Yeah, this is the first I’ve seen someone else weirded out by the constant push to up the age you’re considered a ‘real adult’. I’ve seen people arguing for the age of consent to be set to 25 and treating people in their 20’s like they were 12 year olds.
Like I’m not arguing that old men dating young women isn’t gross, but that doesn’t make those young women in their 20’s children. There’s this dehumanizing element to the conversation that’s really concerning to me, but the whole sexual abuse aspect of it overshadows the extremely troubling language they’re using, so you can’t address it.
You can acknowledge inherent power imbalances without resorting to treating the younger party like a kid.
We really need a middle zone… Human brains don’t reach full maturity until around age 25 when the prefrontal cortex is done developing, and quite frankly I think it could be argued that the thing that makes a human a human is the prefrontal cortex. However, that part of the brain “turns on” at the onset of puberty. It takes about 12 years for the human brain to really master the whole controlling a human body thing, and another 12 for it to master the whole thinking and conceptualizing and thinking ahead (and a bunch of other stuff). That second 12 year span should be treated differently than both the first span and adulthood.
Actually that “brain stops developing at 25” is a misconception, the study that spawned it just ran out of funding when the subjects were 25 and didn’t see the brain development slowing down, iirc (no source on hand it’s past midnight here).
I know that you mean well, but honestly, I’m really getting quite tired reading this particular piece of misinformation about brains maturing at age 25.
25 isn’t a hard line. The reality is that our brains continue to change forever. But, to use a metaphor, around our mid 20s is when it’s done “cooking”, but just like you might let meat “rest” on the counter for a bit after it’s done cooking, your brain keeps changing, just not to the same degree. Maybe some day if brain scanning technology gets better, and we have a real healthcare system, people could get scans to see when their brain seems to have reached full maturity, especially if they’ve committed a crime. Of course “full maturity” will always be sort of an arbitrary choice because as I said, our brains are never truly finished.
Thanks for the reply, I apologise if I come across as rude, I have been personally affected quite a lot by the whole ‘brain development’ conversation because I am disabled and I have had this kind of thing used to take away my human rights. So I find it a little bit upsetting to talk about - which probably means that I shouldn’t talk about it to preserve my own well-being, but I find it really hard to just let discourse that I feel is really harmful to persist in our society.
Some people might be ‘cooked’ at 16, others might not be done until they’re in their 30s. Some are never finished no matter how long they’re in the oven.
The root problem is that we’re desperately trying to find a correlation between “number of years alive” and “level of responsibility” where one doesn’t really exist.
God, the “age of consent” being at 25 freaks me out… If I didn’t become legally an adult when I did I don’t know if I would have been still alive today
These thoughts about consent and everything are all well and good as long as you assume a perfectly healthy family. But what if it’s not? What if it’s dysfunctional? Or abusive? What if the environment you’re in is straight up unhealthy for you?
It really feels like child abuse is very much an afterthought. Despite it being much much more common than people in the past thought. And child abuse is something that comes along with you through your entire life, and if you don’t at least try to handle it, you’re just left a broken person further harming yourself in ways that society is not kind towards, and we’re left with what society considers to be “problem” people.
Yeah, this is the first I’ve seen someone else weirded out by the constant push to up the age you’re considered a ‘real adult’. I’ve seen people arguing for the age of consent to be set to 25 and treating people in their 20’s like they were 12 year olds.
Like I’m not arguing that old men dating young women isn’t gross, but that doesn’t make those young women in their 20’s children. There’s this dehumanizing element to the conversation that’s really concerning to me, but the whole sexual abuse aspect of it overshadows the extremely troubling language they’re using, so you can’t address it.
You can acknowledge inherent power imbalances without resorting to treating the younger party like a kid.
We really need a middle zone… Human brains don’t reach full maturity until around age 25 when the prefrontal cortex is done developing, and quite frankly I think it could be argued that the thing that makes a human a human is the prefrontal cortex. However, that part of the brain “turns on” at the onset of puberty. It takes about 12 years for the human brain to really master the whole controlling a human body thing, and another 12 for it to master the whole thinking and conceptualizing and thinking ahead (and a bunch of other stuff). That second 12 year span should be treated differently than both the first span and adulthood.
Actually that “brain stops developing at 25” is a misconception, the study that spawned it just ran out of funding when the subjects were 25 and didn’t see the brain development slowing down, iirc (no source on hand it’s past midnight here).
I know that you mean well, but honestly, I’m really getting quite tired reading this particular piece of misinformation about brains maturing at age 25.
25 isn’t a hard line. The reality is that our brains continue to change forever. But, to use a metaphor, around our mid 20s is when it’s done “cooking”, but just like you might let meat “rest” on the counter for a bit after it’s done cooking, your brain keeps changing, just not to the same degree. Maybe some day if brain scanning technology gets better, and we have a real healthcare system, people could get scans to see when their brain seems to have reached full maturity, especially if they’ve committed a crime. Of course “full maturity” will always be sort of an arbitrary choice because as I said, our brains are never truly finished.
Thanks for the reply, I apologise if I come across as rude, I have been personally affected quite a lot by the whole ‘brain development’ conversation because I am disabled and I have had this kind of thing used to take away my human rights. So I find it a little bit upsetting to talk about - which probably means that I shouldn’t talk about it to preserve my own well-being, but I find it really hard to just let discourse that I feel is really harmful to persist in our society.
Some people might be ‘cooked’ at 16, others might not be done until they’re in their 30s. Some are never finished no matter how long they’re in the oven.
The root problem is that we’re desperately trying to find a correlation between “number of years alive” and “level of responsibility” where one doesn’t really exist.
God, the “age of consent” being at 25 freaks me out… If I didn’t become legally an adult when I did I don’t know if I would have been still alive today
These thoughts about consent and everything are all well and good as long as you assume a perfectly healthy family. But what if it’s not? What if it’s dysfunctional? Or abusive? What if the environment you’re in is straight up unhealthy for you?
It really feels like child abuse is very much an afterthought. Despite it being much much more common than people in the past thought. And child abuse is something that comes along with you through your entire life, and if you don’t at least try to handle it, you’re just left a broken person further harming yourself in ways that society is not kind towards, and we’re left with what society considers to be “problem” people.