Brain Myth
Brain Myth
Nothing significant changes in our brains in our 20s.
All this talk of "fully developed at 25" is ridiculous bullshit. Even if it were true, it wouldn't mean that people below that age are mentally incompetent.
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The original study that the age point came from just stopped tracking after that age. Which means that the conclusion of mid twenties being the magic age is a flawed bit of information.
What is true is that the parts of the brain that govern self inhibition and impulse control reach the norm for adults around the mid twenties. But it's developing long before that, and is going to be increasingly reliable from the mid to late teens in normative development.
However, that does mean that the norms for those factors are lower the younger the person is. This is not the same as incompetent, as you've rightly said. But it is reason enough to limit the kind of decisions a person can make using age as a rough guideline. That's why contracts with minors have extra rules, age of consent laws exist, there's drinking ages, driving ages, etc.
None of that is true.
K
The brain is by far the most poorly understood organ in the human body. Tons of fMRI studies came out and made headlines over the last 20 years. All of them got debunked. There is ZERO solid evidence of "the parts of the brain that govern self inhibition and impulse control".... that's just something that everyone wants to believe, so they tell themselves that neurology shows that. But the data simply isn't there. Age limits on various activities in various countries have literally nothing to do with brain science. They are based on tradition, odd local superstitions, or practical realities. They almost never have any rational justification at all. For centuries bigots been using "their brains are defective" to justify horrendous treatment of women, Africans, etc They always use pseudo-science to back up their obnoxious claims Today they use exactly the same shit arguments to demean and degrade young adults (aka teens)
None of that contradicts anything that I wrote.
You did not read that.
I'm not wasting any more time with this
Apparently you didn't read what I wrote.
All throughout human history teens have been getting married, starting families, running businesses, hunting, fishing, babysitting, and doing just fine. Sometime in the last 20 years, however, somebody decided that their brains are bad, so we have to treat them like they are children. Neurology has produced a giant pile of fishy results that don't prove anything at all. You can join the British Army at 16 years of age. You can join the US Army at 17. We all know that teen brains work just fine, but when we want an excuse for being bigots and treating them like dirt, suddenly we've got "proof" that their brains are retarded. It's a giant lie.