I was thinking about how 16 year olds in England are full adults, the idea that teens can decide their own medical care and move out without parental consent sounds amazing and could have honestly saved the lives of some kids I went to high school with. letting 16 teen year olds vote too makes sense since the obviously have a stake in the future more so than older people I would say. On the other hand the idea of 16 year olds binge drinking and being with older adults, and god forbid getting married to adults turns my stomach. I know we have some users from England so I am curious to hear your thoughts. I guess my instinct is to stagger everything at the appropriate ages. honestly sometimes i think 18 is too young to get married lol.
IDK I think as long as you institute a "half your age plus seven" rule most stuff could be a lot earlier. Historically many different cultures had rituals that made youth equals in the tribe much earlier than we do, and I genuinely think a lot of the antisocial behaviour we see in youth in the west is because they're systematically infantalized.
I guess the factor working against this is we now have much more potent ways to ruin your (and other people's) life, like cars, plentiful alcohol, drugs, tobacco, firearms, gambling, high-charged pornography, credit cards, etc, and we may hope that responsible use scales somewhat with brain development.
So, I'd suggest the following (assuming no greater changes in society and this is the only lever of change)
Voting: 14
Generation emancipation: 16
Driving: 16 (but it should be much harder to get your licence)
Gambling: 25
Recreational drugs: sliding scale starting at 16 depending on the severity up to 25, with highly addictive drugs by prescription only
Firearms for hunting: 16 (and like driving it should be hard to get a licence)
Firearms for anything else: 200
Smoking: legal to grow at any age but selling it should be banned
Access to sex work: geez IDK honestly how to think about this one
Sex work: 18 is probably ok - heavy restrictions here often just give reasons for police to terrorize sex workers so it's complicated
R-rated movies: 14
Owning a credit card: not until you earn 125% of a living wage
Military service: this is a loaded one lol I'm not touching that one
IDK those are my first thoughts
Recreational drug age limit from 16 to 25 is too young imo
There's quite a few studies that show weed harms brain development if regularly used before the brain is fully developed
And in general, risky behavior (addiction!) vastly does down after the brain fully develops
I think only alcohol should be legal at 16-18 only because it's there's so much social activity and culture around it but anything else should be 25+ imo
https://slate.com/technology/2022/11/brain-development-25-year-old-mature-myth.html
I don't think something magical happens at 25 like a light switch but we still gotta choose some age as a limit
Do we need to though?
We could also use frequency of use and settings as alternative (which might legally increase by age). Personally I don't let people smoke with me till they are 27 or so, which is somewhat ageist, but I accept them if they bring their own stuff before (tolerate, but not enable).