Are You Officially an Adult At 18?

Jorge Arteaga, Editor

Moments ago you were considered a kid. Now you’re in adulthood as the clock hit twelve. The ability to register to vote, apply for credit cards, buy a lottery ticket, register for the selective service (males only) and etc all open up hitting this milestone. These new opportunities make you an “adult” even if you aren’t one mentally. Turning eighteen does not make you an adult, the years after it is what makes you an adult. 

Nineteen years of age has come upon you now. Maybe you’re in college studying away day and night or working hard at your job every day. Whatever choice you make after high school will deeply affect the way you consume, find, and achieve this goal of adulthood, because of the experience you need to embody to find it. Perception plays a part in this as well. You gain a perspective that you couldn’t experience as a kid such as the value of money, the way you take care of yourself, and if going out with friends is the best choice to make that day; these are just a few things to keep in mind.

Your twentieth birthday has passed, and you’re finally out of the teenage years. Possibly this makes you an adult as you are stuck in between 19 and 21 (teenager and adult). You don’t get to experience anything at twenty as you do at eighteen or nineteen. Therefore, you won’t endure as many things on your path toward adulthood.   Most likely you’re still in college or working the nine-to-five. Yet, you’ve experienced two whole years of becoming an adult. Anything you’ve come across up to this point has paved the way to your understanding and acquiring of adulthood. 

The year of cigarettes, vapes, and alcohol twenty-one. You have to be an adult now because of these older people’s activities you can now participate in legally. Likely enough though, you probably have already participated in one of these activities already. Which gives more of a reason why you’re not an adult. So you were no different from being twenty compared to twenty-one. That’s why it’s really hard to discover what age you become an adult. Many lives experience different things at unique times and this is decided just by going through life.

It doesn’t matter what age you realize you’ve become an adult. Experience will tell you whether you have officially achieved adulthood. With this, it will hopefully build a trail for becoming an adult. As they say the older you get the wiser you become.