Forever young? My suggestion

You don't have to be a professional to realise this: Young people may mature physically earlier, but they somehow grow up later mentally. 11-year-olds look like women, but 24-year-olds refuse to leave their nursery. Researchers refer to this phenomenon as «prolonged adolescence». Adolescence is often compared to the metamorphosis of a caterpillar: The child, which has just been full of life, pupates for years in its now youthful body, while the hard drive inside is reconfigured.

One morning, however, the nursery door opens, a young adult spreads his wings and flies out into the world like a butterfly. Beautiful.

The central characteristic of «prolonged adolescence» is a clinging to the status of child. Imagine it like this: The caterpillar has long since become a butterfly, but refuses to leave the much too narrow chrysalis because ... Yes, why is that?

In «prolonged adolescence», young people cling to the status of «child».

Maybe it's too comfortable at home. But perhaps it is simply not particularly promising for young people to grow up at the moment. Delaying it would therefore be a rebellion against a crisis-ridden world that our young people don't want to grow into.

Here's a little thought: since people are turning 100 on average these days and 50 is the new 40 and 40 is the new 30, since 55-year-olds dress like students and 75-year-olds are going through a kind of second puberty - isn't it absolutely okay if young people aren't in such a hurry to grow up? What's more, isn't one of the problems with our world that it puts so much pressure on us to grow up?

Perhaps we should pick up the pace a little: The first thing we could do is extend the kindergarten period. At 8 or 9, children start primary school, which they finish at 15, so that even the last late developer has a chance.

The years between 15 and 20 are spent at ski camps, theatre schools and with occupational therapy measures such as cookery courses and Marie Kondo tidying-up seminars until the young person's brain structure allows them to take in lessons. At the age of 24, they complete their school-leaving certificate or apprenticeship.

Isn't it one of the problems of our world that it puts so much pressure on us to grow up?

During this time, the children don't live with their parents, of course, God forbid, they are kept in camp-like boarding schools, with unisex clothes and no internet, in order to set a limit to their egomania. But above all: so as not to burden them unnecessarily with the ballast of adults.

In their mid-30s, the kids have finished their studies and are ready to start their careers and start their lives. They are a little late by international standards, but without the imposition of the adult world, they may have developed a real desire and love for this world. Admittedly, it is not a fully developed concept. But the current ones don't really seem to work either.