The older I get, the more I look back, the more being 18 still feels like being a child. Not to insult any 18 year olds or young people. You’re great there’s nothing wrong with you.
Just it seems like 18 is still such a vulnerable age. If you could, would you push for the official adult age to be older? 21 maybe?
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From today’s society, I think it should be pushed back to 30
18 is very young and a lot of people that age are functionally children. Raising the age to 21 seems ott, though.
Enough things have been pushed up to 18 from 16, not to.mention so much work and similar experiences being pushed up to 16, that I think 18 is about right.
The only thing I might change is driving age and put that higher, but you’d need better public transport to go with.
Genuinely, if you’re being serious, if you wanted true equality here there should be a test.
I know literal 19 year olds in good jobs in my industry (live events, dance music) who are mature, independent, and so good at their job they put many people in their 40s to shame. I know other people who in their late teens had kids early and despite the stereotypes, were and are excellent parents who raised amazing kids, some of whom are now basically adults.
I also know people in their 40s who I wouldn’t trust to cook me a microwave meal.
I would say I was still immature in a practical sense until I was about 25. On the other hand I don’t think there’s any good reason not to be “officially” an adult at 18.
By 18 I was capable of leaving home, by 22 I was capable of living in a different country, and by 23 I was capable of doing my job as well as people older than me, evidenced by the fact I did these things.
I definitely think my decision-making ability was still improving at these ages, but I don’t think a person has to be fully developed in order to be considered an adult. They just have to be developed enough for most practical purposes
18 is more than sufficient. We just give kids up to that age the luxury of a soft environment as a general rule. I’ve met plenty of extremely mature 18 year olds that grew up in a shit situation (had to be a surrogate parent for their younger siblings for example). I would certainly not want to legislate another 3 years of dependence for them.
I was working & moved out at 17, so 18 is fine IMO.
Maturity does not happen at a specific age – it’s a state of mind that hits some younger, & some never!
Within reason it can go as high or low as we choose as a society to allow. My grandad was working long shifts in a railway yard well before turning 18. If you allow some people to be and stay immature then they will. Hence plenty of people now who act like kids in adult bodies well into their 20s.
I’m 30s and a lad from my primary school lives round the corner in a house share with his brother. Their mum still goes round to cook dinner etc. most days. I know another guy who was basically told to get out (albeit with some financial support) as soon as he turned 18 and he quickly matured.
No.
I teach and manage sixth form. 18 year olds are adults. They are young adults, but so are 21 year olds. They are independent and can be fully independent depending on circumstances and opportunity. They are not children.
Everyone is different. Some reach that maturity at 16, some don’t reach it until 25. But in my experience, most 18 year olds are mature enough to be treated as adults and should be respected as such.
If we have any differences, we should appreciate more how hard it is for an 18 year old to start out economically rather than question the maturity. For instance, foster children should not he cut off from support and funding at 18; they may be mature enough to look after themselves but they can’t suddenly magic up the economic resources to do so. Neither can any other 18 year old.
You are probably one of three or four generations alive right now. True maturity is the point at which you know that, of the generation band that you are part of (kids, yourself, parents, maybe grandparents) you know, without a shadow of a doubt, that it is you that is the most worldly-wise.
For me, that occurred at about mid-thirties.
25, that’s the average age of total brain development
18 is far from mature but we all need to start somewhere. A lot of maturing happens by means of learning from mistakes. If we delay the age I am afraid we may just delay the maturing.
I don’t see any harm in leaving it at 18, at the end of the day, mistakes and regrets are normal, and it’s fine so long as they’re not dangerous mistakes.
Maturity? As in when their fruit is ripe? Or when their brains are not fucked up. I’m with the Athenians on this, no-one under 30
18 is about right I think but 18 is still a teenager and I think that 18-25 year olds still need a certain amount of parental guidance and support. Even if it’s just a bit of reassurance now and then. Not all 18-25 year olds but a significant number still are not mature enough to ‘go it alone’ so to speak.
There were some studies done about the brain not being adult till about age 25. Further, for those that haven’t had a supportive, secure, stable, and functional childhood, some people never fully mentally mature properly and get stuck in their development. Everyone needs a safe and suitable environment to properly mature and develop into a functional adult.
I’m 20 and after just coming out of my teens, there is such a difference in maturity from 16 to 17 to 18 to 19 from my experience. I left school at 16 and went through college and now work full time and am completely financially independent, but hell, I learned a lot and very fast from 18 to now. I don’t think it should be pushed up from 18 though, especially over here where most of our liberties are granted at that age. In Scotland we have the ‘Young People’ age bracket from 18-24 which I find a little condescending. There is also a massive difference from 18-24 as well, but that just comes with experience.
What do you mean by maturity? Or by Adult? What metric are you using?
I don’t think changing the age solves the problem. Maturity comes from the weight of independence and responsibility that you’re burdened with once you reach the legal age of accountability. You could change it to 28 and people would just be emotionally and intellectually stunted for longer. There is always going to be a learning curve with being an adult and that curve only begins once you’re imbued with responsibility and your safety net is gone. That is when empathy, humility and intellect really start to make a mark on your personality.
To put it simply, I think that having a single age (or a narrow range) where you can drive, drink alcohol, have sex, live alone, work a job, or be held responsible for a crime, will always result in people at the lower end being ill-equipped for it, regardless of what that age is. You won’t treat those responsibilities with the reverence they deserve until you’ve had your first few years of practice.
I knew a lot of ppl who had kids at 18 and lived by themselves and worked full time and let me tell you, they were a million times more clued up and street wise and mature than A LOT of people I worked with who were older.
Maturity can come with age but it also comes with experience and some ppl are forced to mature a lot more quickly than others.
It’s fine where it is. I’ve done catastrophically stupid things entering my 30s, things 18 year old me would have called me out on.
No definitely not. 18 is young, but it’s also old enough to live on your own and work full time. You make the age of majority older and you’re trapping people into lives ruled by others.
Yes, neuroscience tells us the brain isn’t fully developed until 25, and I certainly felt like that, but I also wanted to be making my own decisions and mistakes at 18 (or even 16/17).
There’s a lot of stuff I did at 18-22 that I wouldn’t have done at 26.
But then there was also a lot ot stuff I did at 27 that I wouldn’t do now.
Where do you draw the line with it
No, I’d leave it where it is or maybe even make it younger — I was practically an independent adult by the time I was in sixth form.
No I wouldn’t push for a change. With that line of thinking you have to be careful that when you get older still that you don’t start thinking it should really be 25 etc.
Any age that’s chosen will always be something of a compromise. But how can people fully mature if they’re not given the chance to?
I always try to remember what I’d have thought at that age (and obviously this is somewhat tricky and impossible to be fully accurate as experience & hindsight will cloud my thinking), but even at 19 I’d lived away from home for a year by then, been on a couple of holidays abroad with friends, and was in contact with my parents roughly every couple of weeks for a bit of a catch up.
So if someone older had tried to suggest that actually I should be treated as a child again for a couple more years to help them cope with a bit of a midlife crisis, then my answer would break the sub’s rules 😉
Even more so as by 21 someone could already have been working for 5 years!
I shall defer to Professor Tolkien on this:
>At that time Frodo was still in his tweens, as the hobbits called the irresponsible twenties between childhood and coming of age at thirty-three.
I would say 25. Because I felt like I was still a child when I was 23 or 24.