- You cannot sign up for the military, even though you might know how to aim and fire a weapon.
- You cannot vote in elections.
- You cannot purchase nicotine, alcohol, or other drugs. (In the USA this age is higher at 21)
So the takeaway is that yes, teenagers are too fragile and don't have the risk assessment capacity to work some of these dangerous jobs.
Yes, we have OSHA and other safety regulations. Still the jobs are dangerous. Adults are more likely to call this out or recognize when these regulations are being disregarded, but a 14 year old might not realize that what they are doing is more dangerous than it should be.
> You cannot vote in elections.
These two are both linked. In the US, military enrollment age was 20-45 (The Enrollment Act). Around the two world wars it was lowered to 18, primarily because they didn't have enough troops and most kids graduated high school at 18.
The 26th amendment set the voting age to 18 because that's what the draft age was already set to.
Neither had anything directly to do with developmental differences by age. The first followed social norms for schooling age and the second just followed along.
> You cannot purchase nicotine, alcohol, or other drugs. (In the USA this age is higher at 21)
There are many studies showing the risks of consuming these chemicals are much higher for people under the age of around 20. I don't know if those data were known before age limits were set, but there is a good reason to keep it today that has nothing to do with teenagers' ability to make decisions. Alternatively, I'd be just as happy seeing these also removed and us better teaching kids what the risks are so they can make their own decisions.
What "global society" is this? Most of the world by numbers doesn't seem to have signed on to this agreement. Well-off countries may have made child labor largely illegal, though some of it persists inside their borders, but this just moves most of it offshore. Not that the places where it lands didn't have child labor before, but the scale of their operations grow with exports and industrialization.
Children banned from working in sawmills: "how far down the path of trapping them in an overprotective bubble do we really want to go?!".
We could do a lot to let children be more independent, interact more with the world, be able to walk or ride to school or to the shops or to friends' houses or to parks or to get jobs in various places to avoid bubbling them, first. The kind of company wanting to hire a 16 year old for its sawmill seems far more likely to be doing it for cheap labour than for the child's good.
Roofing companies shouldn't have anyone falling off the roof, there are OSHA regulations for a reason. 16 year olds being bad drivers has nothing to do with their employmwnt status. Using trenchers is dangerous no matter who you are, that isn't age related and if we are collectively concerned with how much damage they can do we should not use the machines.
Protecting and teaching kids is totally reasonable, but how far down the path of trapping them in a bubble do we really want to go?