Teenagers Are Adults

(not sure this is an opinion. it’s biological fact. but peeps get VERY Angry when I write it)

So a 13 year old person is an adult? I can see how that opinion is unpopular because it’s just wrong.

Many 13 year olds are still pubescent. None are children. Nature turns children into adults. There is lots of individual variation.
What turns a kitten into an adult cat? Puberty. What turns a puppy into an adult dog? Puberty. What turns a child into an adult human? Puberty. This is not difficult.

That’s not how any of this works.

That’s exactly how all of this works. It is in fact #BasicBiology

You can do all the #ScienceDenial you like. Won’t change the facts.

Whenever people like you go this “its just biology/science!” route they always conveniently forget that the animals you’re comparing us to aren’t sapient and don’t require the time for mental development that humans do. a sixth month old dog might be physically and mentally an adult but human psychological development doesn’t end until about 23-25, our level of intelligence requires a longer incubation time.

You pretend biology is on your side by ignoring psychology entirely.

re: “human psychological development doesn’t end until about 23-25”

This is an urban myth. It has been thoroughly debunked.

re: “our level of intelligence requires a longer incubation time”

Your example was dogs. They reach adulthood in around 1 year. We take longer, yes, about 14 years.

It has been thoroughly debunked.

It has not. Greetings, a psychologist.

“Brains fully developed at 25” is an urban myth. It has been thoroughly debunked.

Slate did an excellent summary of the debunking:

slate.com/…/brain-development-25-year-old-mature-…

#Neurology #Junk #JunkScience #Science #TeensAreAdults #RespectYoungAdults #biology #teens #teenagers #infantilization #ageist #bigotry

Care for some actual science? You’re making some extraordinary statements with very simplistic claims relating a interdisciplinary, highly complex field of research. There is not one single point in development when maturity is reached, there are different, simultaneous processes involving different aspects of development and maturity.

Searching for Signatures of Brain Maturity: What Are We Searching For?

(…) For the current discussion, the key point is that there is no single progression that encompasses functional maturation. Neural activity intensifies and reduces, varies quantitatively and qualitatively, in linear and nonlinear ways that are both linked to—and independent of—behavioral differences across development. Each of these patterns reflects developmental progress, but the wide range of ‘‘journeys’’ prohibits a simple definition of what emerging brain functional maturity looks like. (…)

Cognitive and affective development in adolescence

(…) As reviewed in the accompanying article by Paus [5] there is growing evidence that maturational brain processes are continuing well through adolescence. Even relatively simple structural measures, such as the ratio of whiteto-gray matter in the brain, demonstrate large-scale changes into the late teen-age years [6–8]. The impact of this continued maturation on emotional, intellectual and behavioral development has yet to be thoroughly studied, but there is considerable evidence that the second decade of life is a period of great activity with respect to changes in brain structure and function, especially in regions and systems associated with response inhibition, the calibration of risk and reward, and emotion regulation. Contrary to earlier beliefs about brain maturation in adolescence, this activity is not limited to the early adolescent period, nor is it invariably linked to processes of pubertal maturation (Figure 1). (…)

Behavioral and Neural Pathways Supporting the Development of Prosocial and Risk-Taking Behavior Across Adolescence

(…) Consistent with prior work showing that risk-taking behavior increases and peaks during adolescence (Gullone et al., 2000; Steinberg, 2007), we found that rebelliousness similarly increases from early adolescence to late adolescence before declining into adulthood. Research on the development of prosocial behavior however is mixed (for an overview, see Do et al., 2017). We observed a quadratic effect of age on a broad measure of prosocial behavior, peaking in mid-to-late adolescence, suggesting that, like rebelliousness, prosocial development follows a nonlinear age pattern that converges during late adolescence, although future studies should test if different age patterns are observed for different domains within prosocial behavior (such as helping and donating behavior). Our findings converge on the hypothesis that the development of rebellious and prosocial tendencies peak during late adolescence relative to earlier or later ages (Do et al., 2017), thus highlighting late adolescence as both a window of vulnerability and opportunity (…)

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.

has convinced people that everyone under 25 is a retard

But this follows from none of those papers. You have simply no clue what you’re talking about.

I’m absolutely in favor of letting young adults live their lives and participate in society. Give them the right to vote, let their voices be heard. Give them the opportunities they need and want. You’re arguing against a strawman if you think I am against any of those. But your original claim is simply false. There are differences between people with 20 and 40, and a much bigger difference between 16 and 40. That doesn’t mean we should infantilize 16 year olds, but in certain aspects treating them the same will simply be unfair to the teenager. We have juvenile laws for a reason. And the recommendation to wait with smoking until the early 20s isn’t simply meant to annoy young people either.

If you’d stop looking at this from your over emotional point of view and read up on some actual research for a few minutes you could see that everything else you’ve implied has nothing to do with this debate at all.

If actual scientists however are nothing but “some morons” for you, you’re simply incorrigible and ever conversation with you is pointless.

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.