But us? We're fully grown adults living in a state of suspended childhood. So what happens in 20 years when we're all nearly middle-aged? What happens when millennials grow up?

We stay in flat shares or with our parents, live hand to mouth and subscribe to a culture of anxiety. We struggle with self esteem and live our social lives online. We know what we should be because we learnt it from our parents, who got married when they were our age and had kids, a mortgage and a hatchback just a few years later.

We're skint now and we're likely to be living hand to mouth in later life, too. Ryan Bourne, head of Public Policy at the Institute of Economic Affairs , says that our generation will go into our forties with far less accumulated wealth and be much poorer than we should be. "This lack of wealth is partly because millennials won't own housing, but partly because they'll have always paid so much for rent that it's quite difficult to save anything to even build up to a pension, or savings and investment. That is a big problem." Generational expert Jason Dorsey agrees: "We're expecting to have people in their thirties and forties still relying heavily on their parents – 30-somethings who still live at home and 40-somethings whose parents still pay for their mobile phone bill. That phenomenon is putting pressure on the older generation. Unless income increases dramatically we'll be in trouble."

But really, it's uncharted territory; no one really knows. Of the tens of academics, scientists and economists I emailed, most didn't want to hypothesise – although in many ways, this unsavoury tableau probably isn't too far off the mark.

Basically, if you thought being in your twenties was high pressure, look forward to the latter end of your thirties and your early forties. Bourne thinks we'll hit a point in our so-called middle age and realise the gravity of our situation. "The risk there is that a lot of people in our generation will get into their forties and panic that they really haven't got enough accumulated assets to live on in 30 years time when they retire," he explains. "So you'll get a lot of people worrying in their forties that they might not have a particularly happy retirement."

Will we ever catch up to our parents' standards of living and accumulated wealth? According to the economists I spoke to: probably not.

"The problem is we'll still chase many of the same things that other generations want, but it's more out of reach," explains Dorsey. "As our cohort enter their mid to late thirties, it'll be an interesting time to see if millennials achieve this idea of adulthood." VICE readers' number one fear is not finding love, which suggests we're not completely put off the idea of marriage, and our anger at the housing crisis shows – somewhat unsurprisingly – that we still value having a secure place to live. As we waiting for these traditional markers of adulthood going into our thirties, said Dorsey and others I spoke to, we're likely to continue to be frustrated and unhappy.