Global Coming-of-Age Strands: How the World’s Teens Are Fraying Into Adulthood
The International Bureau of Coming-of-Age Affairs, had such an outfit existed, would have filed its annual report this month and quietly shredded it an hour later. From Lagos to Lausanne, the planet’s teenagers are still required to perform the same rickety stunts—first kiss, first hangover, first tax form—yet the safety net beneath those rituals has become a threadbare souvenir of the late 20th century. The strands have not vanished; they have merely frayed into something darker, more fluorescent, and algorithmically monitored.
Take Gen-Z Seoul, where the traditional “doljanchi” first-birthday grab has been replaced by a crypto-themed NFT drop. Toddlers now reach for whichever QR code emits the loudest notification ping; whichever blockchain their chubby finger selects supposedly foretells whether they will grow up to be surgeons, YouTubers, or disgraced finance bros. The parents film it in 8K, hashtag #FutureBagholder, and upload before the baby has finished crying. Childhood, like the won, is now fully digitized and instantly depreciating.
Meanwhile, in rural Moldova, the rumspringa equivalent involves a 4 a.m. minibus to Palermo, where seventeen-year-olds pick strawberries for €3 an hour so their siblings can afford TikTok Premium back home. Their Italian co-workers lecture them about climate change between drags of unfiltered cigarettes; everyone agrees the planet is doomed but that strawberries still need harvesting. The kids return home fluent in sarcastic Neapolitan, clutching counterfeit Gucci belts and a new understanding that adulthood is mostly paperwork you fill out for someone else’s profit.
Across the Atlantic, American suburbs still host the sacred Driver’s License Ceremony, though the DMV now operates like a dystopian theme park: numbered tickets, armed guards, and a looping playlist of canned joy. Sixteen-year-olds practice their “freedom face” for the photo, unaware the facial-recognition database will tag them forever. The car itself is optional; many simply lease the license to rent e-scooters by the minute. The open road has narrowed to whatever sidewalk Lime hasn’t geo-fenced.
The French, ever the curators of existential chic, have rebranded the lycée “bac” philosophy exam as an Instagram Live debate. Students defend Rousseau while followers spam clown emojis; grading is crowdsourced. The Ministry of Education calls it “democratized pedagogy.” Critics call it “Twitch Plays Sartre.” Either way, the students learn early that intellectual depth is measured in real-time engagement metrics—a handy primer for their future careers in doomed media start-ups.
In Japan, the once-solemn Seijin-no-Hi coming-of-age day now features pop-up vaccination booths and recruiters for the metaverse. Young adults in rented furisode kimonos pose for selfies, then strap on VR headsets to attend a parallel ceremony where their avatars receive NFT certificates of adulthood. The physical event ends at noon; the virtual after-party lasts until the servers crash under the weight of unprocessed angst.
What unites these disparate strands is the growing suspicion that the old ropes—stable jobs, affordable housing, breathable air—have already snapped. Coming of age no longer culminates in membership; it culminates in subscription. You don’t inherit the earth, you lease it with three roommates and an option to renew if the algorithm still likes your face.
And yet, cynicism has its limits. In Cape Town, township teenagers still sneak onto the last train to Muizenberg at sunrise, surfboards balanced on their heads, chasing the same Atlantic waves their grandparents rode. No phones, no sponsors, just the ancient contract between skin, salt, and gravity. Somewhere in that ritual—dangerous, unmonetized, gloriously pointless—the original strand survives, frayed but unbroken, ready to trip the next generation into whatever passes for adulthood these days.
