A Modest and Childish Proposal: Let’s Stop Pretending 18 and 21 Mean Anything
Friday, January 31, 2025.
Let’s be honest: 18 and 21 are nothing but ceremonial numbers, as arbitrary as deciding adulthood based on the number of candles on a birthday cake.
Sure, they serve as convenient legal markers for when someone can vote, sign a contract, or legally order a margarita the size of their face—but do they actually mean anything biologically, neurologically, or developmentally?
If we’re going to be serious about legal adulthood, we need to ditch these outdated markers and align the age of legal responsibility with actual neurological adulthood.
That’s right—science should dictate when we start calling someone an adult, not the whims of policymakers who probably still don’t understand how Snapchat works.
Let’s break this down.
The Brain: The Real Judge of Adulthood
Neuroscience tells us that the brain doesn’t fully mature at 18.
It doesn’t even fully mature at 21. In fact, the prefrontal cortex—the part of the brain responsible for decision-making, impulse control, and weighing long-term consequences—doesn’t fully develop until around age 25 (Arain et al., 2013).
That’s right. We’re sending 18-year-olds off to war, paying them to have sex on camera, qualifying them for $200,000 in student loans, and letting them sign leases while their brains are still essentially a beta version of adulthood. Meanwhile, rental car companies are the only ones making sense, refusing to trust anyone under 25 with their vehicles.
A study by Steinberg et al. (2009) shows that risk-taking behavior, emotional regulation, and long-term planning abilities are all still works in progress in the young adult brain.
This means that an 18-year-old can be tried as an adult in court but still has the impulse control of a hormonal teenager. Makes sense, right?
And yet, we pretend that an 18-year-old is an adult because the government said so, despite the fact that many of them still think pouring the milk in before the cereal is acceptable behavior.
The Incoherence of the 18/21 Split
Then there’s the laughable inconsistency in our legal system:
At 18, you can vote, get married, take out loans, be drafted, and perform in a porn video.
At 21, you can drink alcohol but can’t rent a car (unless you pay an absurd “young driver” fee).
At 16, you can drive a multi-ton death machine.
At 14, you can legally work.
At 13, your parents stop understanding anything you say.
Who came up with these rules? Why is the ability to buy alcohol seen as more dangerous than joining the military? Why can an 18-year-old decide the future of democracy but not celebrate it with a beer? And why do we trust teenagers to drive at 16 when they have the reaction time of a caffeinated squirrel?
The Solution: Align Adulthood with Brain Maturity
Here’s a truly radical thought: if neurological adulthood doesn’t happen until around 25, then why don’t we align the legal age of adulthood with that?
No voting until 25 (because let’s be real—do 18-year-olds even know what a primary election is?).
No military enlistment until 25 (no sending kids into war before they’ve fully developed impulse control).
No student loans until 25 (because your brain should be fully formed before you make lifelong financial decisions).
No criminal trials as an adult before 25 (because brain science should be applied fairly, not just when it’s convenient).
This would force society to rethink the entire notion of early adulthood, shifting more responsibility onto families and institutions to support young people during their brain development years instead of shoving them into adulthood like baby birds tossed off a cliff.
Not to mention how the porn industry will have to go back to the drawing board.
Would there be logistical challenges? Sure. Are some aspects of my modest proposal unworkably childish. probably.
But at least we wouldn’t be pretending that a random birthday suddenly grants someone the cognitive abilities of an adult when science tells us otherwise.
But Wait—What About Voting?
“But if we raise the voting age to 25, won’t that be undemocratic?” Sure, but have you ever watched an 18-year-old try to explain tax policy?
If we’re going to set voting at 18, why not let 14-year-olds vote? After all, they’re deeply invested in the issues—climate change, education, and especially whether TikTok will get banned.
If we’re admitting that people under 25 don’t have fully developed decision-making skills but we still allow them to vote, get into crushing debt, and have sex on camera for money. Perhaps the answer isn’t age-based voting at all.
Maybe humans should have to pass a basic competency test instead. (Calm down, I’m joking. Sorta.)
The Childish Truth
The reality is that 18 and 21 are legal fictions, leftovers from a time when people lived to 40 and 18-year-olds were expected to marry, work the fields, and die of dysentery. We’re in the 21st century now. We have neuroscience. We have data. We should use it.
Let’s stop pretending that a birthday transforms a child into an adult and start letting science dictate when people are truly ready for responsibility.
Otherwise, we’re just assigning legal adulthood like it’s a participation trophy for surviving high school.
As you can see, this really pisses me off.
Be Well, Stay Kind, and Godspeed.
REFERENCES:
Arain, M., Haque, M., Johal, L., Mathur, P., Nel, W., Rais, A., ... & Sharma, S. (2013). Maturation of the adolescent brain. Neuropsychiatric Disease and Treatment, 9, 449-461.
Steinberg, L., Cauffman, E., Woolard, J., Graham, S., & Banich, M. (2009). Are adolescents less mature than adults? American Psychologist, 64(7), 583–594.