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Comment by gaius | Hacker News Reader

There is a strong case in the modern world for upping the age of maturity to say, 25.

How will that help? You don't solve the problem of people being immature even into adulthood by delaying the official onset of adulthood yet more. You solve it by treating teenagers as adults in training. Which used to be the case until very recently. Now we avoid giving responsibility to teens, we treat high school like day care or a prison, and we wonder why our "kids" don't magically acquire maturity when they turn 18, or 21, or 25, or 30.

Maturity and responsibility are skills that must be taught. And they cannot be taught at a distance, they must be taught live, with the real world, because it is only through learning that actions have consequences, sometimes serious ones, that maturity is acquired.

I think the answer isn't so much giving people consequences as giving them responsibility.

It's ridiculous that some kids get their post secondary education degree without ever having held a job (of any kind).

I find it amazing that teens walk around with $200-$2000 worth of electronics that their parents paid for them with no thought to their value because they didn't pay for it, and they know they'll be replaced if they whine enough.

Both points are accurate.

The case for upping the age of maturity to 25 is that there is solid brain science suggesting that that is how old we are when our brain finishes developing the ability to make mature decisions. See http://www.hhs.gov/opa/familylife/tech_assistance/etraining/... for that.

However you're absolutely right that children who are never given responsibility never develop their ability to take responsibility.

After reviewing the conduct of a number of 25 year olds, I find this comment somewhat amusing.

I wouldn't say that increasing it to the age of 40 would be crossing the maturity threshold, either.

Yes, let's just keep infantilizing and disenfranchising young people for more and more of their lives, that's sure to work.

The main reason teen rebellion and delinquency are issues in the first place is because young people are already held back for too long.

Totally agree. You see things from a different perspective when you start having responsibilities and duties, like having to pay for your rent, having to cook and do the cleaning yourself, and so on...

"...the tough thing about adulthood is that it starts before you even know it starts, when you're already a dozen decisions into it. But what you need to know, Todd, no Lifeguard is watching anymore. You're on your own. You're your own man, and the decisions you make now are yours and yours alone from here until the end. "

An arbitrary age of maturity has nothing to do with actual (as opposed to legal) adulthood or responsibility. The fact is that "kids" at the age of 17 and 18 are already making decisions that will affect them for the rest of their lives. Making the legal age later will certainly not help these people realize that the decisions they are making are important or that they need to take responsibility for themselves.

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