Y’all draw very deep lines in the sand when it comes to things as variable as age, and it doesn’t make sense.

Being allowed to do things by age is always a touchy subject. But hopefully you’ll read the post, rather than make up a scenario and argue with it in the comments.

The ages between about 15-20 are all over the place with variables. And any time being allowed or not allowed certain activities comes up, people say several arbitrary things.

-“The frontal lobe isn’t fully developed until 25” That doesn’t mean you lack the ability to reason. It just means you learn to take a beat because info hits the emotional parts of your brain first.

-“18 and 19 still end with “teen” they’re teenagers. The only reason we name our numbers the way we do is because we group by 10’s. We likely only do that because we have 10 fingers.

-“you shouldn’t be able to do X until you’re at least old enough to drink” Basing one arbitrary rule on another arbitrary rule as justification is nonsense.

All of these things are arbitrary. No one alive is going to admit that their out of touch boomer parents and grandparents are smarter just because they’re older. Age doesn’t mean shit other than the opportunity to acquire wisdom. And some people are dodging wisdom like it’ll hurt them all the way through their 20’s, 30’s, and so on. Some people can learn from others’ mistakes at 14, 15, or 16. There’s so much variability between late teens to early 20’s, that shutting down conversations because of our number conventions is silly.

One of the biggest things I’ve heard is “We should raise the age of consent to 20! They’re teens! They’re children!” And no we shouldn’t. Because no one really thinks that. That would put 19 year olds in the same dating pool as 13 year olds. That’s insane. We all know it is.

People love to treat teenagers like children, when a 16 year old is way closer to a young adult, a functioning member of society, than a child. Even a pre-teen. I’d even argue they deserve to vote. They’re working and being taxed. Not being allowed to vote is taxation without representation. And it’s not like the 18+ crowd is voting based on intelligent critical thinking.

My point is that as a teenager, I fucking hated ignorant older people shutting me down just because. If your response to this post is “they’re kids. They don’t have enough life experience” without giving a reason more life experience would make any difference, your point doesn’t have ground to stand on. I’m not even a teenager anymore. I’m closing in on middle age, and it still irks me to see, because I know so many confidently wrong idiots my age and older.

Everyone wants to talk about “social constructs”. “Adulthood” is one of the biggest and most flexible social constructs around. Back up the clock a couple thousand years, and you might find a 15 conquering the known world. Not long ago, you could’ve been 16 years old with a family of 5 and 10 acres of farmland.

You can drive a 2 ton death machine as early as 15 in some cases, but age of consent is 18. You can go die in a war at 18, but drinking has to wait until 21. And the BEST one… Can’t rent a car until you’re 25. This shit is all over the place anyway.

I get that we have to set certain things in stone to make it a law. But for the love of god, realize that those laws, like most others, are just to protect the lowest common denominators of society. Have a little nuance in your discussions. Quit infantalizing young adults. Don’t shut them down because they’re a little newer to the world, nor should you absolve them of guilt. Most of us know the difference between right and wrong well before adulthood. We knew when we were doing something stupid 90% of the time while we were doing it.

Rant over. Felt controversial, might delete later.