Growing into a full humanity requires cultivating virtues that temper one another. Some are associated with adulthood””courage, tenacity, autonomy. Others are more closely associated with childhood””curiosity, humility, generosity.
So, yes: only engaging in “juvenile” culture could shape us in bad ways. (And here at CT, anyhow, we try to take part in both””so go read about the Dardennes brothers’ new film when you’re done here.) But only engaging in “grown up” culture can, too, as can reflexively defending sophisticated products and rejecting simpler ones.
As Scott points out, the kind of culture creative output that results from our cultural shift doesn’t merely mean we end up with “juvenile” culture and fart jokes and boy-men and girl-women. It also means we end up with a lot of “childish” culture.
Or maybe “childlike” is a better term.