Let me explain:
-A job I had in highschool enabled me to buy my own car and pay for insurance at 17 (added as a driver to my parents plan of course).
-I got my first credit card at 18 when I went to college, I have never carried a balance on it month to month (I'm now 26)
-The last time I lived with my parents was the summer after my freshmen year in college
-I graduated with an engineering degree at the age of 21
-I've had a steady fulfilling engineering job for 4.5 years since graduation
-I met my current wife freshmen year of college and we got married a year after graduation
-In 2014 I bought a house based purely of my personal credit history and employment status
-I have voted in every presidential election despite not being actively involved in politics
I'm sure I fall well outside the typical statistics for someone of my age, and I've been very lucky so far. Lots of my coworkers are in a similar situation as me, but there's also lots of people in the opposite situation.
Do you see why this horrifies me? Do you think these ideas would be positive for the young adults that have found success in life?
(Edited for line break formatting)
I moved out of my parents house at age 17. Although they are good parents, responsible people, and I love them, I was miserable and suicidal when I lived with them. I wasn't able to learn how to be happy and social until I moved out on my own, to a city where there were more people like me, and gained some independence. I've never had any debt or trouble paying bills, I've voted in every election as well. I got all my binge drinking out of my system when I was 19. If I had been forced to remain under my parents control until age 25 (just 2 years ago!) I would have been miserable, resentful and angry about it. It would definitely have destroyed my relationship with my parents.
I've always wondered if these stats are partially affected by the 'legal age' itself. If it were changed would the age groups for risky drivers, high probability of crime and debt shift with it?
A younger person is more likely to be irresponsible than an older person, but that is just an average. There are many young people who are responsible, and to disregard the impact of such a policy would have on them would be disregarding important data.
More to the point, data doesn't make decisions. It gives you the ability to make positive statements, i.e. how the world is or what the result of some policy would be. Normative statements, i.e. how the world should be or what should the goal of our policy be, depend on your personal subjective values. Like, how much you value freedom vs prosperity vs safety, etc.
1) Our military is largely composed of 18-24 year olds. We would be sending legal children to war.
2) The purpose of democratic voting is not to decide policy, it is to give legitimacy to policy decisions. When you disenfranchise a large number of people who believe themselves capable of decision-making, and who tend to disagree with the majority opinion, you risk revolts.
Note in particular the disastrous consequences of the product of these two issues.
18 is just fine.
It is emotional processing that goes undeveloped until the late 20's.
Emotion tends to trump cold hard logic -- especially in the young. Actually, hell, not just the young! I'm almost 30 and can't do any meaningful thinking if I'm emotionally upset about something.
I'm just saying, I'm not sure how much value I'd place on the logic of a 16 year old in something as emotionally charged as politics.
I think the overtly emotional nature of politics is exactly why it doesn't matter if you allow 16 year olds to participate. It's such an extreme that virtually all participants are affected, regardless of how much control they have over their emotions.
I wonder if lowering the voting age would shift the "young people don't vote" window lower, or if it wouldn't change at all because it's not that young people don't vote as much as it is that as you grow older you become more invested in your lifestyle and are therefore more likely to vote to protect/preserve/enhance/whatever it.
The problem is lack of information, not emotion. Politics is immensely complicated and hard to understand without the right heuristics, and, from what I've seen, age doesn't help here much at all. People just tend to believe whatever most in their bucket believe regardless of age or even education. Logic doesn't seem to do squat, which is actually not surprising if you think about it.
The idea that logical thinking predominates in voting for political candidates (even for people much older than 16) is distinctly at odds with reality; voting is very often driven by emotion and creating emotionally arousing appeals is a central element of political campaigning.
Responsible voting requires well-developed capacity for logical thinking and emotional maturity * and* the ability to integrate logic and emotion. The article describes 16 year olds as adult in the first of these areas, but not the other two. (In fact, it notes that people, in general, aren't adult in regard to dealing with emotionally arousing circumstances well into their twenties.)
Which isn't to argue against the idea of expanding the franchise to 16 year olds, but that's more because of the social benefits of their early engagement outweigh the costs of their potentially immature use of the frnachise than because they are fully mature in the respects relevant to voting (which, incidentally, is also true, IMO, of allowing 18 year olds to vote.)
After arguing on reddit with, presumably, lots of 16 year olds, I'm certain that there's more that goes into making informed voting decisions.
Note, debt is a huge problem for people don't have earning power yet. If 25 is the new 18, we should expect 25-year-olds to have the same financial instability as current 18-year-olds as they will be on similarly shaky ground in the workforce.
Isn't this the opposite of the conclusion that one of the scientists interviewed came to?
Dr. Steinberg agreed with Dr. Somerville that the maturing of the brain was proving to be a long, complicated process without obvious milestones. Nevertheless, he thinks recent studies hold some important lessons for policy makers.
He has proposed, for example, that the voting age be lowered to 16. “Sixteen-year-olds are just as good at logical reasoning as older people are,” Dr. Steinberg said.
If you want people to be prepared for life, you need to prepare them for life. This life is hard to live, and we mostly just throw people to the wolves and act surprised when they get eaten. Waiting extra years will not magically impart them with missing wisdom, and all the people who end up in the criminal justice system likely have poor families and will only be worse off having to spend even more time with them.
I would, to the contrary, would like to see more means for independence. I'm still not sure why parents need to subsidize everything.
Not to complain, but I sure as hell voted. I checked, and 46% of "young people" (Millenials) do vote regularly.
So, uh, thanks for trying to take our rights away.
Turns out I was wrong. Youngsters aren't 6% of the vote, but closer to about 9%. Still tiny though. The data indicates people who are registered voters are about twice as likely to become a voter after the age of 25.
"Table 1: Voter Turnout Among Citizens November 2000, 2004, 2008, and 2012
18-29
40% 49% 51% 45%
[...]"
It was 45% in 2012 for the age of 18-29.
If you mean table 3, make sure you read the following associated quoted part:
"This statistic is affected by two factors: youth turnout and the age structure of the whole population. (Youth share could rise, for example, if turnout remained constant but the population became younger.)"
Also, my quoted data is from 18-29, and approx 40-51%. If 18-24 is only 6-9% then the group from 24-29 is either far smaller, or is having some really insane turnout of more than 71%.
> So, uh, thanks for trying to take our rights away.
This is an important distinction to make, but it's not a black-and-white one. And while OP didn't literally say "I think we should take rights from 18-24 year olds", they do seem to be arguing in that direction.
> When you're older, you won't take offense so easily.
Please don't condescend.
Course you can. The US doesn't have a monopoly on marriage.
Scotland has historically had more lax requirements for marriage than England (and still to this day the age of unconditional age of marriage is 16 in Scotland but 18 in England). So English couples who couldn't get their parents' permission just went to Gretna Green past the Scottish border to get married.
Even if you disenfranchise young people there will be countless stupid, ignorant and hateful people voting. Even worse, they'll mostly have the biases of old people because you'll have entirely removed the opposing biases of young people.
Finally, on a personal note, I was working and paying taxes from the age of 16. No taxation without representation.
Perhaps we should help kids grow up faster by giving them more experiences and responsibilities.
Not quite. They do not vote on "old people". Why? Anything from simply age to not feeling older people understand their world and situation.
Turns out I was wrong. Youngsters aren't 6% of the vote, but closer to about 9%. Still tiny though. The data indicates people who are registered voters are about twice as likely to become a voter after the age of 25.
What can young people change in the midterm future anyway? The population is becoming more and more a inverted pyramid where the old people are the majority and the young people are the minority.
A voting system which adjusts the voting power based on the age would be interesting. If old people are a minoity the get more voting power until they are equal and vice versa. I believe with something like that the brexit vote would not have happened.
You didn't include alcohol which is already at the age of 21 in USA, but not everywhere else in the world (in my country, it is 18). Yet driving, is age 16 in USA, 18 here as well. My point is that the world is bigger than just a few countries, with different age limits. We should attempt to study the pros and cons of each before drawing to conclusions.
Also, the fact something (e.g. alcohol) is illegal to purchase doesn't mean it cannot be obtained. With driving a car that is going to be more difficult because the car is licensed to a person, and learning driving via obtaining driver's license is important.
On the longer term, driving a car becomes irrelevant though, but I suspect the same is true for tobacco.
You also didn't mention that other hot subject, firearms.
> This wouldn't make any real difference to politics because young people don't vote.
Really? Do you have data to back this up?
I know that, from personal experience, I voted as soon as I became 18.
> open a bank account
I think I was able to open a bank account at age 12. Not that there was a whole lot on it. That's OK, it allows youth to learn how financials work and managing money. What is not OK is allowing youth to get in debt.
The only loans a student (read: 18+) is able to get is via the government, for studies, and they gotta be paid back. I don't see a problem with that system, in the sense that is must be abolished.
I think it is great to have young people work. It teaches them what they want, and not want to do. It stimulates them to start a study, put their heart and soul in it, and finish it. Because who wants to pluck berries for the rest of their life? Only those who never done it before.
> * You could not be tried as an adult in criminal court until age 25. The number of adult violent offenders in prison might decrease as much as 70%.
How are you going to hold those of age below 25 accountable? The justice system exists to find balance between 'damage received', and 'damage done'. If those who cause damage are not going to be held accountable in any way then that does not seem justifiable to me.
However I would agree that a young person should receive, generally, less penalty than an older one. We got a reasonable system for that already: we punishing recidivists more heavy.
My opinion on the whole matter: the term young adult exists for a reason. Part of puberty and being a teen is getting lose from the stigma and lack of responsibilities associated with being a child. We need to let our children taste how it is to be an adult and all of the above are part of exposure. If we treat young adult as if they're children, they are going to remain children and will get a revelation when they reach adult age (in your PoV that should be 25).
Already done. This has been studies exhaustively by the insurance industry and the criminal justice system. The age (of perpetrator) at which adult violent crimes most commonly occur is 18, which is the age of adulthood in most of the US. Secondly, it is 19. Then 20 and so forth up till the age of 24 after which there is no discernible pattern of violence to age. This pattern is largely attributed to the missing link between the prefrontal cortex and the limbic system of the brain.
I don't have any problem with alcohol and firearm sales being pushed to 25. If you want to shoot earlier then get private land outside a city, join a police department, join the military, or have a parent or guardian as a co-signer.
> Really? Do you have data to back this up?
Yeah, I think something like 6% of eligible voters aged 18-24 actually vote in presidential elections with a statistically insignificant amount of those voters voting in other elections.
> How are you going to hold those of age below 25 accountable?
Separate the 18-24 population into senior juveniles. Too old to be incarcerated with the violent children and too young to be bonded with the career criminals. Violent offenders absolutely should do time, but if they aren't adults should also have the opportunity to expunge their criminal record so as to allow them to obtain real jobs later.
I'm baffled at how at one side you argue the legal age should be raised, while you suggest youth should join the military or the police. Jobs which include firearms, and a high sense of responsibility. At the same time, you want to remove accountability from said youth? If you take away so many responsibilities from youth, why keep police/military around for them?
I really don't believe 6% (or, for that matter 9% (50% more)) of eligible voters ages 18-24 in my country vote. Perhaps the problem is local or US specific. Also, we don't know the why. I would like to see the US data cross referenced with data from other countries.
I also read that heroin has overtaken gun shootings in cause of dead. Heroin, an illegal drug. We can make services illegal if they require a government license, but goods? Difficult to make illegal.
> Separate the 18-24 population into senior juveniles. Too old to be incarcerated with the violent children and too young to be bonded with the career criminals. Violent offenders absolutely should do time, but if they aren't adults should also have the opportunity to expunge their criminal record so as to allow them to obtain real jobs later.
An interesting point, but nonetheless if you put criminals together you beget criminals. Instead, all the progressive research I've seen is that investing in people integrating in society has a much lower chance to stop recidivism. Although in the US there's little to no interest in such because the US profits from people incarcerated via cheap/free labour.
Accountability is not an earned quality. Accountability is an appointed quality. By raising the age of adulthood you are deferring the age of accountability (in the realm of individual responsibility) to a later age when the individual is better prepared and perhaps more responsible.
As far police and military individual responsibility is less a consideration because you are on a job with extensive training and constant supervision. Additionally, people in these job classes are held to higher legal standards and are punished more harshly for violations of the public trust.
> I would like to see the US data cross referenced with data from other countries.
I suspect a lower percentage of the population in the US votes compared to other equally democratic nations for all age demographics.
> Instead, all the progressive research I've seen
I really think this is more a separate conversation, but certainly there are many various huge opportunities for improvement in how the US manages its criminal population.
Yes, if accountability must be earned we can bind the term adult to someone who finished school system, and who is working. Then we can bind, say, the license to buy alcohol to these factors. If someone loses their job, they lose the ability to buy alcohol. And not merely alcohol. I think we can much further than merely that. The problem is that once we go down the road of it being earned, we are not non-discriminatory enough for that, since we're after all human.
My point is that with your system we have people who are almost adult, almost accountable, yet they're 0% of either. Then boom 25 and suddenly they gotta cope with all that because research on the prefrontal cortex. But that is also the time until you can still change things like personality issues. I'd argue it is better to find a middle road. Give young adults trial runs to prove their responsibility, and give them positive feedback while not ignoring the negative. The role is partly given to parents, and parents are already doing this. Why should we move it all completely to 25 y.o.? Isn't the inexperience going to backfire?
> As far police and military individual responsibility is less a consideration because you are on a job with extensive training and constant supervision. Additionally, people in these job classes are held to higher legal standards and are punished more harshly for violations of the public trust.
I don't believe the chance they get caught is high enough. You say "extensive training and constant supervision" extensive training, yes, I agree; but the same is true for a driver's license. In Germany, a theory part of a drivers license is very, very difficult but the practical part is easy. In The Netherlands, it is the entire opposite.
The USA has not been held accountable for war crimes it committed in Vietnam or Iraq (this problem is not limited to the USA though). Police are getting away with racism, or harassment. Again, not only in the USA, all over the world.
If I were to need help from the police, I'd rather get an older guy than a young one. Why? He's more experienced. Only if it was computer crime would I not want someone >= 50 age because those people are generally terrible when it comes to anything IT related. There's a reason rookie and junior are called rookie and junior.
> I really think this is more a separate conversation
OK, fair enough.
The quote you replied to asked for data. I don't think that meant just your words.
* Age to get a credit card, file a DBA, open a bank account, or get an apartment.
* Age to purchase tobacco and pornography (yes yes, I suspect most people get their porn for free online regardless of age now).
* FBI already refuses to hire field agents below the age of 24.
* You could not be tried as an adult in criminal court until age 25. The number of adult violent offenders in prison might decrease as much as 70%.
* You cannot get married until the age of adulthood. I suspect states would compromise on this one and allow permissible parental consent as young people will still continue to have children.
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My personal opinions are that people would be much better prepared for life, there would be fewer lost souls to the criminal justice system, and the consumer debt industry would be largely eliminated from all but proverty classes (like the payday loan vultures).