A couple of days ago I reached out to my brothers about something that has been on my mind for a long time. I keep seeing the same pattern. Back in school and church, I choreographed dances. Today the whole world is choreographing dances for TikTok. Somewhere in between, I got older. A lot of the people around me didn't.
The French journalist Alphonse Karr had a line for this back in the 1840s: plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. The more things change, the more they stay the same. The platform changed. The behavior stayed exactly where it was. I think what I'm watching has a name, and the name is Peter Pan Syndrome.
Where the name comes from
J. M. Barrie opens Peter and Wendy with the line that sums up the whole book: "All children, except one, grow up." Peter is the exception, and he chose it. He tells Wendy he ran away the day he was born, right after he overheard his parents talking about what he would be when he became a man. His words: "I don't want ever to be a man. I want always to be a little boy and to have fun."
Neverland has a rule to match. Whenever the Lost Boys start to look like they're growing up, Barrie writes, that is against the rules, and Peter thins them out.
The psychologist Dan Kiley borrowed the name for his 1983 book, The Peter Pan Syndrome: Men Who Have Never Grown Up. Kiley had worked with troubled teenage boys and watched many of them become men who still ran from adult responsibility. Let me be clear on one point: Peter Pan Syndrome is not a clinical diagnosis, and you won't find it in the DSM. It's a label, and I'm using it as one.
Kiley wrote about men. Forty years on, the label fits a lot more people than the ones he described.
The young ones
Scroll TikTok for ten minutes and you'll see grown adults treating their twenties like an extended senior year. The priorities are attention and instant gratification. Responsibility gets pushed to later, and later keeps moving.
The delay shows up in the data. In 1947, the median American man married for the first time at 23.7 and the median woman at 20.5. By 2022, the Census Bureau put those ages at 30.1 and 28.2.
I'll be fair here, because some of this is circumstance. By July 2020, 52% of Americans aged 18 to 29 were living with their parents, the highest share on record, and plenty of those moves came from closed campuses and lost jobs. A pandemic is a real reason.
The psychologist Jeffrey Arnett gave this stretch of life a name back in 2000: emerging adulthood. He also pointed out that it only exists in cultures that give young people a long runway to explore before they commit to anything. That runway is a privilege. My issue is with the people who park on it.
The adults are doing it too
Here's what caught me off guard. Older people love to complain that young people won't grow up, and a lot of those same older people are running the exact same play. Parents in their forties are learning the same dance trends as their kids. Moms and dads would rather be their child's best friend, because being the parent means saying no.
Barrie saw this coming too. On the very first page, two-year-old Wendy runs to her mother with a flower, and Mrs. Darling puts her hand to her heart and cries, "Oh, why can't you remain like this for ever!" The longing to freeze time starts with the grown-ups.
Wanting to stay healthy and sharp for as long as possible is smart. The trouble starts when adults dodge the role that comes with their years. Kids copy what they see. If the adults in the room are still chasing their teenage years, the kids never get a clear picture of what a grown-up looks like.
What it costs us
A society full of Peter Pans stalls out. People sit on the big decisions, like getting married or starting something of their own, until the window is half closed. The hard assignments go unclaimed, because hard assignments belong to adults and nobody wants to volunteer.
The generations stop talking to each other too. Older people roll their eyes at lazy kids. Younger people roll their eyes at hypocrites. Both sides have a point, and both sides stay stuck.
Breaking the cycle
Paul put it plainly in 1 Corinthians. When he became a man, he put the ways of childhood behind him. That's a decision, and it's one you keep making.
It starts with honesty. Look at your own life and find the spot where you're still hiding in Neverland. Then pick one responsibility you've been dodging and own it this week.
It also takes a culture that respects age again, where wisdom and experience actually count for something. If you're older, be the example somebody needs. If you're younger, go find those people and learn from them.
Barrie didn't let Peter off the hook, either. By the final chapter Wendy is a grown woman with a daughter of her own, and Peter shows up at the window as the same boy, having forgotten Captain Hook and even Tinker Bell. Everyone he loved moved on without him.
The more things change, the more they stay the same. You don't have to be one of the things that stays the same.
I'll end with my favorite phrase:
Get Serious!
