When I’m at my wits’ end trying to come up with ways to convince my friends that we should go bar hopping, crash a friend-of-a-friend’s birthday party, or check out the new not-so-secret speakeasy everyone on TikTok is raving about, one of my go-to lines is “This is the youngest we’ll ever be.” It’s my last-resort guilt trip. Manipulative as it may sound, I want to plant the seed that, 20 years from now, they’ll look back on nights spent at home watching Love Is Blind and feel a tinge of regret—wistful for the days when they had no kids or partner to answer to and could go out without feeling “too old” to indulge in bad behavior.
Over time, that argument has become less successful. Mostly because people I know are proud to skip nights out, isolate themselves, and even brag to see who has the earliest bedtime. People on TikTok have branded this behavioral phenomenon (as the amateur sociologists on the app love to do), and it’s now being referred to as “performative maturity.”
“Don’t say that you’re too old to go to the club,” said one user in a popular post calling out textbook “performatively mature” conduct. “It’s so annoying to see people who are like, All my hobbies are grandma hobbies. They’re the same people who go to work, they go home, and they’re literally on their phones rotting. You’re not mature for doing that.”
What I believe distinguishes an innocent personal preference for solo nights from performative maturity is the proclamation of it. And that can be found in plenty of bed-rotting posts that attempt to aestheticize shutting the world out, and prematurely swearing off the reckless fun that youth forgives. They allow young people online to see insulating their lives as the ideal.
In Josh Lora’s 2024 essay, The Mainstreaming of Loserdom, he mapped out the social acceptance of rotting and the concurrent dwindling amount of young people pursuing outside hobbies, linking it all to “a combination of loneliness, social anxiety, unlimited internet access, and economic crisis.” It’s true that the current economy—and the entry-level job drought that most of Gen Z graduated into—does not naturally give way to night after night of frivolous spending. And it’s no surprise that a generation who came of age during a global pandemic is, by and large, way less afraid of being alone; so much so that our loneliness has many a time been declared an epidemic of its own.
That's why the recent naming and shaming of “performative maturity” marks a pivotal moment. There's a resistance forming against anyone who makes a show out of their reclusion and who feels holier-than-thou for doing so. People are voicing their concerns with the idea that staying inside and scrolling through your phone somehow equates to maturity—especially when time spent interacting with the world can obviously foster enriching relationships and strengthen your social proficiency. And most "performative maturity" commentary doesn't even disparage the people who are too tired to go out or who quietly prefer not to for lifestyle reasons (common defenses raised to oppose performative maturity callouts).
No, this backlash has not emerged to shame introverts. Instead, it challenges a longstanding Gen Z practice: placing arbitrary age limits on enjoyment. It’s no surprise that many people in the demographic are eager to age themselves out of fun (and then brag about it). And when you grow up seeing “You’re 25 years old, it’s time for jazz” or “27 is too old to be bisexual” type-posts go viral once a week, of course you’ll feel some pressure to prematurely limit your hobbies. No one's trying to be seen as “too old” for their proclivities, even at 23.
So the "performative maturity" term is a grabby, of-the-moment way to describe and question that restrictive way of thinking. “Performative” has basically been 2025's word of the year. People on social media have been eager to use it to label everything from certain males to intellectualism as fake and pretentious. But in the same way that performative male memes started a relevant discussion about how men take advantage of stereotypically feminine aesthetics/interests for their own gain, the performative maturity debate has surfaced significant points about what bragging about your isolation serves.
Even the casual jokes about girls who act like grandmas in their early 20s have added some much-needed texture to accusations of how Gen Z is perceived as lonely, sexless, and socially inept. Would the demo be as comfortable with this collective detachment if it weren't constantly endorsed by peers? The “performative maturity” label raises the idea that our generation’s loneliness persists because it’s been so normalized and celebrated among us and, until now, has rarely been met with any real criticism. Maybe shame can be productive sometimes
