I remember reading that when national parks tried to make a 'bear-proof' trashcan, they found that there was a larger overlap between the smartest bear and the stupidest human to make a viable product.

I feel like it's a similar situation here. The smartest kid and the stupidest adult are far more similar than we'd like to admit.

Extreme/insane positions on everything. Not just one or two insane positions, not just political extremism; when I say everything I mean EVERYTHING. No nuance allowed. And it has to be fully sincere, otherwise you are dealing with a Jreg.

There are milder versions of this, but I have rarely met a child that didn't have a strongly held insane belief formed from their limited experiences. My favorite was a kid who told me that eating pasta supports fascism because it comes from Italy, so loving Italian products means you support Mussolini. Pizza is fine, though, because that's American.

They like people like Lenin and Stalin.

It's a wakeup call for a lot of young people when they start to recognize the absurdity of anti-communist propaganda, but a lot of kids swing too far the other direction and figure all the bad things they've ever heard about history's worst communist leaders are lies.

It doesn't mean that Communism is uniquely bad, but these men were violent tyrants who don't share values with most mainstream western leftists today.

Some never grow up and say dumb shit like that radical gender expression was common in the USSR or something...

Excessive edginess

It's important to differentiate it from like. Having extreme opinions. There are plenty of adults with extreme opinions and they are a whole other conversation. -- But only people under a certain age (not strictly kid, mind, though most people have shaken this off by their mid 20s) have a penchant to arrive at extreme opinions specifically because they are "edgy" and "cool".

This tends to also come with a particularly needless hostile attitude, where they very quickly and easily start with the verbal abuse.

They are on TikTok and not Lemmy

Nice try little Timmy, but I won't be telling you how to pass as an adult.

Specifically in games: constantly repeating the flavor of the month insults. Typically some influencer comes up with a funny insult then for the rest of the month some kids use that one singular insult for every situation

Unfaltering loyalty to the Chinese Communist Party

Very confidently wrong, poor reading comprehension, poor grammar, limited vocabulary, emoji gore, catch phrase/pop culture quotes/talking points repeated with no comprehension of what they're saying, clearly not aware of how many things in life work, religious regurgitation while being surprised everyone doesn't agree with them. Very easily impressed with basic factual statements, clearly thinking confidence is the main thing that makes someone correct. Thinks their mom telling they they are handsome is a valid point. Idk, that's all I got.

Vertical filming, putting music into videos when you could just use silence

I'm actually gonna give the benefit of the doubt and assume this is actually a grown idiot lol

"Arguing" by listing a long list of fallacies that they don't really even understand.

Fallacy fallacy!

They're getting private messaged by YouTubers

For me personally the first tell is when they are morally loading every statement in an argument and are unable to engage with a topic directly. Adults should be able to discuss or debate certain topics on the value of the arguments alone without feeling pressured to include a declarative virtue signal in every clause.

I don't think there is a "dead giveaway". Plenty of kids can pass as adults online and plenty of adults seem like kids online. And sometimes with stuff like word usage/grammar/etc you can't tell if it's a child or someone who doesn't speak English very well or maybe an English-speaking adult who happens to type like that. There's a lot of different people in the world.

slang mostly, I mod a strictly 18+ space and recently someone used the word "skeet", and would you believe it, they were a minor

I aint reading allat💀💀💀💀💀💀💀

Like if gay is bad and u a sigma (YT shorts raised me)
👇

When they're adamant that voting third party in the United States will be useful in some capacity, I assume they're 13

Fr fr bussin no cap the rizzler is mewing

"Redditors of Reddit, how do you sexily sex the sex out of sexy sex???"

Serious response: you can't really make a very general rule. There are a lot of people who write quite maturely since their teens, and a lot of people who are morons since their teens and have endless dedication and determination to remain in that state for as long as they breathe.

Extensive use of emojis and abbreviations is a good indicator.

They don't remember what life was like before Google.

I can't say there is one. Every time i think to myself something like "goddamn, this person is immature" I remind myself that there's a high number of immature adults in the world including myself, so...?

Very weird political positions, like eg. unironic Polpotism

I don't know

Edit: thanks for all the likes! I never got 100 before!!! 💀

Kids care too deeply about the most shallow things

skibidi toilet

"im 9 btw"

Crypto bros who follow ultra distorted stoicism (the only good philosophy is the ones made when slavery was normalised) that believe everyone else is unaware of what very basic knowledge they world they just learned that day.

Enthusiasm.

Assuming that getting married means you'll never masturbate again.

Not understanding the difference between pre and post 9/11 politics

I don't know about you all, but I have been posting as an adult human male for a numbers of years now despite being a 4 year old Alaskan Malamute. No one seems to notice or care.

I don't really know, but when they have weird illogical views that they defend with trump like arguments, I think they are kids. They might not be 10.

Trick question: assume everyone is a child until proven otherwise.

When someone asks what’s a dead give away someone is a kid, it tells me they’re not old enough to remember the ASL days.