fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #3056 ]

People who talk about teenagers needing time for their brains to develop and all this other stuff when... for the first part of human history, teenagers as we think of them essentially did not exist, right? I know there's a lot of generalizations (people didn't all die by the age of 35 and so forth) but still, there were sixteen year old kings and queens. So... the whole argument doesn't hold up for me. I just think that teenagers are less mature now because they're not forced to grow up as quickly in the same way they were hundreds of years ago.

But, like

Even if your argument is true, that doesn't disprove that teenagers need time for their brains to develop. All it shows is that they didn't have time to develop in the past.

Like, the fact that there were teenaged kings and queens doesn't mean that having teenaged kings and queens was a good thing

a lot of crazy shit used to happen. that doesn't mean we should keep it around.

??

there were still teenagers, man. Them being treated as adults doesn't make them not teenagers, or mean their brains have magically developed faster. Plus, actually there were plenty of societies that had an "age of adulthood" that was higher - I seem to recall that ancient Greece's age of adulthood was 20 for men.

Also, "people did it in history" tends not to be a great argument, lol. Lots of those 16 year old monarchs were either bad, had someone ruling as regent for them, or were just puppets.

Also, "people did it in history" tends not to be a great argument, lol.

Well, I'm not arguing it's a good idea....

I didn't actually know 20 was ancient Greece's age of adulthood. Okay.

In parts of India it used to be 25!

And 25 years is how long it takes for a brain to develop into adult brain. Funny that.

For the first part of human history we also thought gods controlled the weather patterns and that sacrificing livestock would make rains come.

It's almost like we have new knowledge about scientific concepts now or something.

AYRT

It's almost like we have new knowledge about scientific concepts now or something.

OMG YOU'RE KIDDING.

It's almost like this thread is called "something you don't understand" for a reason or something.

It's the not buying it because of history that's really hilarious, though.

And the refusal to believe research? I hope this is a trolling attempt.

AYRT - It's not a trolling attempt. I asked a question. Clearly it was a mistake.

Forget it.

Actually I think you just hold a VERY common misconception about pre-modern societies. The age that people are considered 'adult' hasn't actually changed much (if at all) in the vast majority of societies, even compared to how it was thousands of years ago.

You're conflating the lives of monarchy with the common people. Kings and queens were married off as children for political reasons. They were not considered adults until they were actually, you know, adults. Everyone else married in their late teens/early 20s, just as they do now. And while a child might be apprenticed to someone in early childhood, or have to work for a living as a child, they were still considered to be children by their society. Just like millions of children today have to work for a living.

Every society has placed that cutoff between childhood and adulthood at different ages. Some put it as low as 15 and others at idk 25. And there are outliers. But if you travelled back to p. much any point in recorded history, most civilizations would have just about the same views on that cutoff as we do today, and the same views on how immature teenagers are.

The times when people died by age 35 were pretty rare, and there was usually a reason like a major war or famine going on. There is a reason that the old Bible (as flawed as it is as a historical tome and as a system of ethics) gave the age of man as being three score and ten (a score being an old way of saying twenty). If you made it to adulthood then your chances of hitting 70 were not that bad. It was just getting past the first ten years. Childhood mortality was huge (because they didn't have vaccines, that is why) back then. However, if you got to ten, there was a good chance you'd at least hit your mid sixties and beyond. And teenagers were still reckless morons. Shakespeare got at least one play out of it. The young kings either heeded what adult regents and mentors said or else... The ones that didn't tended to come to bad ends following a period of awful rule.

Most teens spent their teens as an indentured apprentice bound to a master to learn a trade too. The anomaly is right now where instead of whipping the stupid insubordinate teenage bastards for stupidity and forcing them to learn and to fall into better behavioral patterns. We give them this enormous leeway to act like shits and suffer virtually no comeback.

The times when people died by age 35 were pretty rare, and there was usually a reason like a major war or famine going on. There is a reason that the old Bible (as flawed as it is as a historical tome and as a system of ethics) gave the age of man as being three score and ten (a score being an old way of saying twenty). If you made it to adulthood then your chances of hitting 70 were not that bad.

I shouldn't have mentioned that. I was trying to say I realize "people died by 35" is a huge misconception. (I can't believe history teachers actually teach it.) Apparently so were the other things I thought I understood.

And teenagers were still reckless morons. Shakespeare got at least one play out of it.

Heh, fair point.

I'm not trolling, and yes, I know 35 year olds didn't all die off, that's what I was saying, I know there's generalizations. The kings and queens thing was a pretty dumb example, so I apologize for that. The whole question was poorly phrased and I really regret asking how I did.

Hey, don't sweat it, it's a valid question.

The existence of teenage kings and queens doesn't really disprove the idea that teenagers need time to fully develop. For starters, most teenage kings and queens didn't have stellar reigns, and keep in mind that they weren't flying the kingdom solo, they had tons of adult advisors to help keep their dumber ideas in check.

Er... a sixteen year doesn't become king or queen based on their hard work and reasoning skills, though. They generally inherit it, meaning it requires almost no effort, maturity or ability on their part other than being relatively healthy and of relatively sound mind. The latter is even negotiable.

to me it actually explained at all, like, why in old stories (like, in ancient rome, and stuff some people acted like silly teenagers

because they were silly teenagers

You can be a sixteen-year-old queen whose brain is still not fully developed. Those things are not mutually exclusive at all.

You can even have good judgment and make good choices, even if it's a bit less likely, but cognitive maturity is a physiological, real thing.

[ SECRET POST #3056 ]

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