Letting Children Drive and changing our perceptions of youth
There was a fascinating piece on Campbell Live! last week showing that
puberty was onsetting earlier and earlier, that children were growing
into the bodies of adults much quicker than their emotional and
intellectual maturity. Add on top of that evidence suggesting Brain
development finishes much deeper in your early 20's than the original
18 and that Children who watch a lot of TV actually slow the
development of the frontal lobe where the consequences of your actions
are worked out. This all leads to a teenage nation of physical adults
with the minds of children. This must lead to a revaluation of the
`charge them as adults' mantra that our angry anti-youth (times 2 if
you're brown) sensible sentence brigade chump out with every time a
young person commits a serious crime.
Which leads me to driving. The Sunday papers today are filled with the
story of a sixteen-year-old who died while texting and driving and
another story about a bunch of teens who crashed a car after a binge
drinking session. Why would we allow children to drive cars, as the
evidence mounts that teenagers today are simply children in adult
bodies, perhaps we need to re-examine lifting the driving age to 18?
But if we start that debate, we also need to re-think our attitudes
towards young people, Youth are worshipped by society (everyone wants
to stay young) but are also pillared by the Media for being the cause
of all societies troubles (youth gangs).
To me, the reality is that no other generation have been as mass media
bombarded and have had their self esteem and identity as manipulated
as the current youth generation, and I think this self identity
confusion can only be made worse by having an adult body with a
children's mind and a children's understanding of consequences. More
conservative voices in NZ will claim, `Bullshit, those little buggers
know what they are doing", when you point out the biological science,
the effects of TV watching on frontal lobe development and the much
earlier onset of puberty, they mumble something about Politically
Correct science and turn up Newstalk `The National Party tell us what
to say' ZB louder.
With 2 billion of the planets 6 billion global population under the
age of 18, we need to start these reflections towards a more
compassionate, more informed, less marketed and less reactionary view
