If you regularly watch TV, you’ve probably seen a cartoon bear pitching you toilet paper, a gecko with a British accent selling you auto insurance and a bunny in sunglasses promoting batteries. This has always struck me as a bit odd. Sure, it makes sense to use cartoon characters to sell products to kids — a phenomenon that’s been well-documented. But why are advertisers using the same techniques on adults? To me, it’s just one symptom of a broader trend of infantilization in Western culture. It began before the advent of smartphones and social media. But, as I argue in my book “The Terminal Self,” our everyday interactions with these computer technologies have accelerated and normalized our culture’s infantile tendencies. Society-wide arrested development The dictionary defines infantilizing as treating someone “as a child or in a way that denies their maturity in age or experience.” What’s considered age-appropriate or mature is obviously quite relative. But most societies and cultures will deem behaviors appropriate for some stages of life, but not others. As the Bible puts it …