Your straw man at the end is stupid bad-faith bullshit. The vast majority of teens are no longer 13.
There are other factors, of course, but getting treated like shit, being constantly told you’re a moron, having your sex life criminalized, constantly being told you’ll get groomed and preyed on because you’re an idiot, getting zero respect, and having no legal rights is a major cause of the mental health crisis (which happened simultaneously with the change of paradigm from teens = young adults to teens = large children)
I have seen people literally argue that a romantic relationship MUST be abusive because one of the lovers is only 19 and therefore “still a teen” … the dogma that says teens are children is absolutely false and it is damaging the hell out of young people.
If you lock people out of adult society they gain no life experience.
Strictly keeping youth out of bars because they have no “life experience” means they’ll never get the “life experience” you think they need to be considered adults and allowed into bars. It’s a system for maintaining child status permanently.
Do people really believe that 20 year olds are children and no one ever in the entire history of the world ever noticed this, and the only people who ever got this right are in the USA in the last 20 years?
Your position, that puberty is irrelevant, and the only thing that makes humans adults is a vague kind of “maturity” measured only by minute changes in the least-understood organ in the human body, is appallingly stupid.
Like, I can’t believe that you’re not just trolling me. How on earth can you claim something so obviously not true?
I’m blocking you. Rethink your life. You don’t have to be a useless blockhead troll forever.
Teens are adults. We reach Tanner Stage 5 on average at 14 years of age now. This is not in dispute. The science is clear. You just dislike it, so you deflect to irrelevant garbage about some neural pathways that change a bit when you’re 20 :-D
Odd how our bodies reach adult height and brains adult size during puberty :-)
You have cherrypicked your sources. All of neurology points to very fact that brains develop very quickly ages 9-13 and then very slow change from that point on.
but that data doesn’t support your bigotry, so you ignore it.
You chose to ignore all of the obvious signs of adulthood. Instead you want to cherry-pick a few insignificant changes in the brain and say “these are the only things that matter for maturity”
Sorry. That’s just very stupid.
It would be equally valid to claim that pubic hair, or menstruation, or any other adult trait is the only one that matters.
You think that there’s a difference between 26 year olds and 16 year olds. Well, yes, there is. But many 26 year olds can pass for 16 and vice versa. Because they are both adults. 16 year olds cannot pass for 6 year olds or vice versa. 6 year olds are children.
After puberty humans are adults. This is not difficult. Desperately searching for neuological data so you can claim 17 year olds are children is dumb. Stop doing it. Nobody benefits from you supporting bigotry. Stop it.
Everything you write fuels bigotry against a hated demographic.
Teens usually have less experience than older adults. So they will be at a disadvantage.
You write that my posts have nothing to do with the topic, but my posts are the topic. You have veered off into totally irrelevant nonsense about neural pathways.
The vast majority of brain development happens ages 0-3 and 9-13. We get adult brains along with our adult bodies during puberty. That is scientific fact. The fact that brains age even after puberty is not new info, nor is it relevant at all to anything. Our brains slow down as we age. Maturity is not always a good thing.
re: “has convinced people that everyone under 25 is a retard” Yes. Sensational clickbait headlines about very unreliable fMRI studies did that. I am talking about public opinion here. You links to studies of tiny brain changes make no difference. Nobody cares. Read the nasty crap peeps write about under 25s. They have truly been convinced that youth are brain-dead morons who must be shunned if not locked up entirely.
and teenagers drive the same cars as all other adults on the same roads as all other adults to the same jobs as all other adults where they do the same work as all other adults and get the same wages as all other adults and pay the same taxes as all other adults
for all of human history we have known that teenagers are adults
advanced research into neural pathways changes nothing. they are still just as capable of doing all the things they’ve been doing for thousands of years regardless of what some morons claim about their white matter or prefrontal cortexes.
the brain is by far the least understood organ in the human body, and lots of clickbait bullshit pseudo-science has convinced people that everyone under 25 is a retard. it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that teens would be just fine, if we only treated them with basic respect and gave them a chance.
history is replete with examples of that happening. the current level of infantilization of young adults aged 14-24 in the USA is completely unprecedented. it’s a huge experiment, and as their rates of depression, self-harm, and suicide have skyrocketed it’s safe to say this path is disastrous, evil, or both.
I want people to respect each other. and unwarranted infantilization is very damaging. Our teens are having a massive mental health crisis right now. They are depressed as hell and killing themselves at rates never before seen. The way we treat them like shit, tell them they’re idiots and will be for 10 more years contributes to this.
Pathetic fool loses the argument so he starts hurling vile insults :-D
Sorry Clown. You lost.