What does it really mean to be an adult? Is it when you turn 18? Or is it when you know basic life skills?

Key points: An Adelaide council is advertising 'how to adult' classes for young Australians

An Adelaide council is advertising 'how to adult' classes for young Australians The classes cover topics such as budgeting, housing, employment and wellbeing

The classes cover topics such as budgeting, housing, employment and wellbeing An expert says social change has had an impact on the skills young people learn

One Adelaide council is doing its best to teach the basics through "how to adult" classes.

The City of Onkaparinga, a council south of Adelaide, has advertised classes on budgeting, taxes, employment, housing and renting.

The sessions will also focus on how to maintain a vehicle as well as dealing with Federal Government agencies like Centrelink and Medicare.

So, should more young Australians consider taking classes to learn valuable life skills?

There are many stereotypes about young people being "lazy" and "entitled". ( ABC News: Margaret Burin )

Social change has shaped the way

While there are plenty of stereotypes about millennials, University of Adelaide senior lecturer in sociology Nathan Manning said the apparent lack of "adult skills" was not due to laziness, but social change.

"We live in a service economy where lots of these kinds of things are outsourced whereas in the past they probably weren't," Dr Manning said.

"I think the risk with this sort of debate is that we blame young people for being somehow immature or prevented from being proper adults.

"I think it's much more the case that circumstances have changed around young people which means that some of the skills are less necessary or they don't get the opportunities to work on these kinds of skills."

Dr Manning said a lot of previous markers of adulthood had changed in society, including living independently, full-time work and marriage, which now happened much later in life.

"Sometimes people have the view that this is because young people can't budget and spend too much money on smashed avocado," he said.

"But that's about much wider social changes about the availability of full-time work, about the cost of living independently, the cost of housing, the length of time young people need to spend in education to get the jobs that are available."

Should more 'life skills' be taught at school?

Another expert said while technology had changed the world, it had also changed the way young people communicate and learn.

There is still benefits to learning in face-to-face situations rather than online. ( Pexels: Helena Lopes )

Flinders University Associate Professor and education expert Kerry Bissaker said the change for young people was partly because young Australians had more avenues of learning available to them.

"The millennial generation, growing up with technology and high-tech solutions, may have a different perspective on learning 'old-fashioned' skills," she said.

"If they need to learn how to change a tyre, or how to knit, they would probably go online or teach themselves via YouTube."

She said it was a positive to see councils offering "how to adult" classes, as it could provide an avenue for those who lacked family support to develop life skills.

"We often overlook opportunities to learn when we are younger as we don't see the relevance at that time, so opportunities to self-select classes at a time of need generally result in more motivated learners and positive outcomes," she said.

"Even though many millennials will use the internet as a first point in seeking information, there is much benefit in learning in face-to-face situations with others who share similar interests."

Technology has had an impact on the way young people communicate. ( Pixabay.com )

Blame is an 'important part of debate'

Dr Manning said the environment that young people were brought up in now was "radically different" to generations before.

He said millennials did not create those circumstances, but said that "blame" was "an important part of public debate".

"We like to say 'they are just children and they need to grow up'," he said.

He said it was often thought that young people were less capable and less independent, but there were many limitations on them that older generations did not have to worry about.

"Lots of baby boomers didn't go and get tertiary education, now we have almost half of young people entering some sort of tertiary education," he said.

"That puts serious limitations on the way they can engage with the labour market, how much they can work and of course that has knock-on effects on living independently.

"Then there's massive changes in personal relationships as well, we don't have expectations that people get married in their early 20s and then start a family, that happens much later."

Response has been 'overwhelming'

The City of Onkaparinga's director of community relations Philomena Taylor said the response to the new program had been incredible and places had filled up in just two days.

"The idea came from a young person on our Onkaparinga youth committee last year, who said it [would] be great to see a program that talked about all those things you need to learn — and indeed what many adults wish they were taught when they were younger — as you're transitioning from being a young person into adulthood," she said.

"The response has been overwhelming.

"The program attracted huge interest on social media with a post reaching thousands of people on Facebook."

She said the council would seek feedback directly after the classes finished in two months.

"As this is a pilot program, we won't know the feedback until it finishes in April, but we'll collate the responses from participants and use them to evaluate and evolve the program moving forward," she said.