We're definitely not at the point that this brain development science should be affecting policy. Here's an article from 2022 featuring commentary from several neuroscientists. And here are a couple important quotes:
“Some 8-year-old brains exhibited a greater ‘maturation index’ than some 25 year old brains,”
The interpretation of neuroimaging is the most difficult and contentious part; in a 2020 study, 70 different research teams analyzed the same data set and came away with wildly different conclusions.
And here is a different article written entirely by a neuroscientist and released earlier this year.
According to this it would have been legal to hire you. There's a lot of restrictions when it comes to number of hours and time of day that minors are allowed to work though which is probably what they didn't want to deal with.
That's really cool! What's an example of something controversial that ended up on the ballot?
We seem pretty well-aligned. Personally I think 16 is the absolute latest a person ought to have the liberty to do anything that we age restrict. I was talking to someone from Scotland recently where the Age of Majority is 16 and he said that it's not uncommon there for 16yos to graduate their school system, marry their person, and start a family.
So to me that is at least some amount of evidence that if we simply perceived 16yos as adults, they would behave more like adults.
14 is typically the minimum age to have a job (in the US at least).
I've had this exact same thought in response to the logic that the voting age was lowered to 18 during Vietnam so that 18yos could vote for a president who might draft them. But that logic extends to 14yos who may end up being drafted at 18 during the president's term.
About two years ago now, I was sitting on a bench in Central Park writing my initial thoughts on what I didn't know then but would come to know as Youth Rights.
I don't think I'll ever remember why she did, but about halfway through the day Greta Thunberg came to mind, and I looked up the voting age in Sweden. And my blood boiled in a way I've never experienced in my entire life.
16 years old and one of the most famous and recognizable political activists in the world. 16 years old giving a confident, impassioned, admonishing speech to the fucking UN. 16 years old with no legal right to a voice in her country. No voice to vote for the policies she believed in or the people who might enact them.
My writing, already vitriolic to a fault, managed to become even moreso but with the topic abruptly switched to voting. For the first time in my life, I considered where I'd place the voting age if I could do so unilaterally. Not long into considering it I had a thought that I wrote down immediately, a question I've asked well over 100 times at this point with no substantial answer:
When is it reasonable to say to a person, 'If you're not at least this old, then I don't give a fuck what you think'?
And from the moment I had that thought, I have been unable to place the voting age.
What you just described is the absolute dream I have for all adolescents everywhere.
Society (from my perspective) doesn't seem to realize that people grow way more by experience than they ever will by age.
You got your partying out of the way as an adolescent and were way less inclined towards it during college which it's easy to argue was a way more important phase of your life.
This was exactly my experience. Extreme repression of my sexuality via religion.
Shamed for every impulse. Shamed for masturbation (Not by them of course, they had someone from the church do it. I guess the idea of doing it themselves was just too fucking awkward for them). Shamed for porn (Back when porn was waiting 20 min for an image of tits to load).
It is an overall tenet of my advocacy that this cannot possibly be right. We all hit puberty, all we want to do is fuck as we are driven towards it directly by nature.
Maybe there is a societal need to curate that impulse, I can accept that. But not like this. Not through guilt, shame, and fear.
don't do it here.
You mean they told you you could fuck but just not in the home? How on earth is that productive?
Sure, go fuck in your car and risk catching shit from the cops or go get blown behind the library at school and risk getting expelled (real story that actually happened to a friend of an old gf).
I have the same experience as the first few commenters. These things were never talked about in my home.
How can we as a society justify refusing to educate the youth about these things and leaving them to haphazardly stumble through the same mistakes that we all made?
I used to think that too until a friend pointed out to me that I might bog down the healthcare system with injuries that could have been easily avoided if I had.
Elaborate on this a bit. What are the benefits in your opinion?
Is society ready to admit that Jews don't get a free pass to do whatever the fuck they want anymore clinging to the Holocaust as an excuse?
People who speak like you do a great disservice to your own cause and make it easy for people to stand against it.
I espouse what I believe in, same as anyone else.
Is this how you intend to win people over not allied to your cause?
I thought this place was supposed to be an alternative to Reddit. Don't act as if there's no room for a nuanced conversation when it comes to giving children the autonomy to choose to take puberty blockers or opt for surgery.
Ha. I can see I'm off to a good start around here.