About

To Adult (often used in the progressive tense, as "adulting", or in hashtag form) is to act in a responsible, grown-up fashion. This Internet slang is often applied to social media posts regarding chores, bills, and other types of menial tasks.

Origin

On July 25th, 2011, writer Kelly Williams Brown created her first post on her Tumblr, adultingblog.^[1] The blog provided a selection of lifestyle tips in a conversational style, meant to help people act like adults. The blog was formatted as a series, and the first post was titled "Step One: Make your fucking bed." It has received 47 notes as of September 2015.

Spread

Brown's adultingblog has continued to step 388, as of August 2015; her posts now regularly accrue thousands of notes.^[2] On May 7th, 2013, Brown published a book entitled Adulting:
How to Become a Grown-up in 468 Easy(ish) Steps, which helped popularize the phrase among others.^[3] The blog Grammar Girl chose "Adulting" as its 2014 Word of the Year; according to the blog, the first use of adulting on Twitter was by user LinnieTweets, on July 24th, 2014.^[4]

As of September 2015, the word is in common use throughout all social networks. On Twitter, it has been used both with and without hashtag approximately 30,000 times between August 21st through September 20th, 2015.^[5][6] On Instagram, there are more than 85,000 posts using the hashtag #adulting,^[7] as well as thousands more using the hashtags #adultingishard,^[8] #adultingsucks,^[9] and #adultingsohard.^[10] These hashtags are also in use on Vine, where there are 338 results using the search term.^[11]

Notable Examples

Search Interest

External References