Growing up as a child most kids cannot wait to become an adult. This is often because children consider adults to have all the power and the right to important responsibilities. But when are they truly an adult? Some would say the age of eighteen is when a person should be considered an adult but this is a common misconception that people have just assumed and gone along with for the past one hundred years or more. Who decided that a unjustified number such as eighteen or twenty-one would be the age at which society says everyone should be on the same level of maturity and legality for the rest of their lives? “And what are these regulations that define someone as an adult, is it the ability to drive a car unsupervised, the ability to hold intimate relations, the ability to cast a vote, serve in the military, buy alcohol”? (Melissa). No one has easy answers to these questions. The issue and argument at hand will make people aware and understand that you do not have to be ready to become an adult the day you turn eighteen or twenty-one and there can be personal damage caused to a human with that pressure from society. Through scientific and psychological research it has been proven that teenagers should not be pressured into adulthood as soon as they are being in today’s society. No superficial age should represent whether or not a person is an adult, instead a person should be able to decide on his or her own when they feel like an adult through their own self maturity level and life experiences. 

If you asked one hundred random people what age should define a human as an adult, there is a guarantee that at least seventy five percent of those people would say either eighteen or twenty one; but why are these ages the ones that we have been accustomed to for so long? Most would argue those superficial ages because that is when a person is given more responsibilities than what they are use to having. Thousands of years ago “at just age 16 years old, Alexander the Great was busy conquering Maedi, when they dared revolt against Macedonia; also at 16, a peasant girl by the name of Jeanne d’Arc was taking her first steps into historical prominence by having the gall to approach a garrison commander to tell him how to do his job”; however in today’s society a sixteen year old is thought of as immature and still very adolescent in many situations (Melissa). In the United States it has become a common custom that when a teen reaches the age of eighteen he or she will go buy tobacco products or buy a lottery ticket because their new age entitles them to do so. The history of the unjustified age of adulthood beginning at age eighteen started in the early 1900s when people children were in their twelfth year of school and many students would turn eighteen before they graduated or as they went off to a college or a university. Many parents at the time believed a child needed to feel responsible before going away to school so eighteen just became that assumed age. It was not until the passing of the 26th amendment that actually gave the age of eighteen any legal justification. In 1971 “Congress lowered the voting age to 18 as a response to debate amongst the Vietnam War”, Americans were angered at the fact that their sons could be drafted into the military but did not have the right to vote on the matters causing war (Lai). Keeping the age of majority higher at twenty-one didn’t make sense if “lawmakers were going to allow young people to vote at eighteen, so states began using eighteen as the new measure for legal adulthood”, which is still very arbitrary (Lai). And the debate remained arbitrary until the twentieth century, as scientists were able to perform research and prove that the age of eighteen is in no means a rational age of adulthood. 

Instead of allowing society to outline a human as an adult based on rules set sometime in history, a human being should be allowed to choose at what point in their own life they feel as if they have entered adulthood through their own psychological readiness. Nonetheless, I do understand there needs to be some number that generally fits everyone to serve for communal law purposes, but the numbers representing someone as an adult should be demolished entirely. On the scientific aspect of it, “neuroscience tells us that the brain is not fully matured until a person is 25, and for many, this means that a person cannot be labeled as a mature functioning adult until this age”, now this doesn’t mean a twenty five year old cannot be considered an adult (Vananzo). It just provides more proof that everyone matures at different points in life and to suggest that one age should define every single person at the same maturity level is outlandish. One of the most controversial points of argument relating to this question is the sudden period of time that happens as teens who see therapists or psychologists must stop seeing their long-term mental health-care provider because they are no longer considered a child under their insurance companies’ definition.  For some of these children and teens they have had the same child psychologist and have become very comfortable and safe with that person and have been for years. To take a patient, who needs stability more than most, away from someone who encourages and helps them can do more damage than any achievement and may in fact reverse any progress the child had made. Further research has shown this maturing in young adults takes longer “especially in the prefrontal regions that are important for planning ahead, anticipating the future consequences of one’s decisions, controlling impulses, and comparing risk and reward” and all of those sound like particularly important aspects to making adult-like decisions (Slotnik). Too often I have heard that teenagers specifically are not able to make important life decisions because they aren’t mature enough. Yet these teenagers are “mature” enough to operate a vehicle at ninety miles per hour unsupervised around the age of fifteen, and are “mature” enough to decide what they should have tattooed on their bodies for a lifetime; however they aren’t yet mature enough to be entrusted with alcohol. Because for some reason in the United States the time between ages eighteen and twenty one is significant enough to allow the person to begin consuming alcohol, compared to other countries in Europe where the legal drinking age is as low as sixteen. There is nothing wrong with allowing an age to make you feel as if you are granted more responsibilities and litigation but for it to be the same exact number for millions and millions of people living in the United States makes it seem more unreasonable. People, mostly teenagers, should be able to reflect and deliberate on their life so far and draw a conclusion as to if they feel ready and prepared enough to be considered an adult. Instead of allowing society’s guidelines to pressure them and obligate them to adulthood, a simple moment of consideration and reflecting inside one’s mind should be all the justification someone needs. 

In conclusion, although there is no way to really alter or create any existing or future law regarding at what age a human should be considered an adult or fully matured, there are still things that can be done differently. Such as allowing children psychologist to raise the age of people they can treat to twenty-five. Since science has proven most people and their brains don’t finish maturing until at least their early twenties numerous children psychologists have brought up the idea of allowing their patients to still be covered by insurance and continue treatment after they have turned eighteen. Because many children who attend sessions with psychologists are there for a worthy reason and have become comfortable with this doctor, whom they have been seeing since a young age, they should not be taken away from that. And for insurance companies to tell patients they will no longer be covered to see their long-term doctor just because they have turned eighteen can cause serious psychological damage to those people. However instead of creating an arbitrary age at which people must feel mature enough to take care of themselves and their own problems, why not allow humans to create their own rationalization for each individual case. The age at which someone becomes an adult is always going to be specific for each person, so rather than pressuring the youth of America to grow up too quickly, allow them to grow into an adult they will enjoy being for the rest of their lives with patience and experience. 
