As the two fortysomething men at the trampoline park bounced over towards my seven-year-old daughter, the thought occurred to me: are kidults getting out of hand? Admittedly, taking your children to a trampoline park almost guarantees an injury, but as I stood on the viewing platform with the rest of the “old-school” adults, the growing shadows of the men plunging my daughter into darkness did give me pause. It’s Saturday afternoon, gents, shouldn’t you be in an ice bath somewhere or funnelling your wages into your crypto account or going down the slide at that BrewDog pub in Waterloo?
In fact, ice baths and crypto and soft-play pubs are further signs that kidults now officially run the capital. Everything is a little showy-offy game now. Apps have made formerly grim tasks like banking and dating into fun, shareable experiences. New research has said the gamification market is going to grow by 27 per cent over the next four years, spurred on by pandemic smart phone ultra-dependence.
