As millennials, we're often criticized as being one of the least mature and most selfish generations to ever exist. The portrait of a 20-something born in the early to mid-90s is seen as the quintessential man/woman child who relies on their parents for everything, has zero social skills, and would cease to exist without technology; while simultaneously these very same people who describe us as the former laud us for our technological abilities with the somewhat unrealistic belief that we are all tech geniuses and future start-up owners sent to save the world one app at a time. While due to personal biases I do not agree with either of these stances, I can attest to the difficulty, anxiety, and existential crises faced by people my age being pushed into adulthood with more access to technology and media than ever before. While there is no quantitative way to measure one's "adultness" here are 15 things that to me, mean you're well on your way.

1. You Don't Need as Much External Validation

As you begin to mature you'll find that others' opinions of you carry significantly less weight, don't believe me? Think about how important your peer's opinions of you were in high school versus now and tell me that you'd care if someone told you "you dress funny."

2. You Stop Pretending to Care About Things You Don't Care About

My mom always told me that she can't wait to get old because when you're old you're allowed to not give a damn, but I don't think this has to begin when you start receiving AARP newsletters. Grown ups (in my opinion at least) are able to voice their opinions honestly and would never pretend to care about or like something they didn't. With me, this can be applied to when people start talking about sports or whenever someone from Green Peace approaches me at the mall.

3. You Can Articulate Your Feelings

Passive aggressiveness is the height of immaturity: it's lazy, it circumvents problem solving, and is ultimately a lose-lose situation. You know you've reached maturity when you can get past the initial discomfort of expressing your emotions or asserting yourself in order to solve a problem rather than having everyone play the "guess-what-mood-I'm-in-today" game.

4. You Prioritize Your Mental, Physical, and Emotional Well-Being

There is little to no reason as a functioning adult to not prioritize your own health. Does that mean live on nothing but kale and berries? Of course not! But it does mean becoming more aware of how your decisions and lifestyle habits impact your overall health. Being an adult isn't so much about depriving yourself of pizza but ordering the pizza, because pizza makes people happy and happiness is a big part of good mental health. Maybe eat a salad for your physical health with the pizza. See how easy that is?

5. Your Taste in Everything Becomes More Discerning

This is not only applicable to your love life but to your choices in food, clothes, home furnishings, etc. Grown ups have refined taste that took years to establish and that they should take pride in.

6. You Don't Feel a Need to Justify Your Fashion Choices

Being a bonafide, grown-ass adult means dressing in whatever suits you and developing your own personal style outside of what's considered popular. If you're an adult you should feel confident in what you wear and how you choose to wear it.

7. You Realize What Your Parents Mean by "Fiscal Responsibility"

When you're a true adult you spend less money on stupid shit like 10 pound bags of gummy bears and adult coloring books before spending money on bills or adding to your savings. If you're frivolous with money, you aren't fully grown up yet because clearly you aren't earning your own money.

8. You Stand Up for What You Believe In

No matter how weird. A grown up doesn't just go along with injustices or petty tyranny but rather speaks up against it. An immature person does nothing and complains.

9. Your Taste in Mates Becomes Less Superficial

Abs, salon quality hair, a luscious beard, and sparkly eyes might be nice, but you know what else is? Respect, stability, similar values, integrity, and someone who treats you nicely.

10. You Don't Need to Prove You're Right

Let's face it, fighting is exhausting and 99% of the time your argument will fall on dead ears! The older you get, the more solidified your views become, so what's the point in trying to change someone else's? Agreeing to disagree (despite what some people may tell you) is the mature thing to do in most situations; unless a disagreement it's over something serious like murdering one's parents; which, unless you're a sociopath I think we can unanimously agree is wrong.

11. You Have More Self-Awareness

You know your own faults, talents, and faux pas and because of this awareness it becomes easier to realize when you've messed up and not blame other's for said mess-ups.

12. You Realize That it's Sad to Believe High School is the Peak of Our Existence

So you got picked last in PE, so you never went out with the quarterback, so you weren't head cheerleader, who cares? Truly mature people realize that it's not about looking back it's about moving forward. Pulling out old yearbooks and lamenting how you didn't have a good high school experience takes away from your present and future, which in spite of age-old cliches does not have to end in mediocrity just because you're no longer a smug 16-year-old.

13. You Learn to Depersonalize Things

As the old Polish proverb states, "Not my monkeys, not my circus." The same can be applied to not taking other peoples' rudeness personally. Once you become an adult it begins to become very clear whose problems are truly yours to deal with, hint: most of them aren't!

14. You Learn That People Don't Change Much

People ultimately are very predictable, so much so it's kind of boring. When you find yourself in certain situations with certain people, the adult thing to do isn't to blame the other person for putting you in that situation but rather to examine your patterns of behavior that have made it okay for the other person to (predictably) disappoint you again and again instead of being a victim.

15. You Learn That You Aren't Too Big to Fail

Yes, even Beyonce makes mistakes, you're never too old for learning. What matters is how you recover from it! There's always room for growth and improvement!