Published on 12, July, 2020
Yes we all know when the legal definition is, but to me its about so many other things.
Becoming an adult is a process, and not something that happens on your 18th birthday and as a process it should be respected and acknowleged that it happens differently for different people.
Adulthood is often a cultural and social construct too, some cultures encourage their young to be far more independent than others, should we enforce conformity and if we should who's?
Should we hold someone back from doing "adult" things because they're not 18 even when they're ready?
I didn't feel like an actual adult until at least my early 30s.
Among neuroscientists, the consensus seems to be that the brain doesn't finish its progression from adolescence to maturity until around or after the mid-20s. A couple of interesting snippets:
From MIT:
"As a number of researchers have put it, "the rental car companies have it right." The brain isn't fully mature at 16, when we are allowed to drive, or at 18, when we are allowed to vote, or at 21, when we are allowed to drink, but closer to 25, when we are allowed to rent a car"."According to recent findings, the human brain does not reach full maturity until at least the mid-20s". https://hr.mit.edu/static/worklife/youngadult/brain.html
From University of Rochester Medical Centre:
"Understanding the Teen Brain
It doesn’t matter how smart teens are or how well they scored on the SAT or ACT. Good judgment isn’t something they can excel in, at least not yet. The rational part of a teen’s brain isn’t fully developed and won’t be until age 25 or so.
In fact, recent research has found that adult and teen brains work differently. Adults think with the prefrontal cortex, the brain’s rational part. This is the part of the brain that responds to situations with good judgment and an awareness of long-term consequences. Teens process information with the amygdala. This is the emotional part.
In teens' brains, the connections between the emotional part of the brain and the decision-making center are still developing—and not always at the same rate. That’s why when teens have overwhelming emotional input, they can’t explain later what they were thinking. They weren’t thinking as much as they were feeling."
https://www.urmc.rochester.edu/encyclopedia/content.aspx?ContentTypeID=1&ContentID=3051
So then is the ideal age to decide whethr to take a drug or have your goolies surgically or chemically changed.
If that's the case, then in order to create happy adn well adjusted adults we need to start teaching "Delayed Gratification" to all human tiny children as soon as they enter the educational system.
This will make profound changes in all human endeavour, and sound the death knell of neo-classical and keynsian economic theory & practice amnogst other things.
And we'll all live longer in aggregate as a result!