A generation ago a big decision for a 30-something usually involved their spouse, their child, their mortgage or some brainmelting and nerve testing combination of all three. Nowadays we face such colossal decisions as Rock Band or Guitar Hero? iPod or Zune? Vintage Darth Vader figure from eBay or a new skateboard? We’re deep in the era of the teenage adults, living the real-life- Tom-Hanks-in-Big dream.

While daddy’s boys have always been born into this lifestyle, it’s not just the privileged who now enjoy kidult life. We’re all taking advantage of this in our own ways because amazingly, no one’s stopped us!

Three gap years, an extended student lifestyle, years of well-honed expert experience of hiding bills and being ‘not quite ready’ to fully commit to a partner/job/ breakfast choice/you name it, has coasted me along this far but there’s a nagging feeling it’s going to catch up with us.

When you look back at your parents’ photographs of themselves when they were young you see fresh-faced people from another time. Be it the 60s, 70s or even 80s, there’s no doubt a certain dignity to their youthful fun. Give it a couple of years in their photographic timeline and you’ll inevitably appear; a baby burden of responsibility that changed them forever. What will the next generation think of our antics? Instead of warm, oranged faded photos, they get to click through endless digital shots of their parents in the prime of their kidult youth (21-40) stood in clubs and bars throwing gang signs, wearing baggy hoodies and huge baseball caps backwards – all the while doing the one-eyed squint and point combo.

To our kids, if we get round to having them, we could be the most embarrassing, responsibility shirking, childlike generation yet. Will their teenage rebellion be donning suits and getting a job for life as soon as they leave school?

The last generation most likely became adults at around 20 – were they too lenient with us? Are we the product of a changing society that means while they had to work there is now a large chunk

of this generation that doesn’t?

Avoiding a proper job because you’re ‘creative’ is brilliant fun but those days might be coming to an end. Everyone knows the mess the free-love loans we funded these freedom years with and treated with a: “I’ll pay it back later, I’m still young,” attitude got us into. While we were blowing up buildings on Call of Duty, the real-life banks collapsed and the world outside our apartments went to pot. Kidults, however, are still living the dream; sidestepping responsibility indefinitely. The big horrible real world that we’re told so much about through email circulars, online news and Twitter is very much at bay. The gap between comfort and reality has been widened further over the last year. If we couldn’t do it when the going was good, what chance have we got of getting out there now?

Had we picked up the torch of responsibility, Friday nights would either be spent in with the wife and kids after a long day at work or maybe enjoying jolly civilised after-work cocktails at a Soho bar at $85 a pop. Instead, a regular kidult Friday and Saturday night is a few hours huddled outside bar 7-Eleven where the pack instinct kicks in and the shouting and leering begins.

We can make excuses though; we’ve got so much choice these days, from being able to extend school to university, to the ability to get a loan and live literally anywhere in the world. That’s the whole world. When you get where you’re going you’ve then got the choice of a million careers to start thinking about considering. It’s no wonder the weaker ones shut down and retreat back to their carefree youths.

In contrast, previous generation’s lives were mapped out. School – job – marriage – child. Kids outside marriage were frowned upon so wedlock was order of the day. Nowadays attitudes to sex have changed and contraception’s 99.9% effective. If society’s no longer bothered, our options boil down to this: become a grown up or live carefree and enjoy inconsequential sex (or at least stand outside 7-Eleven on a Friday night dreaming of it).

Can we hang the blame on our clothes? How many times have you stepped into an elevator with a smart, well-groomed and suited man and not felt a pang of shame when you see your reflection against this go-getter. All of a sudden your ironic t-shirt feels childish, that worn patch on your jeans doesn’t have the edge of cool it had that morning, you really should have had that shave and that haircut you’ve been planning for a while and your trainers look secondhand, not rock star retro. Your lift-mate’s no doubt a good five years your junior; riding the elevator to the top of the building and skyrocketing to the top of his career. Because this is such a common occurrence, however, once you hear the familiar ping of the lift doors opening, as soon as he’s stepped out you shrug it off, desensitised, check yourself and think, ‘looking good, scruffy Fonz.’

That said, even the guys riding the elevator to the top, our Central-based banking peers who looked like they were doing a good job, it turns out were actually being more irresponsible than us lot put together. At least we only manage to waste our own money and jeopardise our own futures, they’ve managed to bring the world to its knees for a year with whatever they’ve been up to.

So if our classmates who had become grownups didn’t turn out to be responsible adults, who are these days? Are we all still our parent’s children because none of us have stepped into their shoes?

As it stands, we’re on an extended holiday; a 15-year bonus bolt-on to our teens and a bubble that for some of us is soon fit to burst and when it does – what then? Will our generation’s mid-life crisis be a rush for responsibility, stability, a relationship and a career? It looks like our banker peers will have the last laugh when they’re retiring to Discovery Bay at 45 and we’re running around looking for jobs and changing nappies. Ah well, ‘til then, we may as well enjoy it while we’re young…ish.