any one with common since would agree she is a disgusting person . Forcing some to work for 18 years even tho they agreed on not having baby, when she was in the best state of mind.
Eliot please, all I want is for science to tell me the exact age range where I can’t be held responsible for the consequences of my actions. Is that so wrong???
I know you mentioned it briefly, but I wish you would have talked more about how this pseudo brain science is used to infantilize, disempower and depolitcalize young people. When my 22 year old best friend was talked into doing therapy with her abusive parents, her therapist told her parents that she was being disobedient and rebelious because her pre-frontal cortex wasn't fully developed and she was basically too stupid to understand she was in the wrong. It was so fucked up. I've seen situations like this throughout my adolescence, especially for teenage girls, who's bodily and other autonomies are taken and given to some patriarchal adult figure in the name of 'protection'.
I had negative experiences in family therapy as well, where my therapist basically just tried to get me to do whatever my dad wanted (including not dating people of the same gender, so, yikes). The lack of autonomy afforded to young people is plain dangerous. (Edit: wording)
It's my opinion that the less plastic prefrontal cortex you get as you age is in many ways a negative thing. This area of your brain seems to me to be locking in your decision making process so that you don't have to think about what is acceptable in your society or advantageous to your survival and success based on previous experience. The problem is that by the time you reach 25 you don't necessarily have the right idea about those things. Indeed at the age of 75 you might not have the right idea about those things especially since those ideas are hard to change once your prefrontal cortex becomes less adaptable. This is why old people are stubborn and young people can adapt better. In today's society which is rapidly changing due to cultural and technological changes, the younger prefrontal cortex is actually an advantage but that doesn't mean old people can't change. They just have to work harder and perhaps recruit a different part of their brain.
The 'brain doesn't finish developing until you're 25' thing always sounded strange to me because neuro-plasticity doesn't stop when you're 25, people can keep growing and reshaping their minds throughout their life. Also people accomplish insane things before 25 like Einstein. It's like the myth that we only use like 10% of our brains. We'd be better off as a species if we didn't blindly accept random 'facts' without understanding more context around them and if we were just more critical of cultural memes in general.
In truth, artists, scientists, writers and musicians often do their best work by age 25. That does not mean that they can not keep doing great stuff after that, or van develop new talents. But there is a general trend that the early stuff is the best stuff. No one is exactly sure why. Or course, creativity and scientific brilliance do not necessarily correlate with each other. In fact, there often seems to be an inverse relationship between the two.
I have a background in child, adolescent, and adult development and even when this information started getting picked up by professors during my undergrad, there was a massive range (17-28) for when the prefrontal cortex is considered fully developed-- that's 11 years! I'm 28 right now, that means that a 17-year-old could have a fully developed brain around the same time mine finishes developing-- and that's just assuming the rigidity of the range. Adding on, the entire idea of "development" becomes particularly insignificant when considering people with severe brain injuries that, surprisingly despite the nature of the injury, live relatively comfortable & intelligent lives as a result of their brain compensating for any lost parts, such as in the cases of hemispherectomies (disconnecting/removing one hemisphere of the brain). Sometimes, people develop wildly new skills (like musical ability or social ability) as a symptom of their recovery! Do NOT EVER doubt your brain.
our brains have let us figure out how to manipulate the materials and atoms around us so we can build spacecraft that lets us leave our own damn planet. that's objectively insane, in a good way. the human brain's probably one of the most incredible products of nature
I've always found these really cool. Part of my brain exploded just after I was born (an 'Adverse haemorrhagic event' according to my medical records) and from my parents memories it's amazing how unpredictable and fluid outcomes to it actually are. I'd be interested if you know, I've come across suggestions that the brain is more networked than strictly modular or locational and specifically socially distributed (so we don't do all of our thinking in our head, rather the body and social structures like language and external stimuli prompt and build out responses). This seems to fit what I know of the effects of solitary confinement and language processing, but I'm no neuroscientist. I'd be interested if this had made it into the field yet or if it's overstated in the critical theory and linguistics books I've read?
@packman2321 If personalities are the product of the interactions between individual neurological cells, then cultures are the product of interactions between individual persons, you could even do a Gaianist leap and say that humans are like the neuronal cells that make up the mind of the universe.
I have a degree at the fields of Biology and teaching, one of the biggest questions in the field is how should the schooling grades that make up the curriculums be organized in a way that suits that the neuropsychological development of different individuals is different, as in everyone learns and matures at different speeds and times.
As a student of neuroscience, even before I knew all this, I would never dismiss someone because "their brain isn't developed" as brains are so diverse form person to person. I was a neurodivergent child (now an adult) with above average intelligence surrounded by adults who lacked basic critical thinking skills, and as I grew up I realised it wasn't right to treat me like an object when I dared to question things. Adults valued me and told me I am gifted when it suited them, but I was a stupid child if I dared to upset them. There's other measures of how "good" a brain is. Dog brains, they're great at smelling! Baby brains, great at language. Pregnant women's PFC permanently increases in size. Are these brains necessarily superior though? Are they inferior to our adult human brains? How can we measure that? We can't really. Also, fluid intelligence peaks in your early 20s and slowly declines, does this mean we shouldn't allow 45 year olds to be surgeons or nurses because they must make quick decisions? Every brain matter is so much more complex than people believe but yes, people prefer simple answers and simple solutions.
controversial opinion : humans werent built to live past 40 so they should be euthanized once they reach that age in order to actually be in line with natures intentions for us
@@jacob9673 just call it eugenics. sick of people being scared to identify the culprit of all these issues. started with darwin and his incredibly scientifically retarded evolution theory which is easily refuted by the fossil record never showing a single instant of a species in the process of evolving. but due to it supposedly taking millions of years to happen, it should be all that we see in the fossil record.. much of mainstream accepted science is just eugenics being dressed up as other things. few people have the capacity to recognize/admit to that tho. too much personal investment in pushing eugenics for the well off people. who as we all know, are the only ones with the economic capacity to participate in academia.
Most often with these arguments, people act as if the prefrontal cortex was just non-existent till 25, and it magically appeared in the brain on your 25th birthday.. Even if the neuro-science behind it is tough to understand for lay man, isn't it quite obvious that "development" means "gradual change" over the years..
As someone who started working full time and travelled to other side of the world alone with 16, I always despised these narratives that tried take away agency and full personhood away from me, purely based on one number. Agism is just one other prejudiced way of simply judging a person quickly without trying to learn anything that actually defines you as a person.
This reminds me of the whole “girls mature faster than boys” myth. My English teacher always used that line to excuse male students acting up. She said girls had more responsibility to be mature and to not goof around, but if boys did it it wasn’t their fault because their brains weren’t as developed as ours. It was so stupid lol.
Boys do tend to mature more slowly than girls. However, like most things, there's a certain distribution to it. Obviously there do exist some boy who are more mature than some girls at a given age. There is certainly overlap. But the general trend is still there. However, there is no excuse for inappropriate behavior. Even if there are explanations for it, such as a lack of maturity, that doesn't make the behavior any more acceptable, and if it can be discouraged, it should be.
@@leftylizard9085what if I told you the "girls mature faster than boys" myth was simply a justification for older men taking young wives? What if I suggested that since girls are more likely to be harassed and assaulted at a younger age, they tend to mature faster Basically, there are significant social factors in play within patriarchy that self-fulfil this myth, which we cannot disentangle from what we would like to consider "natural" (as though "natural" and social can even be disentangled)
girls often start puberty earlier than boys, and thus may physically mature earlier. In terms of brain development, research has shown that certain parts of the brain tend to mature at different rates in males and females. The frontal lobes, responsible for problem-solving and decision-making, among other tasks, tend to mature later in boys than in girls. This could potentially impact behavior during adolescence and early adulthood. Emotional maturity can be more subjective and vary greatly among individuals. However, some studies suggest that girls might develop emotional skills and empathy at a younger age than boys. Still, it's crucial to remember that there is a lot of variation within genders. Not all girls will mature earlier than all boys, and there are many factors, such as genetics and environment, that contribute to the pace of an individual's maturation. This aligns with my personal anecdotes in high school and even after the age of 20 where girls/women are more quiet and attentive while the boys are cracking jokes and messing around and getting in trouble. Even outside of school I feel like men are fully mature at around the age of 30 which is where the whole idea of women peaking in their twenties while men thrive in their thirties comes from. Even from how women select men they will always find the older 30 year old man more attractive than the teen/ early 20 year old man. If I had to guess women absolutely develop quicker but that’s just my personal pattern recognition.
@@DivinesLegacy something as simple as the modern diet can cause premature puberty in girls. The point of contention here isn't so much the observations but the "naturalization" of those observations. You're glossing over lots of unexamined assumptions when you do that. For example, the stereotyped socializations in which boys are expected to do physical/spatial labor while girls are expected to do emotional labor. Let's not forget that the brain is like a muscle. The parts you use more develop faster.
A few months ago, I met an 84 years old woman who, during her depression, hadn't left her bed for years save for bathroom trips, and had seriously impaired motor function from lack of motion. Now at the time I met her, she had done physical therapy and was able to walk again, but she was poorly coordinated, had crippling tremors, and was pretty much always confused. I started taking her to small shopping trips, just going to buy a couple of fruit or a shake or whatever excuse to go on an errand, so she'd take a walk every other day and interact with things and people. Now she only shakes when she's stressed, moves around as smoothly as her aged body allows, and knows her way around the nearby streets. If we went by estimates of how the brain works at any given age, she shouldn't have recovered this much function while this old, but really the brain is more flexible than people grant it and in the right conditions it can do surprising things.
great comment! People get degrees in their 50s or even later, it's not like the brain is completely rigid and incapable of change and learning new things after a certain age, it's just likely more malleable when we're younger
I think in a lot of ways, youths are powerless. Think of how little control young people are given over their lives. I see some ways adults talk to and treat children, and honestly, if they treated adults that way, it would never fly. Many parents will lose their temper or ignore their child when their child wants attention, but if their child does it to them, they get punished. Society, in general, doesn't do enough to protect or even recognize that children have rights. Lots of parents still see nothing wrong with using corporeal punishment on children. Too many view children as extensions of themselves rather than unique beings with their own autonomy.
I agree with this as I grew up with pretty abusive parents. It was hell and nobody could really do anything about it and it’s had lasting unwanted effects on me. What’s pretty sick and depressing though is that I’ve seen pedophiles online try to hide behind “advocating” for “children’s rights” when what they’re trying to change has nothing to do with protecting children from abuse.
@Princess I'm sorry you had to go through that. I hope you're doing well. Honestly, I'm not surprised pedophiles would try to hijack children's right advocacy. Disgusted, but not surprised.
100%. My life got significantly easier as soon as I was legally considered an adult and there were actual consequences to mistreating me. People are so fond of looking back on previous eras as backward for sentencing adults to physical beatings for crimes, but many of those same people see no problem with children having a similar experience... for arbitrary offences... administered by their own parents. I'm convinced that much of society, while perhaps not being aware of it, doesn't actually see children as people with thoughts and feelings and identities.
got to say, as someone with constant bad thoughts about what I should have achieved as I'm close to turning 30, learning that brains keep developing throughout life and that we actually don't (at least not necessarily) stop learning easily at age 25 is such a relief to me
you'd be smart to never believe something that comes out of the mouth of a well off person. especially one in academia or any other position of high power over others. they are incentivized to push only things that keep wealth consolidating into the fewest hands possible. basically they are religious cultists but ones without a specific subject to follow outside of wealth acquisition. they'll say and do anything to get you into a position of servitude/subjugation
@@albummutation2278 most people will die before age 25 from labor induced starvation. a fact brought to us by that "best we could possibly do" system thats called eurocentric culture
I have a friend who really buys into this myth. To the point that if someone in their 30s dates a 23 year old she thinks it's grooming and predatory. Like, yes power imbalances exist but let's not deny the agency of young adults who are well over the age of consent?
I dated a 44 year old woman when I was 20 years old. I know a lot of people, particularly like your friend would feel grossed out by that and would say I was groomed but I'm 23 years old now I still don't feel like I was groomed in any way. My relationship with my ex ended amicably and she never had bad intentions either. I like older women, typically in their 30s or 40s but that doesn't mean I'm completely opposed to dating a woman my age either. Recently I hit on this 35 year old woman and she knew I was 23 years old. The way she infantilized me made me so uncomfortable and she basically implied that anyone her age dating someone my age is a creep and I really didn't like that. Even if my brain doesn't fully develop until age 25, I'm still only two years away from that age so there's really not that big of a difference between me and someone literally only two years older than me. This infantilization and patronization really gets on my fucking nerves.
I don't know how my other totally irrelevant comment ended up here. I meant to comment that I agree. I'm 17 and will turn 18 this year, my boyfriend is older than me and some of my friends at my university use terms like "grooming" and "pedophilia", effectively comparing it to CSA, which I find to be a reprehensible comparison. What it does is reduces the trauma of CSA survivors to being equivalent to someone's squick over an age difference, causing these terms to lose the shock value they are supposed to have to convey the seriousness of the situation. So many people trivialize these serious terms meant to describe something heinous done by adults to young children. It genuinely angers me that it's become common and accepted to say that an older man dating a younger woman is just like the Subway guy (I can't remember his name but he was a spokesman for an American sandwich restaurant until they found he did truly awful, unspeakable things to very young children). This seems to be more of an Anglosphere phenomenon, North America, the UK, Australia and New Zealand have this attitude but my home country of Sweden thinks the "age gaps = CSA" attitude is weird. Or at least the part of Sweden that I'm from does.
Yes, you see a lot of those people with the 25-year myth in the sex negative advocacy groups. Essentially, they want to take away sexual autonomy from people before they are 25 (and probably even after they are 25).
I was going to say this but the opposite. I think many people want this myth to be debunked so they can actually take advantage of younger people. Many people want to say that kids are definitely able to consent to relationships with adults while fully understanding the situation. I think the myth being applied to take away responsibility and agency from adults is bad, but I also think it helps protect children and teenagers from being literally groomed.
Elliot’s proving a point. We all, especially young people, love to underestimate our brains. We may not be wise enough, but we sure have active brains. My theories to why we doubt our brains: 1. Maybe it has to do with our education and lifestyles? 2. Our memory levels? 3. What we been hearing on brain development in the media without proper research? Who knows🧠🤷🏾♂️ Great video Elliot and great editing Danae👨🏾⚖️!
ill just say that for me, im constantly gaslighting myself, and im like 99% sure that i do it sm because growing up i was never taken seriously and i never had a parent who validated my feelings, or did any kind of emotional labor to help me grow as a person. so i cant speak for anyone else but for me its def a result of trauma. and since im autistic, even now that im legally an adult, almost everyone around me still treats me like a child and doesnt take me seriously. its like my neurodivergence gives ppl an excuse to ignore what i say cuz "theyre just crazy".. and no, no one has said that explicitly to me but its so painfully clear that thats how most ppl see me and it def affects how i see myself.
I would add some possibilities : - How often adults dismiss what young people say, without justification other than their age (I’m 60, my children are now adults, and I am disgusted how often I heard this from my peers) - young people have access to many points of view / access to critical thinking.. so they doubt themselves Doubting oneself is a good thing in many (not all !) cases, and also may hinder one’s confidence. I wish more adults would try it (I hope my english is ok)
@@unseenmolee That sucks and I get what you’re saying. How you’re raised and who you interact with plays factors to why you may doubt yourself. Thank you for sharing!
There are specific diagnoses where this miiiiight be a reasonable stance,so I’d be really interested to hear more about this! Personality disorders are what I’m mostly thinking of - they’re basically an inflexible pattern of thinking, feeing, and behaving that’s harmful to ourselves or others, but the inflexibility is key. Because “adolescent brains” are generally a lot more adaptable than “adult brains”, it’s much easier and more common for people to end up “growing out of” those symptoms when they’re younger. Personality disorder diagnoses can be really stigmatizing (which is its own problem), so a lot of psychologists/psychiatrists are reluctant to diagnose it before they’re reasonably confident this is gonna stick. In my individual experience, this kinda turned out to be true, but I’d love to hear some more anec-data!
I remember hearing this “25th year” idea and misattributing my college years coming-of-age to it. It couldn’t be that my peers were finally telling me the truth about my behavior, or that I was doing more mushrooms and LSD than I should have while still going to work and school. Had to be that I was finally 25
Psychedelic drugs have made me a much more responsible individual, weed too oddly enough. I'm 21 now, and first dabbled with that stuff at 18. I've used it all somewhat regularly since then, and my mind is... rather unaffected. If anything, it's running on more cylinders than before. If the 25 thingy was true, then I'd be some kind of perma-fried moron by now, but I'm not, and clearly neither are you. Older adults just want to keep us feeling down, the same way they felt at that age themselves. It's all psychological projection.
@@spencerricketts8025Wait fifteen years, you'll see. You've been doing drugs for only three years, that's no time at all for the effects certain drugs (especially marijuana) have on the brain to show themselves. The 25 year data may be a myth, but neuroplasticity does naturally drop off drastically in the later twenties. It can be "reactivated" later on, but that doesn't happen on its own. And drugs can affect the neuroplasticity of the brain during formative years. 18 is a "better" age to start with drugs (if at all) than say 13, but it still changes how easily you can learn things, how flexible your personality and character are, specifically regarding the healing of childhood trauma and how you view the world. You're much more likely to support your neurological development with a good diet, exercise, meditation, healthy socialisation etc. You know, the "happy chemicals" your body already produces naturally.
@@spencerricketts8025 I think to an extent it’s unconscious though. How much of what we do is situationally automatic ? We’d like to think we’re not simple enough to fall into routines, but if you’ve ever had to drive somewhere for the 1000th time, you might not even remember the drive over. A recent study on mice found that a small shock associated with almond changed their scent detection to be more sensitive to the scent of almonds. I don’t think it’s a huge leap to think “what if instead of a scent, we consider the behavioral pattern of dominance” and consider that people have been doing so for thousands of years?
@@matgonzalez6272 Dude that's such a great point, and I suppose hence why psychedelics can be very helpful for some. They can break those patterns which have been etched into our culture for hundreds or thousands of years, at least for a time long enough to get a glimpse beyond them. And God Almighty, do we have a LOT of those unconscious patterns.
@@spencerricketts8025 if you honestly think you have that much capacity to control your body, why dont you order your blood cells to move more slowly in high temperatures and stuff like that? you are not the pilot. you are the passenger. the observer. but its all those microscopic individual creatures we call cells that are actually making every choice for you. the rest is just your ego perverting your understanding of reality
I'm so glad someone is finally trying to debunk this, I've been screaming about how the myth is.. well a myth, and no one listens because it is so deeply ingrained into people at this point. It's frustrating and vastly oversimplifying how the most complex object in the known universe works.
I moved out at age 19, almost 20, and then 9 months later I stopped living partially off my parent's money after already earning a part of the money I needed for my living expenses myself. At 20, I was living in my own rented flat alone, working for the money I needed, and taking care of everything that needed to be done in my household. I was most definitely not a child at age 20. And I really wasn't especially mature for my age, neither mentally nor in regard to how responsible I was.
At age 18, after functioning pretty normally and with no diagnoses under my belt, I suffered a severe and painful 8-year burnout. During this time, I wasn't able to function anywhere near the capacity I was used to (I had no working memory and couldn't retain any information, all physical movement resulted in pain, I was easily overstimulated and got horrible days-long migraines, I had no sense of time or space, I couldn't communicate with people, much less form a coherent thought, etc). It was a scary time and I lost a lot of friends who thought I was stupid, lazy, unreliable, cold, and babyish. I knew I was disabled, but nobody believed me or took my cognitive disability seriously. They thought I wasn't doing enough to change my situation, that if I just go to therapy, I would be all back to normal. They all thought I was acting this way and experiencing all of this WILLFULLY! Finally, after much denial from health professionals who insisted I was just anxious and depressed (and not really offering much guidance beyond that), I was diagnosed with ADHD, OCD, and autism. I cannot express to you how much these diagnoses changed my life. As soon as I started taking medications that were geared towards these things, after 8 years of pain and suffering and loneliness and grief, I was RIGHT back to the way I used to function. It was THAT simple. My brain NEEDED those meds, and immediately after taking them, it's like I was CURED lol. Those 8 years I spent in despair, unsure if I would ever be my real self, unsure if I had lost myself completely to whatever this force was that was holding me hostage. But it turns out, with the right help, you can actually bounce back SO FAST. I will never doubt the power and resiliency of my brain again.
i got arrested at a blm protest when i was 18. the amount of people that have used this to downplay the political work i've been doing (i'm 21 now) drives me up the WALL!!! yes i am mentally disabled, but i've also been told i'm "mature for my age" for my whole life bc i was helping raise my siblings starting at age six! just! god yeah this line of thinking really bother me lmfao THANK YOU FOR ADDRESSING IT HOLY SHIT
@@thefridge7335 i was (legally) standing in a bike lane. cops gave an order to disperse, we contested it saying it was an unlawful order bc we weren't doing anything wrong, and eventually they arrested us
"Why do we seem eager to call ourselves underdeveloped?" Because we are, socially speaking. I'll be 38 this year, so I definitely can't speak for Gen Z, but I can for Millennials and BOY HOWDY do we feel behind in life. Few of us own houses, many are choosing not to have kids specifically for financial reasons, we bounce around from entry level job to entry level job because the promised opportunities for advancement never seem to materialize, and even a decade or two after graduation we're still carrying around student loan debt. We may be using junk science to explain it, but a lot of the social markers of adulthood have vanished. There's also a well-meaning side to it, a kind of "benevolent ageism" to it, if you will. Many of us look back at the decisions we made in our 20s and cringe, so we want to offer a bit of a pass to young people because part of us remembers what it was like. It's not that one perspective is actually superior to another, it's just your priorities shift over time. I'm sure 25-year-old me would cringe at many of the things 37-year-old me believes and values. Which is why it's so dangerous when we dismiss young people for literally being young. We need that perspective just as much as any other. It's funny how you're constantly told you're too young to be considered until one day you wake up and find you're being told you're now too old to be relevant. It's like the "right age" only lasts about as long as springtime in Arizona. 🥀
"It's funny how you're constantly told you're too young to be considered until one day you wake up and find you're being told you're now too old to be relevant." Wow, perfect. As a 37 year old with 3 degrees who just quit an entry-level job that was going nowhere, I resonate with this comment to the point of shattering. Good luck internet stranger.
Crazy timing - I was just pondering on this, because it’s another reasonable theory the internet has warped. I’m not advocating for open season on young adults (bullying, sexualisation or worse) but this idea that teens should just be allowed to operate as unchecked id seems far from ideal And as was pointed out, it can undermine the advocacy of young people. Look how many young activists are dismissed as childish, too much “their brain isn’t done” discourse undermines teens and early 20 somethings who are engaged in thoughtful action
Absolutely. I think one of the issues is that we tend to act like young people are 'potential people' outside of being impacted by society. When they're people, in society who have their own cultural networks both in relation to adults and outside them (which makes sense when you consider adults as a power majority actively engaged in oppressing young people in many cases). One of the issues we then act like the default should be barring young people from spaces and controlling them down different paths, rather than recognising that they're already active agents and we should building support systems and disrupting the more oppressive elements of society. The two that really annoy were the response to teenage guy control action and the discussion of the web. In the former people would normally congratulate the activists but then go 'It's awful that children are having to get involved in politics.' Rather than recognising that gun violence affects children, and children live in society. So in a world that didn't disenfranchise them, they'd already be involved. The other people respond to worries about children using online spaces by advocating for banning children from them. But children don't have that many spaces that aren't already controlled and built for adults. We act as if kids are invading 'our precious adult areas' without realising that we basically already have every space and if we're not building spaces to be accessible for young people, that's a problem. (And I don't mean this in the 'everything needs to be censored to high heaven sense'. Obviously, in keeping with the spirit of this video, some young people will want to engage with material that other young people will find distressing or disgusting. Rather, we need to get better at building spaces that are transparent, easy to navigate, clearly telegraph the sorts of things you'll find in them etc. We need to build online spaces that aren't predatory. Because that's a benefit to EVERYONE [young people, adults with media literacy, poorer users, literally everyone]. And we need to get better at supporting each other, because half of these discussions aren't actually about young people being traumatised by content, they're about young people being unable to access help and support in understanding upsetting things (an issue adults also face). Sorry for the rant, I think about this sort of stuff a lot. Hopefully I'm managing to communicate clearly. I always worry I'll type this out and someone will read stuff I don't intend into it.
We can dismiss them also because they don't have enought information on diverse topics to be effective in their political opinions and actions. Don't worry excuses won't dry.
seriously though, my brain is fine, but i feel at most, 18. maybe thats me falling into the trap of wanting to feel young, but with the pandemic, and with my own mental health issues, i missed out on up to 6 years of learning to be an adult, and many more of how to manage ADHD and Autism. i was deem too smart, too high functioning when i was young, and then in 2019 after getting assessments, it stalled because of you know what. only now am i getting a diagnosis. am i wrong to say i'm less developed? that i'm less capable? apart from having a mental "disability" or as i prefer, a different set of social abilities not in line with society, is it okay to say i'm mentally younger than my body? socially i'm certainly a late bloomer, first date at 19, does that excuse any of my mistakes? i can't make childish mistakes anymore because i'm an adult, i can't grow up with other people because they're all grown up already i don't like thinking that i've got it hard, because i have a home, if suboptimal, but you be the judge if age or development is a scientific element, or this is all subjective or fake.
I've always hated the whole frontal cortex development argument. I would rather say that people are messy, especially people who are in their early 20s. Hell, I am a 40-year old who just came out as trans and I'm quite certain I'm doing dumb shit because I'm navigating the world in a new way.
It's nice to see an older trans person, as a younger trans person I don't feel as alone in my identity. I think this whole maturity thing could have to do with the fact that no one teaches us how to be adults in the first place. And then we get called immature for not having our shit together, or if we do, we're "too young to know." our societies in a weird state of infantilizing younger people while also leavening us for the wolves.
ok wait im sorry to comment again lol, but i just wanted to say ageism is def a thing. i can remember when i was younger no one would take me seriously. i can remember what i was upset abt and all that and it was all valid asf lol. but no one around, not even my mom, would believe me when i would tell them how i felt. and like literally im an adult now but ppl look at me like im still a child and like idk what im talking abt since i dont have a normal job or because im autistic or whatever. its a real problem and im glad youre talking abt it
I so agree! also, even despite times where one may actually have less maturity, their emotions still are very legit and should be taken seriously/aided in improving. Often, I also find a lot of perceived maturity also comes from simply knowledge above all else. It's hard to know how to express how you feel, well, if you've never been taught how. ~
I agree, it's so irritating. Even when you're a kid and experience distress, it's so dismissing to have adults tell you that your problems or feelings are just no big deal and to be belittled for them. Story time: I'm a grad student and as part of my course I had to do an academic intervention on a kid in elementary school (I'll call him A). It was a math intervention, just helping A identify numbers and with simple addition and subtraction. A felt insecure about his math abilities, but he also told me that he didn't have any friends and that would make him sad. When he got in a fight with one of his peers at recess he would always come to the session sad and do worse on the activities. It clearly affected his learning. In class we would talk about how the intervention was going and I brought that up a few times. I also talked to his mom about it (she worked at the school), the school psych, and the teacher who's class I was pulling him from. They all said that he totally had friends and was generally well-liked by his peers and that he was just being silly and tended to overreact. When I told my prof and classmates this they would come to the same conclusion. But...I mean it was clearly still bugging him. Maybe he had a skewed notion of what friendship was? Maybe he was socially insecure? I asked my prof if I could write about that in the report and he said that would be "reaching" and to not include it. But the way he perceives things still matters, how we perceive things impacts how we act. But this was all dismissed as childish overreacting. It doesn't matter if you think it's stupid, it was still affecting him. Idk where I'm going with this but I don't like when people invalidate others feelings and experiences.
fr.and the sad thing is people don't even acknowledge that that's what it is. as if it's invisible. it has such profound impacts on people lives but few people say anything about it
@@hannahluden2245 for real that just sounds like they were belittling him and ignoring his feelings. They probably didn't know as much about him as they shouldve.
@Gabriel Gray I agree. I mean, I only really knew him for the 6 intervention weeks so I didn't know him too well either but he was definitely struggling in more ways than one. I wish school staff weren't so overworked and overwhelmed so they could notice this kind of stuff or so they could dive deeper.
That's stupid that disregards things like power dynamics too like how a older parent has a lot of ways to emotionally manipulate an adult child can't believe ppl would dismiss that when it isn't uncommon
Not even to mention the other imperfection stories of childhood lead exposure, microplastics, and recent global health events. Expecting immaculate cognition in anyone ever requires ignoring an incomprehensible number of factors. CO2 levels are at a 14 Million year high, so those currently alive are at a significant disadvantage to the rest of human history. You'll just have to make do with what you've got
Exactly, I actually think that your brain can do incredible things just by not limiting yourself mentally by thinking too hard about the physical brain. Does the mind originate in the brain or not? That question is a distraction, what matters is that it's always better to conduct yourself, and your thoughts, as though that stuff doesn't limit your mental capacity beyond a certain level. Allow your mind to wire itself as is necessary, and it WILL work its way around environmental disadvantages.
Even then, I think boomers had it pretty bad development wise because they had heavy metals alongside carbon dioxide in the air compared to mostly just carbon dioxide.
@@justanidiotmk2749 Many replacements to these environmental hazards are going to have effects of their own that we don't know about. The other side: boomers' vegetables were more nutritious, they had more exercise, their bones weren't as filled with Strontium and other nuclear fallout, and they were richer, among many other advantages. It is impossible to reduce the pros and cons of a generation to a final score
I used to be super involved in non-profit youth organisations dedicated to empowering young people to engage in global issues and make their voice heard. Conversely, I have worked in a rural newsagency for the better part of the last three years where the majority of my customers are elderly retirees (usually conservative ones at that). In this job I have encountered many elderly people with a lot of wisdom and endlessly interesting stories. But I have also observed a shocking emotional immaturity, lack of basic critical thinking skills, and wilful ignorance among so many older people (including those in their 50's). When I consider the bright, thoughtful, educated (or at least aspiring to be educated) and genuinely engaged young people I used to work with it is crazy to me that 16 year olds are not allowed to vote but old, approaching-senile racists are. I definitely think we should be more forgiving of, say, teenagers when they make questionable decisions. But that's more to do with life experience than brain development (although certainly brain development plays some role here). But once you get into your early-mid twenties, if you're considered mature enough to join the army, get a credit card, lay taxes, and have your own health insurance, I really don't think your prefrontal cortex is holding you back all that much. Speaking generally of course. Also, I'm 24 and dating a 31 year old. We're both neurodivergent and so we just get each other in ways that neurotypicals don't get us. I often feel like the more mature one in the relationship and we like to joke that he's just immature for his age (rather than the other way around lol). I hate the discourse around age gap relationships always assumes a woman in her mid 20's is just some immature, infantile victim of male exploitation. This can certainly be the case in some instances- particularly if there is a financial power imbalance. But in many ways I have my shit together way more than my boyfriend does and I have never once felt like he has used our age gap to assert any kind of power or authority over me. We also were friends for 4 years before we caught feelings. Adult women can make their own decisions. End of story. Any financial or otherwise exploitation that occurs within an age-gap relationship among two fully grown adults is down to a multitude of factors and not purely the innocent fragility, naïveté, or incompetence of a young woman.
I think people are obsessed with the "powerlessness of youth" because they themselves are that age, or slightly older, and are enveloped in shame over where their life is, and so believing they had no choice and it was their biological destiny is comforting. But making mistakes is part of life, and you can make mistakes and it not be because you are victimised. I think people who adhere to this belief have quite external loci of control.
The main consequences of underdeveloped pre-frontal cortex are related to attention and inhibition of behaviours. It has nothing to do with intelligence or emotions - people should stop generalizing without even knowing what they're talking about (and infantilize/invalidate teenagers cognitive experiences)
Instead of suggesting people wait until their brain is "ready" to make good decisions, why not provide training for people as a means to help compensate for the perceived discrepancy and allow them to make better decisions earlier in life?
I learned as a teenager that the brain already deteriorates from 25 years on. Sounded really f-d up to me. So, essentially, if you're under 25 you're a child and above 25 you're a decaying old person. And somewhere between those two stages there is a short moment you are able to vote, carry a weapon, make decisions about your bodily integrity, can smoke a cigarette, drink a beer. LMAO
It's kind of weird because if a 22 years old little kid have sex to a 25-26 years old you'r basically a predator because their brain is not fully developed until 25
The brain grows in many ways above 25. It also 'deteriorates' in many ways long before 25. The brain is constantly throwing off information it no longer needs and adding new information. But yes, humans, like animals or food, have a peak period of health before slowly decaying.
I feel that the reason why so many young people fall into this oversimplification is because we think our failures in life are caused by something being wrong with ourselves, but we don't want to feel entirely responsible for them. I feel like that sometimes. I've been told my entire life that I could do whatever I wanted and I would succeed, that I'm intelligent, but I often think "if I was intelligent, I would have a job already". I see people younger than me having their shit together and I can't help asking myself what I'm doing wrong. But the difference between me and them it's mainly money and connections. It took me seven months to earn money for a 400€ tablet I need for drawing commissions. They can spend that in only two weeks.
Though the prefrontal cortex is important in decision-making and regulating behaviour, the picture many people try to paint is not what the science shows or the professionals say. It is commonly described as the brakes of behaviour; it is responsible for the, oh wait I shouldn't do that, or I should take more time before acting moments. To illustrate this, there is a popular study based around placing cards in their respective categories. One task asks to sort by shape, the other by color. What was found in that study was that during maturation: toddler, child, adult, there are varying levels of ability to switch these tasks or take their time. The toddler could only do the task after reinforcement of the correct responses, but had no ability to switch tasks or strategy, regardless of being wrong every time. The child was able to do the tasks well on their own, practically perfectly accurate at distinguishing between color or shape individually, but when the tasks switch rapidly and/or the stimuli from the other task is used (color stimuli in shape task, shape stimuli in color task) the child doesn't hesitate giving the wrong response. In the adult though, they were able to change the tasks and have differing stumli, while still giving the correct response. But, the adult was slower and was prone to inconsistant errors, as opposed to the predictable error of the child; the adult rushed and knew they messed up vs the child messing up while taking the same time as the other tasks and had no awareness of having messed up. This is just an example to illistrate how this maturation is not just a binary (fully developed or undeveloped thing) all throughout maturity the ability to stop yourself when you know things are wrong grows, and even after maturation every individual has varying levels of traits such as impulsiveness. If someone is aware that they did something wrong, or they were impulsive in their decision to do a crime, it does not change that they may be a danger to others. A way I like to describe it comes from robert sapolsky, imagine a car with differing levels of braking abilities. If a car has brakes that are not functional the car should be put into a garage to hopefully get fixed, depending on the ability of the rbakes or severity of damages done to others, the car should have different lengths of stay. Regardless of if a decision was impulsive or not, the fact that the decision happened does not excuse the harm that may be done. We can allot different amounts of time to make a decision, from a quarter second to a year, but there is no right amount of time to have the right decision. Some people are faster or slower when it comes to grasping their final decision, differences in the impulsiveness of a decision can only ever give an empathetic lens to understand why something may have happened. The prefrontal cortex should not excuse everything, it should only explain parts of an event's cause.
The question I’m about to ask is very simplistic and probably falls into the trap of black and white thinking when it comes to neurological science, especially considering the complex variabilities of each person, at roughly what age range does the child brain morph into an adult brain? Or rather at what “average” age range estimate does the maturation of the adolescent brain start and finish?
@@SxVaNm345 it does not really finish or start morphing at any one point, the brain is constantly developing. There may be general guidelines for when certain stages are expected to be developed, but the normal range can be anywhere from 17-25 which is too broad to judge people. Even after becoming an adult ability is not implied, only that development has finished. An adult could very well have a less functional/powerful prefrontal cortex than a child that is not fully developed, it is just less likely. Crimes often occur where the ability to stop impulses or make moral judgements is weakest. The moral compass that is developed in people depends in the individuals own way of understanding right/wrong. The impulses are unable to be excused by a developmental period. People are rehabilitated for things that are harmful to society, developed or not, they should be proven as stable citizens.
Neurodivergent from birth here. Had a car accident at age 38 and experienced a pretty significant loss of the skills my autistic brain had arleady adapted for me :/
The Mismeasure of Man by Stephen Jay Gould gives a really detailed history of this topic. I never heard this 25 number in my coursework, only that the PFC is considered mature around 18-20 yrs old. I think 25 comes from a researcher who was tasked with recommending the appropriate legal age for alcohol consumption but I doubt he based that recommendation on brain data alone. I usually don’t care for video essays but I love this one and will be sharing it. Thanks so much! EDIT: Your McMindfulness video was also brilliant and I’ve been enjoying Ron Purser’s The Mindful Cranks podcast
The pre frontal thing is... something that could be used for good. To engender empathy. That it isn't used for that purpose reflects an issue with the reason it is prepetuated as a talking point. Namely to essentially and dismiss certain people.
LOVE this. the brain never stops growing and the idea that it does is dangerous to long term mental health, i think. if you’re of the mindset that you’re done at a certain point, why try? what more can be done? if you’re of the mindset that, no matter your age, you will always continue to learn and grow, you’ll be exercising those brain cells like you need to exercise the rest of your body. the brain isn’t a muscle, but i think treating it as one in the sense that it should be used for problem solving, critical thinking, and learning new skills and concepts, will help keep us all healthier. i ain’t a doctor, but i’ve read plenty and have my own anecdotal experiences to draw from. love the video. :)
I agree, but there are still age related neurological factors. For example, older people have to make a conscious effort to stay sharp to avoid age related cognitive impairment. Young people's brains are still developing and should be aware they might be susceptible to naivete, impulsivity etc.
My problem with normalizing the responsibility of people up to the age of 25 has more to do with internalizing misogyny than validating pseudo science in any way. We still hear a lot justification about men not being held accountable for any action, especially in this age range and arguing that women from an early age "know very well what they are doing." At the age of 16 I normalized a lot of this sexist view, I put myself in abusive dynamics with other men because I thought I knew what I wanted, because of my gender more than my age. Time really helped me realize ways to protect myself and not need protection from other women who had already suffered from what I did too. Protection is a hard thing to debate because it really shouldn't be something authoritatively imposed. My fear is that it will further justify the sexual abuse that young people suffer, especially people who are not cis men, even though I fully agree on individual autonomy.
I do think there's a difference between 16 year olds and 19 year olds in this regard. At some point you do need to give people, including young women, responsibility, but that doesn't mean we have to say "oh everyone under 18 can do everything an adult can."
@@kr3642 This talking point doesn't work for predators as we're all talking about 18+ year old adults here. If anything, social awareness and helping remind young adults that they DO have autonomy and CAN make good decisions, also informing them of the potential (not mandatory) caveats of dating someone significantly older, is going to be far more helpful than trying to keep all adults 18-24 away from anyone over 25. Teaching teens what healthy dating practices look like on a large scale would help adults of all ages. Predators only have power when they're allowed to slink around in the dark.
Really good video. I studied Phineas Gage in college and his case is really fascinating. As a trans guy, I really appreciate you calling out the transphobia that this leads to. It's funny that no one ever questions a cis kid's gender identity because it was "formed before the PFC was finished developing". People don't even realize how much we still don't know about the brain and how it works. They like to think that "modern science" has answered all the questions and anyone with a MD can tell them all they need to know about their health.
If you're at all self critical and introspective you will see a retrospective difference between your youth and your middle age. There is an even bigger difference between the self you recall before and after having children, with each child producing a sea change in your experience of your own life. There is a desire in anyone who feels regret or remorse for psst mistakes to absolve themselves with some truism about biology that make it okay that they lacked wisdom, but that frame of reference is always moving forward in time. Compassion allows you to see it that way and a lack thereof causes you to weaponize it and turn it outward.
Even if the brain finished development at a specific age, its a long progression, not a sudden state change. From toddlerhood the adults in your life should be slowly increasing your responsibility and privileges as you demonstrate the ability to handle them. It starts with picking up your toys and multiple choice outfits, and escalates to picking your career and personal risk tolerance. You don't need to be fully baked to have some responsibility and rights. But the younger folks do need grace and guidance.
Elliot, I am an advocate for grooming victims and girls who have been sexually exploited, either on a small scale or within major companies in the industry. My focus is primarily towards teenage girls, (13-19) and a lot of predators we encounter use the whole “brain developing earlier” as a justification for their behavior, or “its legal so its fair game” in reference to either 18 as the legal age of adulthood, or ~13+ as the age of consent. I used to use the “brain finishes developing at least in early 20s” argument, but now that I know that the brain can finish developing as early as 17, and I believe in science, I feel disheartened. I’ve worked with former SWers who were scouted at 17 by small agencies, and grooming victims who were under 18 but above the age of consent. I’ve been helping out and advocating for older teenage girls, and I’ve seen predators use this science as a way to defend their personal behaviors, age of consent, and exploitation w/in the SW industry, as well as victims blaming themselves w/ this knowledge. At first I thought it was just predators stretching the truth, but now that I know that this is true, I’m not sure how to continue to advocate for social support and legal change.
Even if the brain has finished developing it doesn't mean that people have created neuropathways for solid reasoning and critical thinking skills. You don't just stop mentally growing when your brain is done developing. The brain may become more rigid as we age but that doesn't mean we can't learn new things (people get degrees in their 50s). I'd say the best way to help is through promoting better education on the topic so girls are aware of the situations that can arise and are better equipped to deal with them. I think people tend to make more mistakes when they lack knowledge.
Well, tbh, while a 17 year old's brain might be finished developing, the kind of experience they have still pales compared to an older predator. You're finishing one puberty and entering a more psychological puberty. I think the topic of the development of the prefrontal cortex is nuanced, but 25 is a good maximum to make sure everything is "well baked" lol. Plus, maturation should be seen on a sliding scale. Some teens are more naturally independent than others. But are they suddenly more "adult" than those more childish teens? No, they're just mature *for their age group*, but they're suddenly not as mature as a 25 year old or a 35 year old.
Yea I was curious about this when i saw this video cuz I've seen groomers argue it a lot (not saying Elliot is advocating for that with this video though, 13:08 he says big age gaps are probelmatic and can be shown as bad without the misinformed science, im just concerned as you are since I've seen someone argue it before )
I would probably shift my focus more toward power imbalances than the exact ages of the victims. It doesn't really matter if your brain is fully baked if you're being pressured by someone with more resources and social status than you and you don't have the education to understand what is happening, for example. People in their forties can still be lured into cults and completely victimized by them, and they're not automatically better off in that situation than someone in their twenties. You can be exploited at any age, and while I'm not an expert and am just spitballing here, focusing on that might be useful.
I think the discourse around consent and boundaries needs to change. Yes, maybe a girl's brain may fully develop at 18, but that says nothing about her life experience up until then and the obstacles she has to learn to navigate. It was only when I was 23, well over the legal age of consent, that I realised I was going through domestic abuse. That's because I was never taught what abuse is and had no idea how boundaries work. Doesn't matter that my brain probably fully developed. I needed education and support from older people to overcome my situation. A 34 year old has way more life experience than an 18 year old and hence there's a power imbalance. It's much easier for a 34 year old to emotionally manipulate an 18 year old, and if we agree there's a power imbalance, we agree that the 18 year old cannot _fully_ consent to something if she doesn't have the same level of power as the older guy.
The 'maturity' refers to the myelination of gray matter in the prefrontal cortex/limbic system. This NEVER stops in anyone at any age. That's one thing the slate article got wrong. It just keeps pruning until you die, and the rate of this definitely does not slow down at 25.
From what I can tell the idea that the prefrontal cortex wiring is complete at 25 comes from Arain, M., et al. (2013) - "Maturation of the adolescent brain." However the paper seems to simply assert that this fact is well established while citing papers that make no such assertion.
"maturity" and "development" isn't entirely based on the prefrontal cortex though, it also includes the limbic system, and importantly, the integration (networking) of these and other systems or parts of the brain. If anything though, the many references to phrenology vs personality vs cognition vs "ability" is exactly why there's a separation between neuroscience and psychology as specializations, and within those, further specializations such as personality, cognition, language, perception & processing for example. There's no static age given for "fully developed" in practice, only as an over generalization, but rather a range spanning approx a decade and like you mentioned, full of variables. That's the biggest indicator to whether something passes the sniff test in psych: humans are complex creatures full of contradictions and variables, so if any universal answer is given that's supposed to apply to anyone in black and white terms, it's almost always oversimplified generic pop psych bs.
Your comment perfectly analysed why a one size fits all approach for a species as variable and complex as humans can never fully apply without there being much discrepancies involved.
Great video, thanks for pointing out these myths! It's so frustrating when people use these to justify discrimination. Similar to neurosexism and gender essentialism being used to discriminate against women or infantilise and excuse men.
As a student in health sciences who has done multiple internships in neuroscience labs, I am not an expert, but I do believe that the general public deeply misunderstands scientific data. When scientists say that the prefrontal cortex finishes its development and is involved in most aspects of higher level cognition (inhibition, thought, execution..) it really doesn’t mean that you are unable to live before 25. Your brain parts don’t work in isolation, you brain is still very well functioning before 25. As an aspiring researcher it is very frustrating to see how a lot of people just choose to interpret science in a way that only serves their agenda to dismiss or defend poor behaviour
Fantastic video, this is a really important topic and I really appreciated your thoughts on it. I think it’s odd that people take the idea that adolescents may be more likely to act rashly when making quick decisions and use that to argue that they are incapable of making sound decisions in general. Look at something like voting - is voting a certain way typically a spur of the moment decision? No, in the U.S. you have to register, and you have to go to a polling place and often wait in line and go through the whole process of voting for often many different offices, which takes preparation. It’s not something people are likely to go into with zero planning, making an on the spot decision. Young people are completely capable of thinking things out and making thoughtful decisions; it is only in split second decisions specifically where they may be less likely to consider or fully understand consequences than older people. So why do we discount the thought out decisions and work of young people? Yes, young people are more likely to get in car accidents and shoot people because those actions are often based in rapid, in-the-moment decisions. Voting, activism, and even entering a longterm relationship are not. They’re things you plan for and think out and do over time. Young people also need to be held to account when they do make harmful decisions, because otherwise how will they ultimately learn to consider and understand consequences? It reminds me of the “boys will be boys” message - you’re literally teaching people that you expect them to misbehave. That’s gonna make them more likely to misbehave. We need to look at issues on a case by case basis and stop oversimplifying, because we’re getting a lot of things about young people wrong, and in ways that have extreme consequences.
Sure wasn’t the original, but the first time I heard this idea get popular was in relation to fanfiction shipping discourse. Y’know, so people could call each other child abusers and groomers over shipping the wrong fictional pair of adults, totally nothing to be concerned with. All seriousness, “25 year old teenager” rang those same awful alarm bells
This is a terrifying new thing i'm only hearing about now. But i'm only half way through the video, and i'd like to give my little input. My conclusions are purely based on my anecdotal experience, but when it comes to specifically the number 25 i think it is two things. 1. is the afformentioned pretty number thing, we love when things neatly fit into things and 2. it's around this age where typically you're finally figuring stuff out. I'm turning 25 this year exactly, and i'm living on my own with my boyfriend for a long long time, and we both have went through such radical changes of personality and for the better. So many new responsibilities, a lot of new relizations and new things to discover, you feel like you've entered a whole new chapter of your life. So of course people will jump to this as being "Aha, now i have matured, my brain has finished up" and they attribute their new found maturity to factoid non-science that makes their "i'm so smart" feelings get tickled.
22:54 "obvious, simple, natural rules" cannot exist because natural things do not follow, let alone are influenced by, mankind's beliefs of what is "simple" and "obvious." If anything, "natural" is replacing as a more acceptable work for "normal," when these words are so very different by meaning; rules in general, let alone these ones, aren't "natural," but are manmade expectations of reality which can become very unnecessarily damaging, Especially to those with natural characteristics that lie outside the norm.
Just to bring my two cents, even in the Bible it is said that you should never let anyone look down on you because of your youth. I believe that people mature at a different times in their lives. I don't believe it has to do with your brain. Never understood this argument.
i think the prefrontal cortex discourse is so popular because it's reassuring to allow ourselves rest from the constant pressure of society. we are expected to meet outdated and unachievable standards, struggle to make ends meet and can't really see a future for ourselves, so being freed from responsibility for a few more years can really be a huge relief to quote mitski mom am i still young ? can i dream for a few months more ?
TLDR: it’s not about maturity and brain cooking. It’s about the ability to learn new tricks! The DR that introduced me to the core of this idea explained that around 26, not 25, the brain slows down on the ability to CREATE new paths in the brain, mostly with learning new skills and habits. Basically, after 26, we naturally will grow more likely to follow the same pattern as we already know. The topic was my diagnosis, the question was “can I reverse this?” He said yes but I have till about 28-30 before my disorders are fully set and stone and I will be more reluctant to “cure” any disorders out of pure comfort and acceptance. He said it’s a win win unless the disorders get worse with time, and that I have a long time to make sure they do not settle into something bad. Hope someone can back this information up a little ❤❤❤
Conflation by people that are not educated about the subjects they bring up is not a robust source of information. Nor is an anecdotal incident. Neurologists do have very robust research into cognitive function and the role of the prefrontal cortex in executive functioning.
Please correct me if I’m wrong, I try to become more knowledgeable. To answer your question at the end of the video, I think, at least from personal experience, a lot of people like to use the “25-year old brain” argument was to argue against people who thought that if someone was of legal age of consent, they were “fair game”. The obsession with legality and age (ex. “It’s legal in X” “They’re 18 so it’s okay”) is quite popular, even with really old people dating barely-legal people (which is a nuanced topic all in itself). I believe that people used the prefrontal cortex (despite it being a false argument which could lead to disempowerment of young people and ableism) to argue against the belief that being attracted to young people - when you are much, much older - was okay just because they were of legal age of consent. This video was very educational for me, as I had not thought that this argument could lead to taking away autonomy from young people, even though they should have said autonomy, and should not be infantilized as they can make good decisions even if they’re not quite as old. Thank you for making this video. I heavily apologize if I had said something ignorant. If I have, please tell me.
I'm a year late but unpopular opinion. I don't think there is anything wrong with a much older adult dating another adult of any age. There is nothing inherently wrong with it. Do I find it confusing and isolating as to why anyone would want to date someone with zero of the same core memories? Sure. There is nothing wrong or unnatural about being attracted to young adults, older adults don't simply gain attracted to old features, unless they're married to them and have had years to be in love. I promise you when you're a 60 year old you will definitely spot a 24 year old that you find attractive, either someone that reminds you of a crush from your younger years as is often the case, or just the natural human reaction of being attracted to attractive adults! Old people tend to forget how much older they look to young people, they remember their own faces from their 20s and 30s. I don't see how there could be anything wrong with an older man or woman making a genuine commitment to someone on their early 20s to love and honor them being inherently negative, unless they're actively trying to take advantage of them, which would be bad in a relationship of any age gap. The same way a 19 year old trying to quickly marry an 75 year old with dementia for his wealth would be inherently bad.
There is neurodevelopment related to age though. It's not just brain development, but life experience. Even someone whose faculties are more developed than the average for their age is still lacking in life experience. Although I do think you have a point that older people are often unambitious and set in their ways and unwilling to accept that younger people can be right about things.
@@cat_city2009Experience is not knowledge. It's experience. A rock can experience movement,damage,heat,cold and still it knows nothing of these things. Further more, just as rote repetition does not lead to improvement in a skill ,merely living does not lead to wisdom. And different people can get better at the same thing in the same amount of time faster. Because they reflected better,have better learning methods,are simply more talented,etc. Fact is,you're not wiser because you're old. Not even fkn close. The more old people think they know because they're old,the less wise,the more ignorant they really are. I once knew a stupid old woman who got scammed by contract workers multiple times because she didn't bother to check references and thought her "LiFe ExPeRiEnce" meant she knew the first thing of home repair. She didn't. She just lost time and money. Also,specific experience matters. I was once 10 years old and my teacher 37.and yet she defered to use when it came to navigating the city in a field trip one day. Because we knew the city better than her,because we lived there our whole lives. It does not matter if she has more "life experience" this nebuloud,meaningless term. What specific life experiences are we talking about here?
great video! I've heard about Phineas Gage before but never with such context or in so much detail. You are a gifted communicator and I love videos like these that educate us about important stuff like this.
@24:44 that professor's ideas about "emerging adulthood" is kind of weird to me. like yes, cultural changes are important but i dont think that means there's a new stage in life. i think what he says is "emerging adulthood" is simply just adulthood. every adult of every generation has had to figure out how to survive in America and that often means pursuing education, jobs, marriage and having children. just because one generation (ie. Gen Z) is using different tools to face their current social and political landscape doesn't mean that they're less adult than other generations (ie. boomers, Gen X, etc.). i think to say that younger generations' adulthood phase is an emerging one is to insinuate that adulthood is equated to having a job, house, married and kids. i think the case he is making also implies that every 20-something should strive to have those things if they want to be an adult. but not everyone wants a certain type of job or several college degrees or even a house. some people's adulthood will involve those things but some may involve becoming a digital nomad or caring for pets instead of children or only going to technical school or not going to college at all. just because younger generations don't marry or get a job or have kids as soon as other generations, doesn't mean they are less "adult" at 18 or 21 or 25. i think this way of thinking makes it easy to invalidate young people's experiences and overestimate how "adult" older generations were when they were in their late teens to late 20s. my opinion is that older generations just had easier access to things that made people outwardly appear "adult". someone can be 23 and be married and have a house and a stable career and kids and still have the emotional maturity that they had at 16. physical maturation does not equal emotional maturation. physical maturation just provides the opportunities to emotionally mature, not guarantee it. i will turn 25 this month! and i have had my first full-time job for almost two years. i do not have a house, a spouse or children. and if i were to have those things one day, i would never look at my peers who don't have those things as being "less adult" and me as being the "real adult". i think older people need to be more careful about how they view younger people. it's disempowering to say that we haven't arrived at adulthood because we are not behaving exactly as older generations did. i think it also adds to the common worry that 20-somethings already have about being "behind" in life. i think that article sheds some light on how older generations sometimes underestimate how much younger generations have gone through and matured through because they are judging us by this arbitrary scale of milestones. there are other adult achievements in life.
The idea of emerging adulthood isn’t that a life stage was invented, but that our society is now structured in a way that allows for us to take a longer-range view of the maturation process and understand the differences that we didn’t have the luxury of acknowledging before a certain point in (Western) history. There have always been teenagers, but for a long time our lifespan was so short and families had to be so much larger (on average) that you had to really get cracking with that whole “getting married and having children” thing almost as soon as you were physically capable. Once that changed, we could give kids more time to grow into themselves before they had to start making those decisions. Likewise, I think right now we have the time and space to understand that people over the age of 18 are still changing and growing in important ways, and to understand them a bit more fluidly than we used to. Hopefully we eventually end up in a place where we understand that ALL human beings are growing and changing, and that people who stay the same from 25 onwards are the exception rather than the rule.
“..powerlessness of youth” really stuck with me. I’m a neurospicy woman and am constantly treated as younger than I am. It makes me feel more powerless.
How much of Gage's experience can be explained as PTSD? While Im sure it would have some effect, whats missing is the plasticity of the brain. The brain *isn't* compartmentalized, at least not as many people see it. While the brain *usually* develops in a specific way, damage to specific regions of the brain eventually leads to the damaged function being taken on by a different part of the brain.
I think this myth is part of a broader culture of scientism. Science is concerned with establishing models of reality, which are not absolute truth but may coexist with a variety of other understandings. It also takes a long time to develop and validate these models, largely because models are validated by a lack of contradicting findings. However, as you say, there is a tendency in society to use scientific findings to justify normative statements. This often involves presenting scientific models as objective truth and massively over-representing the weight of certain findings.
The idea that the human being becomes this static, steadily functioning machine of the psyche at a certain age is so small-minded and assigns gross instrumentality to personhood. It was a concept that terrified me in childhood until I passed into adulthood and realized this whole line past which your psyche becomes statically defined simply doesn't exist.
Well considering that the average age of a typical shooter in the US is 30 year old, way pass the magical 25 years old "adult" brain thing I don't think rising the age is going to help that much.
I feel like I read somewhere recently that things have been upped to about 30 years old now. So no decisions until at least 34, just to be safe. Edit to fix autocorrect
I have seen this statistic used most frequently in the context of grooming and manipulation in relationships. I think that most would agree that the type of relationship decisions they make at 14-19 are much different than choices they would make at 25+. I don’t know if this is brain development or life experience or some intersection of the two. I mostly just want 30 year olds to stay away from teens. 😅🤷♀️
That's what I was thinking as well. This can be applied to giving adults more ability to actually groom children. I hope most people apply this to young adults and don't use it in a way that is harmful to how children and teens view predators.
Oof, thank you for this vid. I straight up didn't catch on the the underpinnings of the developed by 25 ice berge. And ill admit Ive been using to hold off on trying out alcoholic drinks and beverages until ny brain was finished "developing" and Ain't know that there's been such a twisted conviction behind the idea. Im still going wait out a bit on drinking though, my brain's atypical btw, I just don't want to damage my brain with alcohol. Well, i guess i get to rethink the process for a bit then.
I read some research article that said the prefrontal cortext and other parts of the brain still develops til you hit your 40s mostly from what i gathered it's still pruning getting rid of stuff you don't need and strengthing areas you do use after that it stabilizes and changes very little so people in their 30s by this logic are also not ready to make life altering decisions which honestly sounds ridiculous I think at some point we just got to let people make decisions and mistakes instead of waiting for their brain to be fully at its peak because if we wait til 40s no one is going to get anything done
welp, now my sister cant use this as an excuse for why she bullied me growing up "my pre frontal cortex wasn't developed yet 🤪" girl i think you have greater problems than that, lmao
There likely was some type of abuse/dysfunction in your family. Otherwise your sister wouldn't get away with acting that way. She probably learned from the only people she knew. Once she's an adult however, it's on her to become a better person and unlearn those behaviors that were ingrained in her brain.
I was verified on a popular video platform at 14/15. I still have my account though in 2020 all of my content got wiped. I also corrected my birthday and still have the verification badge (im not saying what website). I certainly believe the intellect to communicate their boundaries and what they are after, distinguish who and how much to trust, when to respect/yield AND has the capacity to balance confidence and comfort with trust and respect is what I am looking for, and the amount of exposure to the facts (knowledge) about the experience is more important than the amount of experience (wisdom) the person already has so long as there is sufficient wisdom in terms of the way actions and intentions play out even through witnessing. Again the amount of wisdom intrinsically means there is less knowledge on the overstanding part but the overstanding comes after the under and innerstanding NATURALLY. So exposure to the experience is the only way to grow the knowledge with the wisdom at a certain point, and THAT is the part where self control and things like that play in. But there are 40 year olds who dont care who they hurt just the same number if not that number and a third of it teenagers. Likewise there are so many empathetic individuals on the planet and humans are not the only one to form bonds where we sacrifice our self for others and or we trust. We are not the only animal who does wrong nor are we the only animal that does justice. Let's talk beestingality while we're at it, since we like to sprinkle the amount of things we have already been exposed to into account for a topic where you only get exposed to more if the environment lets you? Thank you and if you read this you have a heart and soul in you
The exact limit for when we should allow full autonomy to people is unclear but not having a good means of delineation between mature and immature isn't an excuse to assume everyone mature. That's not an argument I see anybody making but I'm sure that quietly there are some MAPs (I'm just using that term because it might be less likely for TH-cam to flag.) that want to justify their identity with this new narrative. So. The prefrontal cortex develops fully anywhere from age 17 to 28, brain maturity indexes can falsely flag children as young as 8 as more mature than some adults, and some people develop smaller prefrontal cortexes than others and go on to lead fulfilling lives. What's to say our current narrative about the brain being the root of intelligence and wisdom isn't the full story the way people of old thought of souls and hearts? What if there's other parts of the brain that are more currently associated with the body? The stomach sends all kinds of signals to the brain... what's the difference between that and being an organ that hosts neurotransmitters? Same can go for skin, blood vessels, thyroid glands, you name it. What if the entire body is the brain? The body is certainly not finished developing when one is small... but we need to be careful to not be Ableist to dwarves. Intelligence is environmental adaptive advantage.
If Jotaro from stardust crusaders was a real guy I think quite a lot of people would hate his guts. But he would deem that to be but a petty controversy in his conquest to defeat Dio.
I hate how people pick and use this idea. Like okay you dont want trans kids to have medical access.....then ban nosejobs and whatnot. Equal playing field lads. You cant just pick and choice what your going to apply it to
While watching the video I felt a sense of guilt because I tend to infantilize myself a lot. I deny most of the responsibilities that I actually know that I'm capable of but I feel an overwhelming sense of the "this task will never gonna end" and sometimes its just about something perspectively lighter like school projects or my own projects about the fields I'm interested in or something much heavier like dismantling the patriarchy. If you, the viewer, also feel like this time to time I would like to share a quote, "Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it." - Rabbi Tarfon. There is also some other point on the video I wish to talk about, towards the end about the media we consume (I'm also very baby in that field). My favourite show of all time is Sailor Moon and its gonna be my favourite till I die I think and its for children obviously but I still watch it whenever I feel like it. When Elliot said "the problem is not strictly the media that you consume its the messages that you internalize about yourself". Now a quick background about me, I used to think me an usagi had so much in common; we both crybabies, we both clumsy, we both eat a lot of sweets, we both blonde (I live in turkey so this was also a big deal at the time). So when I watched Usagi fight with evil people with so little fighting skills she had and get better at saving the world episode by episode, when I watched Usagi dont want to fight but she will do it anyway, when I watched Usagi try to befriend evil aliens because maybe all they needed was a good company and understanding, my 5 year old ass thought she was the role model and will live my life trying to make Usagi proud know that I'm saying the truth and only the truth. And like Elliot and Lily mentioned it is ok to go back to medias that make you feel warm inside but its important to acknowledge that all those medias that we consumed when we were little and got fascinated were such big deals because most of them had encouraging messages for children and youth, like yes you are young but check out this high school girl who saves human kind every episode, yes you are young but look at your nerdy neighbor who is hero and saves people because he got bitten by a spider (not everyone who has superpowers choose to be heroes). Most of the characters we loved when we were young were loved so dearly because the encouraged us. And it is fine to let yourself be a baby time to time, remind yourself who you looked up to when you were actually baby. Omg such a long comment I'm sorry, orkhon inscriptions revisited, why I wrote this much I do not know. But this video made me feel and think things and I wanted to share I guess so by by and have good time.
Nuero-engineering student here, the study that concluded that said brains develop until 25 was actually in regards to things like nuero plasticity and if brains continue to improve but the study didn't test if it actually stops at 25 that was just the age of the participants in which the study was concluded. Later studies about nuerodiverse folk confirm that the brain keep developing until you are 27~28. I don't think we should infantalize people under the age of 25 however, I did observe that getting older does make the day to day struggle easier, it might be partially the continued brain development but it might simply be just be learning how to cope better. While I don't believe that all decisions should be deferred until your are 25 on the topic of having children I think it's recommended, something that effects more than just yourself, could be provided that you spend that time learning and preparing, things like gentle parenting and some practical psychology feel like a near necessity when dealing with children.
I would agree with you but many young ppl dont wanna listen to what older ones have to say unless those older ppl have more or less the same way of thinking as themselves (cognitive bias?) You can be super polite and they will still run with their hands on ears saying "nanannaa I dont hear you", I can talk to my younger sister about these things bc she respects me in that way, we listen to each other so we know in what aspects we are here to teach each other through our differences, but if I tell someone on the internet (which is this generation's teacher) that they are smart for their age it will sound weird to them and will start coming up with conclusions about how I'm a proshipper for shipping something they see as some sort of non related siblings, just because they see everything they don't like as "the enemy", specially if they are non conventional adults (in their mind, an adult's place is working to maintain a family of their own, when the reality a lot of us don't even wanna get married, let alone have children). I see a lot of "we as adults should stop judging the young ones" but I dont see ppl admitting that those young ones tend to have crappy expectations and no respect for adults, and I dont mean it in an authority way, just basic common sense, basic politeness, basic "don't go wishing ppl to KYS", specially when they wish that to the same kind of ppl they claim to protect, they can't even be that much coherent in a lot of cases. I can be my sister's big sis, but where's these children's big sis?
Idk how to tell you this. But most older people are exactly like that or worse, and barely anybody is actually polite to younger people, in a way that isn't purely performative.
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Just saw your Gus video. It was incredibly uniformed. " Boys defending boys".
any one with common since would agree she is a disgusting person . Forcing some to work for 18 years even tho they agreed on not having baby, when she was in the best state of mind.
u effectively said the Gus reaffirming his boundaries is abuse. .
Eliot please, all I want is for science to tell me the exact age range where I can’t be held responsible for the consequences of my actions. Is that so wrong???
@@SamBeck6090 not just exterior but also interior ones
Your brain is just an organ after all
🤣
I'd say it's when you're able to fully distinguish right from wrong and understand the consequences of everything you do.
@@2011tiberiu Superb, never it is then!
I know this isn't exactly your question but legally speaking (in England at least) it's 10 and over.
I know you mentioned it briefly, but I wish you would have talked more about how this pseudo brain science is used to infantilize, disempower and depolitcalize young people.
When my 22 year old best friend was talked into doing therapy with her abusive parents, her therapist told her parents that she was being disobedient and rebelious because her pre-frontal cortex wasn't fully developed and she was basically too stupid to understand she was in the wrong. It was so fucked up. I've seen situations like this throughout my adolescence, especially for teenage girls, who's bodily and other autonomies are taken and given to some patriarchal adult figure in the name of 'protection'.
I had negative experiences in family therapy as well, where my therapist basically just tried to get me to do whatever my dad wanted (including not dating people of the same gender, so, yikes). The lack of autonomy afforded to young people is plain dangerous.
(Edit: wording)
It is difficult to have mature adult conversations about this because for some reason the infantilization of young adults now has political charge.
@@val.628nah they were in the right, looks like you prefrontal cortex has some issues
A lot to unpack there. Your agenda is pretty transparent.
It's my opinion that the less plastic prefrontal cortex you get as you age is in many ways a negative thing. This area of your brain seems to me to be locking in your decision making process so that you don't have to think about what is acceptable in your society or advantageous to your survival and success based on previous experience. The problem is that by the time you reach 25 you don't necessarily have the right idea about those things. Indeed at the age of 75 you might not have the right idea about those things especially since those ideas are hard to change once your prefrontal cortex becomes less adaptable. This is why old people are stubborn and young people can adapt better. In today's society which is rapidly changing due to cultural and technological changes, the younger prefrontal cortex is actually an advantage but that doesn't mean old people can't change. They just have to work harder and perhaps recruit a different part of their brain.
The 'brain doesn't finish developing until you're 25' thing always sounded strange to me because neuro-plasticity doesn't stop when you're 25, people can keep growing and reshaping their minds throughout their life. Also people accomplish insane things before 25 like Einstein. It's like the myth that we only use like 10% of our brains. We'd be better off as a species if we didn't blindly accept random 'facts' without understanding more context around them and if we were just more critical of cultural memes in general.
einstein was actually 26 when he published the special theory of relativity oo wee
Exactly!
@@neuralsoupYeah I think he probably worked on that for longer than a year tbh
better you go and educate media.
In truth, artists, scientists, writers and musicians often do their best work by age 25.
That does not mean that they can not keep doing great stuff after that, or van develop new talents. But there is a general trend that the early stuff is the best stuff. No one is exactly sure why.
Or course, creativity and scientific brilliance do not necessarily correlate with each other. In fact, there often seems to be an inverse relationship between the two.
I have a background in child, adolescent, and adult development and even when this information started getting picked up by professors during my undergrad, there was a massive range (17-28) for when the prefrontal cortex is considered fully developed-- that's 11 years! I'm 28 right now, that means that a 17-year-old could have a fully developed brain around the same time mine finishes developing-- and that's just assuming the rigidity of the range.
Adding on, the entire idea of "development" becomes particularly insignificant when considering people with severe brain injuries that, surprisingly despite the nature of the injury, live relatively comfortable & intelligent lives as a result of their brain compensating for any lost parts, such as in the cases of hemispherectomies (disconnecting/removing one hemisphere of the brain). Sometimes, people develop wildly new skills (like musical ability or social ability) as a symptom of their recovery!
Do NOT EVER doubt your brain.
our brains have let us figure out how to manipulate the materials and atoms around us so we can build spacecraft that lets us leave our own damn planet. that's objectively insane, in a good way. the human brain's probably one of the most incredible products of nature
I've always found these really cool. Part of my brain exploded just after I was born (an 'Adverse haemorrhagic event' according to my medical records) and from my parents memories it's amazing how unpredictable and fluid outcomes to it actually are.
I'd be interested if you know, I've come across suggestions that the brain is more networked than strictly modular or locational and specifically socially distributed (so we don't do all of our thinking in our head, rather the body and social structures like language and external stimuli prompt and build out responses). This seems to fit what I know of the effects of solitary confinement and language processing, but I'm no neuroscientist. I'd be interested if this had made it into the field yet or if it's overstated in the critical theory and linguistics books I've read?
@packman2321
If personalities are the product of the interactions between individual neurological cells, then cultures are the product of interactions between individual persons, you could even do a Gaianist leap and say that humans are like the neuronal cells that make up the mind of the universe.
I have a degree at the fields of Biology and teaching, one of the biggest questions in the field is how should the schooling grades that make up the curriculums be organized in a way that suits that the neuropsychological development of different individuals is different, as in everyone learns and matures at different speeds and times.
@Nightblender
The video answered that brains never stop changing if you are alive, so there would be no point in which the brain is finally done.
As a student of neuroscience, even before I knew all this, I would never dismiss someone because "their brain isn't developed" as brains are so diverse form person to person. I was a neurodivergent child (now an adult) with above average intelligence surrounded by adults who lacked basic critical thinking skills, and as I grew up I realised it wasn't right to treat me like an object when I dared to question things. Adults valued me and told me I am gifted when it suited them, but I was a stupid child if I dared to upset them.
There's other measures of how "good" a brain is. Dog brains, they're great at smelling! Baby brains, great at language. Pregnant women's PFC permanently increases in size. Are these brains necessarily superior though? Are they inferior to our adult human brains? How can we measure that? We can't really. Also, fluid intelligence peaks in your early 20s and slowly declines, does this mean we shouldn't allow 45 year olds to be surgeons or nurses because they must make quick decisions?
Every brain matter is so much more complex than people believe but yes, people prefer simple answers and simple solutions.
👏👏👏👏
The problem isn’t neuroscience. It’s pseudoscientific psychology.
controversial opinion : humans werent built to live past 40 so they should be euthanized once they reach that age in order to actually be in line with natures intentions for us
@@jacob9673 just call it eugenics. sick of people being scared to identify the culprit of all these issues. started with darwin and his incredibly scientifically retarded evolution theory which is easily refuted by the fossil record never showing a single instant of a species in the process of evolving. but due to it supposedly taking millions of years to happen, it should be all that we see in the fossil record.. much of mainstream accepted science is just eugenics being dressed up as other things. few people have the capacity to recognize/admit to that tho. too much personal investment in pushing eugenics for the well off people. who as we all know, are the only ones with the economic capacity to participate in academia.
I very much resonate with your first paragraph being ND and being selectively gifted and a child who didn't "know their place."
Most often with these arguments, people act as if the prefrontal cortex was just non-existent till 25, and it magically appeared in the brain on your 25th birthday.. Even if the neuro-science behind it is tough to understand for lay man, isn't it quite obvious that "development" means "gradual change" over the years..
YES
As someone who started working full time and travelled to other side of the world alone with 16, I always despised these narratives that tried take away agency and full personhood away from me, purely based on one number. Agism is just one other prejudiced way of simply judging a person quickly without trying to learn anything that actually defines you as a person.
This reminds me of the whole “girls mature faster than boys” myth. My English teacher always used that line to excuse male students acting up. She said girls had more responsibility to be mature and to not goof around, but if boys did it it wasn’t their fault because their brains weren’t as developed as ours. It was so stupid lol.
God, the prevailing "boys will be boys" mentality of excusing men's actions because of inaccurate views on human biology just erks me so much
Boys do tend to mature more slowly than girls. However, like most things, there's a certain distribution to it. Obviously there do exist some boy who are more mature than some girls at a given age. There is certainly overlap. But the general trend is still there. However, there is no excuse for inappropriate behavior. Even if there are explanations for it, such as a lack of maturity, that doesn't make the behavior any more acceptable, and if it can be discouraged, it should be.
@@leftylizard9085what if I told you the "girls mature faster than boys" myth was simply a justification for older men taking young wives?
What if I suggested that since girls are more likely to be harassed and assaulted at a younger age, they tend to mature faster
Basically, there are significant social factors in play within patriarchy that self-fulfil this myth, which we cannot disentangle from what we would like to consider "natural" (as though "natural" and social can even be disentangled)
girls often start puberty earlier than boys, and thus may physically mature earlier. In terms of brain development, research has shown that certain parts of the brain tend to mature at different rates in males and females. The frontal lobes, responsible for problem-solving and decision-making, among other tasks, tend to mature later in boys than in girls. This could potentially impact behavior during adolescence and early adulthood.
Emotional maturity can be more subjective and vary greatly among individuals. However, some studies suggest that girls might develop emotional skills and empathy at a younger age than boys.
Still, it's crucial to remember that there is a lot of variation within genders. Not all girls will mature earlier than all boys, and there are many factors, such as genetics and environment, that contribute to the pace of an individual's maturation. This aligns with my personal anecdotes in high school and even after the age of 20 where girls/women are more quiet and attentive while the boys are cracking jokes and messing around and getting in trouble. Even outside of school I feel like men are fully mature at around the age of 30 which is where the whole idea of women peaking in their twenties while men thrive in their thirties comes from. Even from how women select men they will always find the older 30 year old man more attractive than the teen/ early 20 year old man. If I had to guess women absolutely develop quicker but that’s just my personal pattern recognition.
@@DivinesLegacy something as simple as the modern diet can cause premature puberty in girls.
The point of contention here isn't so much the observations but the "naturalization" of those observations. You're glossing over lots of unexamined assumptions when you do that.
For example, the stereotyped socializations in which boys are expected to do physical/spatial labor while girls are expected to do emotional labor.
Let's not forget that the brain is like a muscle. The parts you use more develop faster.
A few months ago, I met an 84 years old woman who, during her depression, hadn't left her bed for years save for bathroom trips, and had seriously impaired motor function from lack of motion. Now at the time I met her, she had done physical therapy and was able to walk again, but she was poorly coordinated, had crippling tremors, and was pretty much always confused. I started taking her to small shopping trips, just going to buy a couple of fruit or a shake or whatever excuse to go on an errand, so she'd take a walk every other day and interact with things and people. Now she only shakes when she's stressed, moves around as smoothly as her aged body allows, and knows her way around the nearby streets.
If we went by estimates of how the brain works at any given age, she shouldn't have recovered this much function while this old, but really the brain is more flexible than people grant it and in the right conditions it can do surprising things.
great comment! People get degrees in their 50s or even later, it's not like the brain is completely rigid and incapable of change and learning new things after a certain age, it's just likely more malleable when we're younger
I think in a lot of ways, youths are powerless. Think of how little control young people are given over their lives. I see some ways adults talk to and treat children, and honestly, if they treated adults that way, it would never fly. Many parents will lose their temper or ignore their child when their child wants attention, but if their child does it to them, they get punished. Society, in general, doesn't do enough to protect or even recognize that children have rights. Lots of parents still see nothing wrong with using corporeal punishment on children. Too many view children as extensions of themselves rather than unique beings with their own autonomy.
I agree with this as I grew up with pretty abusive parents. It was hell and nobody could really do anything about it and it’s had lasting unwanted effects on me. What’s pretty sick and depressing though is that I’ve seen pedophiles online try to hide behind “advocating” for “children’s rights” when what they’re trying to change has nothing to do with protecting children from abuse.
@Princess I'm sorry you had to go through that. I hope you're doing well. Honestly, I'm not surprised pedophiles would try to hijack children's right advocacy. Disgusted, but not surprised.
100%. My life got significantly easier as soon as I was legally considered an adult and there were actual consequences to mistreating me. People are so fond of looking back on previous eras as backward for sentencing adults to physical beatings for crimes, but many of those same people see no problem with children having a similar experience... for arbitrary offences... administered by their own parents. I'm convinced that much of society, while perhaps not being aware of it, doesn't actually see children as people with thoughts and feelings and identities.
Yes, there at terms for what you're describing. Adultism and childism specifically.
got to say, as someone with constant bad thoughts about what I should have achieved as I'm close to turning 30, learning that brains keep developing throughout life and that we actually don't (at least not necessarily) stop learning easily at age 25 is such a relief to me
I'm only 20 and I'm already panicking that I'm failing at life
people only stop learning because they stop choosing to learn and become close-minded.
@@jacklyntree7752 Most people are "failing" at 20, nobody knows what they're doing, even people double that age. you'll be okay
you'd be smart to never believe something that comes out of the mouth of a well off person. especially one in academia or any other position of high power over others. they are incentivized to push only things that keep wealth consolidating into the fewest hands possible. basically they are religious cultists but ones without a specific subject to follow outside of wealth acquisition. they'll say and do anything to get you into a position of servitude/subjugation
@@albummutation2278 most people will die before age 25 from labor induced starvation. a fact brought to us by that "best we could possibly do" system thats called eurocentric culture
I have a friend who really buys into this myth. To the point that if someone in their 30s dates a 23 year old she thinks it's grooming and predatory. Like, yes power imbalances exist but let's not deny the agency of young adults who are well over the age of consent?
I dated a 44 year old woman when I was 20 years old. I know a lot of people, particularly like your friend would feel grossed out by that and would say I was groomed but I'm 23 years old now I still don't feel like I was groomed in any way. My relationship with my ex ended amicably and she never had bad intentions either. I like older women, typically in their 30s or 40s but that doesn't mean I'm completely opposed to dating a woman my age either. Recently I hit on this 35 year old woman and she knew I was 23 years old. The way she infantilized me made me so uncomfortable and she basically implied that anyone her age dating someone my age is a creep and I really didn't like that. Even if my brain doesn't fully develop until age 25, I'm still only two years away from that age so there's really not that big of a difference between me and someone literally only two years older than me. This infantilization and patronization really gets on my fucking nerves.
I don't know how my other totally irrelevant comment ended up here. I meant to comment that I agree. I'm 17 and will turn 18 this year, my boyfriend is older than me and some of my friends at my university use terms like "grooming" and "pedophilia", effectively comparing it to CSA, which I find to be a reprehensible comparison. What it does is reduces the trauma of CSA survivors to being equivalent to someone's squick over an age difference, causing these terms to lose the shock value they are supposed to have to convey the seriousness of the situation. So many people trivialize these serious terms meant to describe something heinous done by adults to young children. It genuinely angers me that it's become common and accepted to say that an older man dating a younger woman is just like the Subway guy (I can't remember his name but he was a spokesman for an American sandwich restaurant until they found he did truly awful, unspeakable things to very young children).
This seems to be more of an Anglosphere phenomenon, North America, the UK, Australia and New Zealand have this attitude but my home country of Sweden thinks the "age gaps = CSA" attitude is weird. Or at least the part of Sweden that I'm from does.
Yes, you see a lot of those people with the 25-year myth in the sex negative advocacy groups. Essentially, they want to take away sexual autonomy from people before they are 25 (and probably even after they are 25).
I was going to say this but the opposite. I think many people want this myth to be debunked so they can actually take advantage of younger people. Many people want to say that kids are definitely able to consent to relationships with adults while fully understanding the situation. I think the myth being applied to take away responsibility and agency from adults is bad, but I also think it helps protect children and teenagers from being literally groomed.
@@Molly-iw1rc A myth is just a lie. If you have to lie to 'protect' you are in big trouble once the myth is debunked.
Elliot’s proving a point. We all, especially young people, love to underestimate our brains. We may not be wise enough, but we sure have active brains. My theories to why we doubt our brains:
1. Maybe it has to do with our education and lifestyles?
2. Our memory levels?
3. What we been hearing on brain development in the media without proper research? Who knows🧠🤷🏾♂️
Great video Elliot and great editing Danae👨🏾⚖️!
ill just say that for me, im constantly gaslighting myself, and im like 99% sure that i do it sm because growing up i was never taken seriously and i never had a parent who validated my feelings, or did any kind of emotional labor to help me grow as a person. so i cant speak for anyone else but for me its def a result of trauma. and since im autistic, even now that im legally an adult, almost everyone around me still treats me like a child and doesnt take me seriously. its like my neurodivergence gives ppl an excuse to ignore what i say cuz "theyre just crazy".. and no, no one has said that explicitly to me but its so painfully clear that thats how most ppl see me and it def affects how i see myself.
I would add some possibilities :
- How often adults dismiss what young people say, without justification other than their age (I’m 60, my children are now adults, and I am disgusted how often I heard this from my peers)
- young people have access to many points of view / access to critical thinking.. so they doubt themselves
Doubting oneself is a good thing in many (not all !) cases, and also may hinder one’s confidence. I wish more adults would try it
(I hope my english is ok)
Just gotta say 'memory levels' a hilarious phrase and it's entering my lexicon starting.. now
@@eleanorblake697 That was my best way of saying our levels of memory😭
@@unseenmolee That sucks and I get what you’re saying. How you’re raised and who you interact with plays factors to why you may doubt yourself. Thank you for sharing!
A psychiatrist refused to diagnose me until I’m 25 years old. That’s why I believed it.
There are specific diagnoses where this miiiiight be a reasonable stance,so I’d be really interested to hear more about this! Personality disorders are what I’m mostly thinking of - they’re basically an inflexible pattern of thinking, feeing, and behaving that’s harmful to ourselves or others, but the inflexibility is key. Because “adolescent brains” are generally a lot more adaptable than “adult brains”, it’s much easier and more common for people to end up “growing out of” those symptoms when they’re younger. Personality disorder diagnoses can be really stigmatizing (which is its own problem), so a lot of psychologists/psychiatrists are reluctant to diagnose it before they’re reasonably confident this is gonna stick. In my individual experience, this kinda turned out to be true, but I’d love to hear some more anec-data!
K then so work, drink, date etc all until you're freaking 30
I remember hearing this “25th year” idea and misattributing my college years coming-of-age to it. It couldn’t be that my peers were finally telling me the truth about my behavior, or that I was doing more mushrooms and LSD than I should have while still going to work and school. Had to be that I was finally 25
Psychedelic drugs have made me a much more responsible individual, weed too oddly enough. I'm 21 now, and first dabbled with that stuff at 18. I've used it all somewhat regularly since then, and my mind is... rather unaffected. If anything, it's running on more cylinders than before. If the 25 thingy was true, then I'd be some kind of perma-fried moron by now, but I'm not, and clearly neither are you. Older adults just want to keep us feeling down, the same way they felt at that age themselves. It's all psychological projection.
@@spencerricketts8025Wait fifteen years, you'll see. You've been doing drugs for only three years, that's no time at all for the effects certain drugs (especially marijuana) have on the brain to show themselves.
The 25 year data may be a myth, but neuroplasticity does naturally drop off drastically in the later twenties. It can be "reactivated" later on, but that doesn't happen on its own.
And drugs can affect the neuroplasticity of the brain during formative years. 18 is a "better" age to start with drugs (if at all) than say 13, but it still changes how easily you can learn things, how flexible your personality and character are, specifically regarding the healing of childhood trauma and how you view the world.
You're much more likely to support your neurological development with a good diet, exercise, meditation, healthy socialisation etc. You know, the "happy chemicals" your body already produces naturally.
@@spencerricketts8025 I think to an extent it’s unconscious though. How much of what we do is situationally automatic ? We’d like to think we’re not simple enough to fall into routines, but if you’ve ever had to drive somewhere for the 1000th time, you might not even remember the drive over.
A recent study on mice found that a small shock associated with almond changed their scent detection to be more sensitive to the scent of almonds. I don’t think it’s a huge leap to think “what if instead of a scent, we consider the behavioral pattern of dominance” and consider that people have been doing so for thousands of years?
@@matgonzalez6272 Dude that's such a great point, and I suppose hence why psychedelics can be very helpful for some. They can break those patterns which have been etched into our culture for hundreds or thousands of years, at least for a time long enough to get a glimpse beyond them. And God Almighty, do we have a LOT of those unconscious patterns.
@@spencerricketts8025 if you honestly think you have that much capacity to control your body, why dont you order your blood cells to move more slowly in high temperatures and stuff like that? you are not the pilot. you are the passenger. the observer. but its all those microscopic individual creatures we call cells that are actually making every choice for you. the rest is just your ego perverting your understanding of reality
I'm so glad someone is finally trying to debunk this, I've been screaming about how the myth is.. well a myth, and no one listens because it is so deeply ingrained into people at this point. It's frustrating and vastly oversimplifying how the most complex object in the known universe works.
I moved out at age 19, almost 20, and then 9 months later I stopped living partially off my parent's money after already earning a part of the money I needed for my living expenses myself. At 20, I was living in my own rented flat alone, working for the money I needed, and taking care of everything that needed to be done in my household. I was most definitely not a child at age 20. And I really wasn't especially mature for my age, neither mentally nor in regard to how responsible I was.
At age 18, after functioning pretty normally and with no diagnoses under my belt, I suffered a severe and painful 8-year burnout. During this time, I wasn't able to function anywhere near the capacity I was used to (I had no working memory and couldn't retain any information, all physical movement resulted in pain, I was easily overstimulated and got horrible days-long migraines, I had no sense of time or space, I couldn't communicate with people, much less form a coherent thought, etc). It was a scary time and I lost a lot of friends who thought I was stupid, lazy, unreliable, cold, and babyish. I knew I was disabled, but nobody believed me or took my cognitive disability seriously. They thought I wasn't doing enough to change my situation, that if I just go to therapy, I would be all back to normal. They all thought I was acting this way and experiencing all of this WILLFULLY!
Finally, after much denial from health professionals who insisted I was just anxious and depressed (and not really offering much guidance beyond that), I was diagnosed with ADHD, OCD, and autism. I cannot express to you how much these diagnoses changed my life. As soon as I started taking medications that were geared towards these things, after 8 years of pain and suffering and loneliness and grief, I was RIGHT back to the way I used to function. It was THAT simple. My brain NEEDED those meds, and immediately after taking them, it's like I was CURED lol.
Those 8 years I spent in despair, unsure if I would ever be my real self, unsure if I had lost myself completely to whatever this force was that was holding me hostage. But it turns out, with the right help, you can actually bounce back SO FAST. I will never doubt the power and resiliency of my brain again.
Can you talk a bit more about your symptomes and situation? Your story is do similar to mine and im still undiagnosed
i got arrested at a blm protest when i was 18. the amount of people that have used this to downplay the political work i've been doing (i'm 21 now) drives me up the WALL!!! yes i am mentally disabled, but i've also been told i'm "mature for my age" for my whole life bc i was helping raise my siblings starting at age six! just! god yeah this line of thinking really bother me lmfao THANK YOU FOR ADDRESSING IT HOLY SHIT
This is so gross, i’m sorry it happened/is happening to you.
@@thefridge7335 i was (legally) standing in a bike lane. cops gave an order to disperse, we contested it saying it was an unlawful order bc we weren't doing anything wrong, and eventually they arrested us
"Why do we seem eager to call ourselves underdeveloped?"
Because we are, socially speaking. I'll be 38 this year, so I definitely can't speak for Gen Z, but I can for Millennials and BOY HOWDY do we feel behind in life.
Few of us own houses, many are choosing not to have kids specifically for financial reasons, we bounce around from entry level job to entry level job because the promised opportunities for advancement never seem to materialize, and even a decade or two after graduation we're still carrying around student loan debt.
We may be using junk science to explain it, but a lot of the social markers of adulthood have vanished.
There's also a well-meaning side to it, a kind of "benevolent ageism" to it, if you will. Many of us look back at the decisions we made in our 20s and cringe, so we want to offer a bit of a pass to young people because part of us remembers what it was like. It's not that one perspective is actually superior to another, it's just your priorities shift over time. I'm sure 25-year-old me would cringe at many of the things 37-year-old me believes and values.
Which is why it's so dangerous when we dismiss young people for literally being young. We need that perspective just as much as any other. It's funny how you're constantly told you're too young to be considered until one day you wake up and find you're being told you're now too old to be relevant. It's like the "right age" only lasts about as long as springtime in Arizona. 🥀
Young shouldn't mean stupid. Children can learn new skills very fast versus adults
"It's funny how you're constantly told you're too young to be considered until one day you wake up and find you're being told you're now too old to be relevant."
Wow, perfect. As a 37 year old with 3 degrees who just quit an entry-level job that was going nowhere, I resonate with this comment to the point of shattering.
Good luck internet stranger.
Confirming age means nothing in terms of intelligence nor experience and exposure to events (wisdom). Also most milennials look 22 or 47.
Crazy timing - I was just pondering on this, because it’s another reasonable theory the internet has warped. I’m not advocating for open season on young adults (bullying, sexualisation or worse) but this idea that teens should just be allowed to operate as unchecked id seems far from ideal
And as was pointed out, it can undermine the advocacy of young people. Look how many young activists are dismissed as childish, too much “their brain isn’t done” discourse undermines teens and early 20 somethings who are engaged in thoughtful action
Absolutely. I think one of the issues is that we tend to act like young people are 'potential people' outside of being impacted by society. When they're people, in society who have their own cultural networks both in relation to adults and outside them (which makes sense when you consider adults as a power majority actively engaged in oppressing young people in many cases). One of the issues we then act like the default should be barring young people from spaces and controlling them down different paths, rather than recognising that they're already active agents and we should building support systems and disrupting the more oppressive elements of society.
The two that really annoy were the response to teenage guy control action and the discussion of the web. In the former people would normally congratulate the activists but then go 'It's awful that children are having to get involved in politics.' Rather than recognising that gun violence affects children, and children live in society. So in a world that didn't disenfranchise them, they'd already be involved. The other people respond to worries about children using online spaces by advocating for banning children from them. But children don't have that many spaces that aren't already controlled and built for adults. We act as if kids are invading 'our precious adult areas' without realising that we basically already have every space and if we're not building spaces to be accessible for young people, that's a problem. (And I don't mean this in the 'everything needs to be censored to high heaven sense'. Obviously, in keeping with the spirit of this video, some young people will want to engage with material that other young people will find distressing or disgusting. Rather, we need to get better at building spaces that are transparent, easy to navigate, clearly telegraph the sorts of things you'll find in them etc. We need to build online spaces that aren't predatory. Because that's a benefit to EVERYONE [young people, adults with media literacy, poorer users, literally everyone]. And we need to get better at supporting each other, because half of these discussions aren't actually about young people being traumatised by content, they're about young people being unable to access help and support in understanding upsetting things (an issue adults also face).
Sorry for the rant, I think about this sort of stuff a lot. Hopefully I'm managing to communicate clearly. I always worry I'll type this out and someone will read stuff I don't intend into it.
Meanwhile their fluid intelligence is at its peak.
We can dismiss them also because they don't have enought information on diverse topics to be effective in their political opinions and actions.
Don't worry excuses won't dry.
@@zerotwo7319says who?
sadly, i lost my prefrontal cortex in a tragic animatronic incident, it really is quite suprising how well a kid can do without it
seriously though, my brain is fine, but i feel at most, 18. maybe thats me falling into the trap of wanting to feel young, but with the pandemic, and with my own mental health issues, i missed out on up to 6 years of learning to be an adult, and many more of how to manage ADHD and Autism. i was deem too smart, too high functioning when i was young, and then in 2019 after getting assessments, it stalled because of you know what. only now am i getting a diagnosis.
am i wrong to say i'm less developed? that i'm less capable? apart from having a mental "disability" or as i prefer, a different set of social abilities not in line with society, is it okay to say i'm mentally younger than my body? socially i'm certainly a late bloomer, first date at 19, does that excuse any of my mistakes? i can't make childish mistakes anymore because i'm an adult, i can't grow up with other people because they're all grown up already
i don't like thinking that i've got it hard, because i have a home, if suboptimal, but you be the judge if age or development is a scientific element, or this is all subjective or fake.
I've always hated the whole frontal cortex development argument. I would rather say that people are messy, especially people who are in their early 20s. Hell, I am a 40-year old who just came out as trans and I'm quite certain I'm doing dumb shit because I'm navigating the world in a new way.
mazel tov on coming out :)
You aren't trans. You have been just brainwashed by all this transgender hysteria in todays media
hey, congrats on your transitioning! i hope your blahajs are plentiful
congrats on coming out! :)
It's nice to see an older trans person, as a younger trans person I don't feel as alone in my identity.
I think this whole maturity thing could have to do with the fact that no one teaches us how to be adults in the first place. And then we get called immature for not having our shit together, or if we do, we're "too young to know." our societies in a weird state of infantilizing younger people while also leavening us for the wolves.
ok wait im sorry to comment again lol, but i just wanted to say ageism is def a thing. i can remember when i was younger no one would take me seriously. i can remember what i was upset abt and all that and it was all valid asf lol. but no one around, not even my mom, would believe me when i would tell them how i felt. and like literally im an adult now but ppl look at me like im still a child and like idk what im talking abt since i dont have a normal job or because im autistic or whatever. its a real problem and im glad youre talking abt it
I so agree! also, even despite times where one may actually have less maturity, their emotions still are very legit and should be taken seriously/aided in improving. Often, I also find a lot of perceived maturity also comes from simply knowledge above all else. It's hard to know how to express how you feel, well, if you've never been taught how. ~
I agree, it's so irritating. Even when you're a kid and experience distress, it's so dismissing to have adults tell you that your problems or feelings are just no big deal and to be belittled for them.
Story time: I'm a grad student and as part of my course I had to do an academic intervention on a kid in elementary school (I'll call him A). It was a math intervention, just helping A identify numbers and with simple addition and subtraction. A felt insecure about his math abilities, but he also told me that he didn't have any friends and that would make him sad. When he got in a fight with one of his peers at recess he would always come to the session sad and do worse on the activities. It clearly affected his learning.
In class we would talk about how the intervention was going and I brought that up a few times. I also talked to his mom about it (she worked at the school), the school psych, and the teacher who's class I was pulling him from. They all said that he totally had friends and was generally well-liked by his peers and that he was just being silly and tended to overreact. When I told my prof and classmates this they would come to the same conclusion. But...I mean it was clearly still bugging him. Maybe he had a skewed notion of what friendship was? Maybe he was socially insecure? I asked my prof if I could write about that in the report and he said that would be "reaching" and to not include it. But the way he perceives things still matters, how we perceive things impacts how we act. But this was all dismissed as childish overreacting. It doesn't matter if you think it's stupid, it was still affecting him. Idk where I'm going with this but I don't like when people invalidate others feelings and experiences.
fr.and the sad thing is people don't even acknowledge that that's what it is. as if it's invisible. it has such profound impacts on people lives but few people say anything about it
@@hannahluden2245 for real that just sounds like they were belittling him and ignoring his feelings. They probably didn't know as much about him as they shouldve.
@Gabriel Gray I agree. I mean, I only really knew him for the 6 intervention weeks so I didn't know him too well either but he was definitely struggling in more ways than one. I wish school staff weren't so overworked and overwhelmed so they could notice this kind of stuff or so they could dive deeper.
I’ve literally saw people claiming that a 36 year person couldn’t claimed to have been manipulated, because their brain was already fully developed
That's stupid that disregards things like power dynamics too like how a older parent has a lot of ways to emotionally manipulate an adult child can't believe ppl would dismiss that when it isn't uncommon
I've also seen people make troll posts on the internet.
This new generation is full of idiots. It’s frightening really.
Not even to mention the other imperfection stories of childhood lead exposure, microplastics, and recent global health events. Expecting immaculate cognition in anyone ever requires ignoring an incomprehensible number of factors. CO2 levels are at a 14 Million year high, so those currently alive are at a significant disadvantage to the rest of human history. You'll just have to make do with what you've got
Exactly, I actually think that your brain can do incredible things just by not limiting yourself mentally by thinking too hard about the physical brain. Does the mind originate in the brain or not? That question is a distraction, what matters is that it's always better to conduct yourself, and your thoughts, as though that stuff doesn't limit your mental capacity beyond a certain level. Allow your mind to wire itself as is necessary, and it WILL work its way around environmental disadvantages.
Even then, I think boomers had it pretty bad development wise because they had heavy metals alongside carbon dioxide in the air compared to mostly just carbon dioxide.
@@justanidiotmk2749 true, they grew up in the age of leaded gas. Manmade horrors beyond my comprehesion
@@justanidiotmk2749 Many replacements to these environmental hazards are going to have effects of their own that we don't know about. The other side: boomers' vegetables were more nutritious, they had more exercise, their bones weren't as filled with Strontium and other nuclear fallout, and they were richer, among many other advantages. It is impossible to reduce the pros and cons of a generation to a final score
I used to be super involved in non-profit youth organisations dedicated to empowering young people to engage in global issues and make their voice heard. Conversely, I have worked in a rural newsagency for the better part of the last three years where the majority of my customers are elderly retirees (usually conservative ones at that). In this job I have encountered many elderly people with a lot of wisdom and endlessly interesting stories. But I have also observed a shocking emotional immaturity, lack of basic critical thinking skills, and wilful ignorance among so many older people (including those in their 50's). When I consider the bright, thoughtful, educated (or at least aspiring to be educated) and genuinely engaged young people I used to work with it is crazy to me that 16 year olds are not allowed to vote but old, approaching-senile racists are. I definitely think we should be more forgiving of, say, teenagers when they make questionable decisions. But that's more to do with life experience than brain development (although certainly brain development plays some role here). But once you get into your early-mid twenties, if you're considered mature enough to join the army, get a credit card, lay taxes, and have your own health insurance, I really don't think your prefrontal cortex is holding you back all that much. Speaking generally of course. Also, I'm 24 and dating a 31 year old. We're both neurodivergent and so we just get each other in ways that neurotypicals don't get us. I often feel like the more mature one in the relationship and we like to joke that he's just immature for his age (rather than the other way around lol). I hate the discourse around age gap relationships always assumes a woman in her mid 20's is just some immature, infantile victim of male exploitation. This can certainly be the case in some instances- particularly if there is a financial power imbalance. But in many ways I have my shit together way more than my boyfriend does and I have never once felt like he has used our age gap to assert any kind of power or authority over me. We also were friends for 4 years before we caught feelings. Adult women can make their own decisions. End of story. Any financial or otherwise exploitation that occurs within an age-gap relationship among two fully grown adults is down to a multitude of factors and not purely the innocent fragility, naïveté, or incompetence of a young woman.
I think people are obsessed with the "powerlessness of youth" because they themselves are that age, or slightly older, and are enveloped in shame over where their life is, and so believing they had no choice and it was their biological destiny is comforting. But making mistakes is part of life, and you can make mistakes and it not be because you are victimised. I think people who adhere to this belief have quite external loci of control.
good comment, thanks for sharing
The main consequences of underdeveloped pre-frontal cortex are related to attention and inhibition of behaviours. It has nothing to do with intelligence or emotions - people should stop generalizing without even knowing what they're talking about (and infantilize/invalidate teenagers cognitive experiences)
But even then it's not "inhibited" at 25 or under 25
Instead of suggesting people wait until their brain is "ready" to make good decisions, why not provide training for people as a means to help compensate for the perceived discrepancy and allow them to make better decisions earlier in life?
Because it's not about wanting them to make good decisions. It's about maintaining power and control over young people. We know this....
I learned as a teenager that the brain already deteriorates from 25 years on. Sounded really f-d up to me. So, essentially, if you're under 25 you're a child and above 25 you're a decaying old person. And somewhere between those two stages there is a short moment you are able to vote, carry a weapon, make decisions about your bodily integrity, can smoke a cigarette, drink a beer.
LMAO
It's kind of weird because if a 22 years old little kid have sex to a 25-26 years old you'r basically a predator because their brain is not fully developed until 25
The brain grows in many ways above 25. It also 'deteriorates' in many ways long before 25. The brain is constantly throwing off information it no longer needs and adding new information. But yes, humans, like animals or food, have a peak period of health before slowly decaying.
I feel that the reason why so many young people fall into this oversimplification is because we think our failures in life are caused by something being wrong with ourselves, but we don't want to feel entirely responsible for them.
I feel like that sometimes. I've been told my entire life that I could do whatever I wanted and I would succeed, that I'm intelligent, but I often think "if I was intelligent, I would have a job already". I see people younger than me having their shit together and I can't help asking myself what I'm doing wrong.
But the difference between me and them it's mainly money and connections. It took me seven months to earn money for a 400€ tablet I need for drawing commissions. They can spend that in only two weeks.
I highly agree.
the "to be continued" at the end omg
this video is my personal infinity war
Though the prefrontal cortex is important in decision-making and regulating behaviour, the picture many people try to paint is not what the science shows or the professionals say. It is commonly described as the brakes of behaviour; it is responsible for the, oh wait I shouldn't do that, or I should take more time before acting moments. To illustrate this, there is a popular study based around placing cards in their respective categories. One task asks to sort by shape, the other by color. What was found in that study was that during maturation: toddler, child, adult, there are varying levels of ability to switch these tasks or take their time. The toddler could only do the task after reinforcement of the correct responses, but had no ability to switch tasks or strategy, regardless of being wrong every time. The child was able to do the tasks well on their own, practically perfectly accurate at distinguishing between color or shape individually, but when the tasks switch rapidly and/or the stimuli from the other task is used (color stimuli in shape task, shape stimuli in color task) the child doesn't hesitate giving the wrong response. In the adult though, they were able to change the tasks and have differing stumli, while still giving the correct response. But, the adult was slower and was prone to inconsistant errors, as opposed to the predictable error of the child; the adult rushed and knew they messed up vs the child messing up while taking the same time as the other tasks and had no awareness of having messed up.
This is just an example to illistrate how this maturation is not just a binary (fully developed or undeveloped thing) all throughout maturity the ability to stop yourself when you know things are wrong grows, and even after maturation every individual has varying levels of traits such as impulsiveness. If someone is aware that they did something wrong, or they were impulsive in their decision to do a crime, it does not change that they may be a danger to others. A way I like to describe it comes from robert sapolsky, imagine a car with differing levels of braking abilities. If a car has brakes that are not functional the car should be put into a garage to hopefully get fixed, depending on the ability of the rbakes or severity of damages done to others, the car should have different lengths of stay.
Regardless of if a decision was impulsive or not, the fact that the decision happened does not excuse the harm that may be done. We can allot different amounts of time to make a decision, from a quarter second to a year, but there is no right amount of time to have the right decision. Some people are faster or slower when it comes to grasping their final decision, differences in the impulsiveness of a decision can only ever give an empathetic lens to understand why something may have happened. The prefrontal cortex should not excuse everything, it should only explain parts of an event's cause.
The question I’m about to ask is very simplistic and probably falls into the trap of black and white thinking when it comes to neurological science, especially considering the complex variabilities of each person, at roughly what age range does the child brain morph into an adult brain? Or rather at what “average” age range estimate does the maturation of the adolescent brain start and finish?
@@SxVaNm345 it does not really finish or start morphing at any one point, the brain is constantly developing. There may be general guidelines for when certain stages are expected to be developed, but the normal range can be anywhere from 17-25 which is too broad to judge people. Even after becoming an adult ability is not implied, only that development has finished. An adult could very well have a less functional/powerful prefrontal cortex than a child that is not fully developed, it is just less likely. Crimes often occur where the ability to stop impulses or make moral judgements is weakest. The moral compass that is developed in people depends in the individuals own way of understanding right/wrong. The impulses are unable to be excused by a developmental period.
People are rehabilitated for things that are harmful to society, developed or not, they should be proven as stable citizens.
Neurodivergent from birth here. Had a car accident at age 38 and experienced a pretty significant loss of the skills my autistic brain had arleady adapted for me :/
The Mismeasure of Man by Stephen Jay Gould gives a really detailed history of this topic. I never heard this 25 number in my coursework, only that the PFC is considered mature around 18-20 yrs old. I think 25 comes from a researcher who was tasked with recommending the appropriate legal age for alcohol consumption but I doubt he based that recommendation on brain data alone.
I usually don’t care for video essays but I love this one and will be sharing it. Thanks so much!
EDIT: Your McMindfulness video was also brilliant and I’ve been enjoying Ron Purser’s The Mindful Cranks podcast
That book is brilliant. I learned so much from it!
The pre frontal thing is... something that could be used for good. To engender empathy.
That it isn't used for that purpose reflects an issue with the reason it is prepetuated as a talking point.
Namely to essentially and dismiss certain people.
LOVE this. the brain never stops growing and the idea that it does is dangerous to long term mental health, i think. if you’re of the mindset that you’re done at a certain point, why try? what more can be done? if you’re of the mindset that, no matter your age, you will always continue to learn and grow, you’ll be exercising those brain cells like you need to exercise the rest of your body. the brain isn’t a muscle, but i think treating it as one in the sense that it should be used for problem solving, critical thinking, and learning new skills and concepts, will help keep us all healthier. i ain’t a doctor, but i’ve read plenty and have my own anecdotal experiences to draw from. love the video. :)
I agree, but there are still age related neurological factors. For example, older people have to make a conscious effort to stay sharp to avoid age related cognitive impairment. Young people's brains are still developing and should be aware they might be susceptible to naivete, impulsivity etc.
@@cat_city2009 yep, that goes with what i was saying.
My problem with normalizing the responsibility of people up to the age of 25 has more to do with internalizing misogyny than validating pseudo science in any way. We still hear a lot justification about men not being held accountable for any action, especially in this age range and arguing that women from an early age "know very well what they are doing." At the age of 16 I normalized a lot of this sexist view, I put myself in abusive dynamics with other men because I thought I knew what I wanted, because of my gender more than my age. Time really helped me realize ways to protect myself and not need protection from other women who had already suffered from what I did too. Protection is a hard thing to debate because it really shouldn't be something authoritatively imposed. My fear is that it will further justify the sexual abuse that young people suffer, especially people who are not cis men, even though I fully agree on individual autonomy.
Yes! Thank you. Predators will just use this as yet another talking point.
@@kr3642 "Boys will be boys", "men are wired like that", they say.
I do think there's a difference between 16 year olds and 19 year olds in this regard. At some point you do need to give people, including young women, responsibility, but that doesn't mean we have to say "oh everyone under 18 can do everything an adult can."
@@kr3642 This talking point doesn't work for predators as we're all talking about 18+ year old adults here. If anything, social awareness and helping remind young adults that they DO have autonomy and CAN make good decisions, also informing them of the potential (not mandatory) caveats of dating someone significantly older, is going to be far more helpful than trying to keep all adults 18-24 away from anyone over 25. Teaching teens what healthy dating practices look like on a large scale would help adults of all ages. Predators only have power when they're allowed to slink around in the dark.
Struggles to know left from wrong.
You definitely got that one right.
The one thing our brains cannot yet fully understand is itself
Really good video. I studied Phineas Gage in college and his case is really fascinating.
As a trans guy, I really appreciate you calling out the transphobia that this leads to. It's funny that no one ever questions a cis kid's gender identity because it was "formed before the PFC was finished developing".
People don't even realize how much we still don't know about the brain and how it works. They like to think that "modern science" has answered all the questions and anyone with a MD can tell them all they need to know about their health.
I didn't read your comment but bon clay is peak
@@brightsoull yes bon clay was goat
We appreciate your content. They contain the most intellectual topics that we need to more about in depth.
This video developed my prefrontal cortex
If you're at all self critical and introspective you will see a retrospective difference between your youth and your middle age. There is an even bigger difference between the self you recall before and after having children, with each child producing a sea change in your experience of your own life. There is a desire in anyone who feels regret or remorse for psst mistakes to absolve themselves with some truism about biology that make it okay that they lacked wisdom, but that frame of reference is always moving forward in time. Compassion allows you to see it that way and a lack thereof causes you to weaponize it and turn it outward.
Even if the brain finished development at a specific age, its a long progression, not a sudden state change. From toddlerhood the adults in your life should be slowly increasing your responsibility and privileges as you demonstrate the ability to handle them. It starts with picking up your toys and multiple choice outfits, and escalates to picking your career and personal risk tolerance. You don't need to be fully baked to have some responsibility and rights. But the younger folks do need grace and guidance.
Elliot, I am an advocate for grooming victims and girls who have been sexually exploited, either on a small scale or within major companies in the industry. My focus is primarily towards teenage girls, (13-19) and a lot of predators we encounter use the whole “brain developing earlier” as a justification for their behavior, or “its legal so its fair game” in reference to either 18 as the legal age of adulthood, or ~13+ as the age of consent. I used to use the “brain finishes developing at least in early 20s” argument, but now that I know that the brain can finish developing as early as 17, and I believe in science, I feel disheartened. I’ve worked with former SWers who were scouted at 17 by small agencies, and grooming victims who were under 18 but above the age of consent. I’ve been helping out and advocating for older teenage girls, and I’ve seen predators use this science as a way to defend their personal behaviors, age of consent, and exploitation w/in the SW industry, as well as victims blaming themselves w/ this knowledge. At first I thought it was just predators stretching the truth, but now that I know that this is true, I’m not sure how to continue to advocate for social support and legal change.
Even if the brain has finished developing it doesn't mean that people have created neuropathways for solid reasoning and critical thinking skills. You don't just stop mentally growing when your brain is done developing. The brain may become more rigid as we age but that doesn't mean we can't learn new things (people get degrees in their 50s). I'd say the best way to help is through promoting better education on the topic so girls are aware of the situations that can arise and are better equipped to deal with them. I think people tend to make more mistakes when they lack knowledge.
Well, tbh, while a 17 year old's brain might be finished developing, the kind of experience they have still pales compared to an older predator. You're finishing one puberty and entering a more psychological puberty. I think the topic of the development of the prefrontal cortex is nuanced, but 25 is a good maximum to make sure everything is "well baked" lol.
Plus, maturation should be seen on a sliding scale. Some teens are more naturally independent than others. But are they suddenly more "adult" than those more childish teens? No, they're just mature *for their age group*, but they're suddenly not as mature as a 25 year old or a 35 year old.
Yea I was curious about this when i saw this video cuz I've seen groomers argue it a lot (not saying Elliot is advocating for that with this video though, 13:08 he says big age gaps are probelmatic and can be shown as bad without the misinformed science, im just concerned as you are since I've seen someone argue it before )
I would probably shift my focus more toward power imbalances than the exact ages of the victims. It doesn't really matter if your brain is fully baked if you're being pressured by someone with more resources and social status than you and you don't have the education to understand what is happening, for example. People in their forties can still be lured into cults and completely victimized by them, and they're not automatically better off in that situation than someone in their twenties. You can be exploited at any age, and while I'm not an expert and am just spitballing here, focusing on that might be useful.
I think the discourse around consent and boundaries needs to change. Yes, maybe a girl's brain may fully develop at 18, but that says nothing about her life experience up until then and the obstacles she has to learn to navigate. It was only when I was 23, well over the legal age of consent, that I realised I was going through domestic abuse. That's because I was never taught what abuse is and had no idea how boundaries work. Doesn't matter that my brain probably fully developed. I needed education and support from older people to overcome my situation. A 34 year old has way more life experience than an 18 year old and hence there's a power imbalance. It's much easier for a 34 year old to emotionally manipulate an 18 year old, and if we agree there's a power imbalance, we agree that the 18 year old cannot _fully_ consent to something if she doesn't have the same level of power as the older guy.
Great video. The cultural implications this idea has on youth rights in the school, in the doctor's office, and in the home cannot be understated.
The 'maturity' refers to the myelination of gray matter in the prefrontal cortex/limbic system. This NEVER stops in anyone at any age. That's one thing the slate article got wrong. It just keeps pruning until you die, and the rate of this definitely does not slow down at 25.
From what I can tell the idea that the prefrontal cortex wiring is complete at 25 comes from Arain, M., et al. (2013) - "Maturation of the adolescent brain." However the paper seems to simply assert that this fact is well established while citing papers that make no such assertion.
"maturity" and "development" isn't entirely based on the prefrontal cortex though, it also includes the limbic system, and importantly, the integration (networking) of these and other systems or parts of the brain. If anything though, the many references to phrenology vs personality vs cognition vs "ability" is exactly why there's a separation between neuroscience and psychology as specializations, and within those, further specializations such as personality, cognition, language, perception & processing for example. There's no static age given for "fully developed" in practice, only as an over generalization, but rather a range spanning approx a decade and like you mentioned, full of variables. That's the biggest indicator to whether something passes the sniff test in psych: humans are complex creatures full of contradictions and variables, so if any universal answer is given that's supposed to apply to anyone in black and white terms, it's almost always oversimplified generic pop psych bs.
Your comment perfectly analysed why a one size fits all approach for a species as variable and complex as humans can never fully apply without there being much discrepancies involved.
Great video, thanks for pointing out these myths! It's so frustrating when people use these to justify discrimination. Similar to neurosexism and gender essentialism being used to discriminate against women or infantilise and excuse men.
As a student in health sciences who has done multiple internships in neuroscience labs, I am not an expert, but I do believe that the general public deeply misunderstands scientific data. When scientists say that the prefrontal cortex finishes its development and is involved in most aspects of higher level cognition (inhibition, thought, execution..) it really doesn’t mean that you are unable to live before 25. Your brain parts don’t work in isolation, you brain is still very well functioning before 25. As an aspiring researcher it is very frustrating to see how a lot of people just choose to interpret science in a way that only serves their agenda to dismiss or defend poor behaviour
Fantastic video, this is a really important topic and I really appreciated your thoughts on it. I think it’s odd that people take the idea that adolescents may be more likely to act rashly when making quick decisions and use that to argue that they are incapable of making sound decisions in general. Look at something like voting - is voting a certain way typically a spur of the moment decision? No, in the U.S. you have to register, and you have to go to a polling place and often wait in line and go through the whole process of voting for often many different offices, which takes preparation. It’s not something people are likely to go into with zero planning, making an on the spot decision. Young people are completely capable of thinking things out and making thoughtful decisions; it is only in split second decisions specifically where they may be less likely to consider or fully understand consequences than older people. So why do we discount the thought out decisions and work of young people?
Yes, young people are more likely to get in car accidents and shoot people because those actions are often based in rapid, in-the-moment decisions. Voting, activism, and even entering a longterm relationship are not. They’re things you plan for and think out and do over time. Young people also need to be held to account when they do make harmful decisions, because otherwise how will they ultimately learn to consider and understand consequences? It reminds me of the “boys will be boys” message - you’re literally teaching people that you expect them to misbehave. That’s gonna make them more likely to misbehave.
We need to look at issues on a case by case basis and stop oversimplifying, because we’re getting a lot of things about young people wrong, and in ways that have extreme consequences.
Sure wasn’t the original, but the first time I heard this idea get popular was in relation to fanfiction shipping discourse. Y’know, so people could call each other child abusers and groomers over shipping the wrong fictional pair of adults, totally nothing to be concerned with.
All seriousness, “25 year old teenager” rang those same awful alarm bells
This is a terrifying new thing i'm only hearing about now. But i'm only half way through the video, and i'd like to give my little input. My conclusions are purely based on my anecdotal experience, but when it comes to specifically the number 25 i think it is two things. 1. is the afformentioned pretty number thing, we love when things neatly fit into things and 2. it's around this age where typically you're finally figuring stuff out. I'm turning 25 this year exactly, and i'm living on my own with my boyfriend for a long long time, and we both have went through such radical changes of personality and for the better. So many new responsibilities, a lot of new relizations and new things to discover, you feel like you've entered a whole new chapter of your life. So of course people will jump to this as being "Aha, now i have matured, my brain has finished up" and they attribute their new found maturity to factoid non-science that makes their "i'm so smart" feelings get tickled.
22:54 "obvious, simple, natural rules" cannot exist because natural things do not follow, let alone are influenced by, mankind's beliefs of what is "simple" and "obvious."
If anything, "natural" is replacing as a more acceptable work for "normal," when these words are so very different by meaning;
rules in general, let alone these ones, aren't "natural," but are manmade expectations of reality which can become very unnecessarily damaging,
Especially to those with natural characteristics that lie outside the norm.
Just to bring my two cents, even in the Bible it is said that you should never let anyone look down on you because of your youth. I believe that people mature at a different times in their lives. I don't believe it has to do with your brain. Never understood this argument.
i think the prefrontal cortex discourse is so popular because it's reassuring to allow ourselves rest from the constant pressure of society. we are expected to meet outdated and unachievable standards, struggle to make ends meet and can't really see a future for ourselves, so being freed from responsibility for a few more years can really be a huge relief
to quote mitski mom am i still young ? can i dream for a few months more ?
TLDR: it’s not about maturity and brain cooking. It’s about the ability to learn new tricks!
The DR that introduced me to the core of this idea explained that around 26, not 25, the brain slows down on the ability to CREATE new paths in the brain, mostly with learning new skills and habits. Basically, after 26, we naturally will grow more likely to follow the same pattern as we already know.
The topic was my diagnosis, the question was “can I reverse this?” He said yes but I have till about 28-30 before my disorders are fully set and stone and I will be more reluctant to “cure” any disorders out of pure comfort and acceptance. He said it’s a win win unless the disorders get worse with time, and that I have a long time to make sure they do not settle into something bad. Hope someone can back this information up a little ❤❤❤
Thanks! TLDRs should be mandatory for videos. Anyways, how are you doing?
Conflation by people that are not educated about the subjects they bring up is not a robust source of information. Nor is an anecdotal incident. Neurologists do have very robust research into cognitive function and the role of the prefrontal cortex in executive functioning.
Please correct me if I’m wrong, I try to become more knowledgeable. To answer your question at the end of the video, I think, at least from personal experience, a lot of people like to use the “25-year old brain” argument was to argue against people who thought that if someone was of legal age of consent, they were “fair game”. The obsession with legality and age (ex. “It’s legal in X” “They’re 18 so it’s okay”) is quite popular, even with really old people dating barely-legal people (which is a nuanced topic all in itself). I believe that people used the prefrontal cortex (despite it being a false argument which could lead to disempowerment of young people and ableism) to argue against the belief that being attracted to young people - when you are much, much older - was okay just because they were of legal age of consent. This video was very educational for me, as I had not thought that this argument could lead to taking away autonomy from young people, even though they should have said autonomy, and should not be infantilized as they can make good decisions even if they’re not quite as old. Thank you for making this video.
I heavily apologize if I had said something ignorant. If I have, please tell me.
I'm a year late but unpopular opinion. I don't think there is anything wrong with a much older adult dating another adult of any age. There is nothing inherently wrong with it. Do I find it confusing and isolating as to why anyone would want to date someone with zero of the same core memories? Sure. There is nothing wrong or unnatural about being attracted to young adults, older adults don't simply gain attracted to old features, unless they're married to them and have had years to be in love. I promise you when you're a 60 year old you will definitely spot a 24 year old that you find attractive, either someone that reminds you of a crush from your younger years as is often the case, or just the natural human reaction of being attracted to attractive adults! Old people tend to forget how much older they look to young people, they remember their own faces from their 20s and 30s. I don't see how there could be anything wrong with an older man or woman making a genuine commitment to someone on their early 20s to love and honor them being inherently negative, unless they're actively trying to take advantage of them, which would be bad in a relationship of any age gap. The same way a 19 year old trying to quickly marry an 75 year old with dementia for his wealth would be inherently bad.
hella ageist arguement. it is holding youth back to say we cannot think for ourselves and need an "elder" in-charge.
There is neurodevelopment related to age though. It's not just brain development, but life experience. Even someone whose faculties are more developed than the average for their age is still lacking in life experience.
Although I do think you have a point that older people are often unambitious and set in their ways and unwilling to accept that younger people can be right about things.
@@cat_city2009Experience is not knowledge. It's experience. A rock can experience movement,damage,heat,cold and still it knows nothing of these things.
Further more, just as rote repetition does not lead to improvement in a skill ,merely living does not lead to wisdom. And different people can get better at the same thing in the same amount of time faster. Because they reflected better,have better learning methods,are simply more talented,etc.
Fact is,you're not wiser because you're old. Not even fkn close. The more old people think they know because they're old,the less wise,the more ignorant they really are.
I once knew a stupid old woman who got scammed by contract workers multiple times because she didn't bother to check references and thought her "LiFe ExPeRiEnce" meant she knew the first thing of home repair.
She didn't. She just lost time and money.
Also,specific experience matters.
I was once 10 years old and my teacher 37.and yet she defered to use when it came to navigating the city in a field trip one day. Because we knew the city better than her,because we lived there our whole lives. It does not matter if she has more "life experience" this nebuloud,meaningless term. What specific life experiences are we talking about here?
great video! I've heard about Phineas Gage before but never with such context or in so much detail. You are a gifted communicator and I love videos like these that educate us about important stuff like this.
@24:44 that professor's ideas about "emerging adulthood" is kind of weird to me. like yes, cultural changes are important but i dont think that means there's a new stage in life. i think what he says is "emerging adulthood" is simply just adulthood. every adult of every generation has had to figure out how to survive in America and that often means pursuing education, jobs, marriage and having children. just because one generation (ie. Gen Z) is using different tools to face their current social and political landscape doesn't mean that they're less adult than other generations (ie. boomers, Gen X, etc.). i think to say that younger generations' adulthood phase is an emerging one is to insinuate that adulthood is equated to having a job, house, married and kids. i think the case he is making also implies that every 20-something should strive to have those things if they want to be an adult. but not everyone wants a certain type of job or several college degrees or even a house. some people's adulthood will involve those things but some may involve becoming a digital nomad or caring for pets instead of children or only going to technical school or not going to college at all.
just because younger generations don't marry or get a job or have kids as soon as other generations, doesn't mean they are less "adult" at 18 or 21 or 25. i think this way of thinking makes it easy to invalidate young people's experiences and overestimate how "adult" older generations were when they were in their late teens to late 20s. my opinion is that older generations just had easier access to things that made people outwardly appear "adult". someone can be 23 and be married and have a house and a stable career and kids and still have the emotional maturity that they had at 16. physical maturation does not equal emotional maturation. physical maturation just provides the opportunities to emotionally mature, not guarantee it.
i will turn 25 this month! and i have had my first full-time job for almost two years. i do not have a house, a spouse or children. and if i were to have those things one day, i would never look at my peers who don't have those things as being "less adult" and me as being the "real adult". i think older people need to be more careful about how they view younger people. it's disempowering to say that we haven't arrived at adulthood because we are not behaving exactly as older generations did. i think it also adds to the common worry that 20-somethings already have about being "behind" in life. i think that article sheds some light on how older generations sometimes underestimate how much younger generations have gone through and matured through because they are judging us by this arbitrary scale of milestones. there are other adult achievements in life.
The idea of emerging adulthood isn’t that a life stage was invented, but that our society is now structured in a way that allows for us to take a longer-range view of the maturation process and understand the differences that we didn’t have the luxury of acknowledging before a certain point in (Western) history. There have always been teenagers, but for a long time our lifespan was so short and families had to be so much larger (on average) that you had to really get cracking with that whole “getting married and having children” thing almost as soon as you were physically capable. Once that changed, we could give kids more time to grow into themselves before they had to start making those decisions. Likewise, I think right now we have the time and space to understand that people over the age of 18 are still changing and growing in important ways, and to understand them a bit more fluidly than we used to. Hopefully we eventually end up in a place where we understand that ALL human beings are growing and changing, and that people who stay the same from 25 onwards are the exception rather than the rule.
Ill remember this and question common popular beliefs i hold by looking for their real world history
Daamn, another banger content choice. Can't wait
“..powerlessness of youth” really stuck with me. I’m a neurospicy woman and am constantly treated as younger than I am. It makes me feel more powerless.
How much of Gage's experience can be explained as PTSD? While Im sure it would have some effect, whats missing is the plasticity of the brain. The brain *isn't* compartmentalized, at least not as many people see it. While the brain *usually* develops in a specific way, damage to specific regions of the brain eventually leads to the damaged function being taken on by a different part of the brain.
I think this myth is part of a broader culture of scientism. Science is concerned with establishing models of reality, which are not absolute truth but may coexist with a variety of other understandings. It also takes a long time to develop and validate these models, largely because models are validated by a lack of contradicting findings. However, as you say, there is a tendency in society to use scientific findings to justify normative statements. This often involves presenting scientific models as objective truth and massively over-representing the weight of certain findings.
Beautifully said
The idea that the human being becomes this static, steadily functioning machine of the psyche at a certain age is so small-minded and assigns gross instrumentality to personhood. It was a concept that terrified me in childhood until I passed into adulthood and realized this whole line past which your psyche becomes statically defined simply doesn't exist.
Well considering that the average age of a typical shooter in the US is 30 year old, way pass the magical 25 years old "adult" brain thing I don't think rising the age is going to help that much.
First video I've seen from you and I'm hooked! Honestly well done 👍
Thank you for giving a nuanced view of neuroscience.
lmao every time you refer to brain development as "finish cooking". Great video!
This was a spread rumor before TikTok began
Prejudice of age is something people really need to think about more.
I feel like I read somewhere recently that things have been upped to about 30 years old now. So no decisions until at least 34, just to be safe.
Edit to fix autocorrect
Not only are your videos fascinating, your voice is very expressive and relaxing :)))
If individuals are old enough to be taxed, they're old enough to make their own decisions.
according to substance abuse councillors, my pre frontal cortex resembles a slice of swiss cheese
Omigawsh i used to be in a band 20ish years ago that had a song about Phineas P. Gage! Wow.
One correction. He did work again as a coach master / taxi in South America
I have seen this statistic used most frequently in the context of grooming and manipulation in relationships. I think that most would agree that the type of relationship decisions they make at 14-19 are much different than choices they would make at 25+. I don’t know if this is brain development or life experience or some intersection of the two. I mostly just want 30 year olds to stay away from teens. 😅🤷♀️
That's what I was thinking as well. This can be applied to giving adults more ability to actually groom children. I hope most people apply this to young adults and don't use it in a way that is harmful to how children and teens view predators.
Like you said brain age is hard to even pin down. 😂 Elliot it's so nice to hear nuance you've provided honestly!
In my country it's when car insurance gets significantly cheaper if the persons insured are older than
Oof, thank you for this vid. I straight up didn't catch on the the underpinnings of the developed by 25 ice berge. And ill admit Ive been using to hold off on trying out alcoholic drinks and beverages until ny brain was finished "developing" and Ain't know that there's been such a twisted conviction behind the idea. Im still going wait out a bit on drinking though, my brain's atypical btw, I just don't want to damage my brain with alcohol.
Well, i guess i get to rethink the process for a bit then.
I read some research article that said the prefrontal cortext and other parts of the brain still develops til you hit your 40s mostly from what i gathered it's still pruning getting rid of stuff you don't need and strengthing areas you do use after that it stabilizes and changes very little so people in their 30s by this logic are also not ready to make life altering decisions which honestly sounds ridiculous
I think at some point we just got to let people make decisions and mistakes instead of waiting for their brain to be fully at its peak because if we wait til 40s no one is going to get anything done
welp, now my sister cant use this as an excuse for why she bullied me growing up "my pre frontal cortex wasn't developed yet 🤪" girl i think you have greater problems than that, lmao
There likely was some type of abuse/dysfunction in your family. Otherwise your sister wouldn't get away with acting that way. She probably learned from the only people she knew. Once she's an adult however, it's on her to become a better person and unlearn those behaviors that were ingrained in her brain.
I was verified on a popular video platform at 14/15. I still have my account though in 2020 all of my content got wiped. I also corrected my birthday and still have the verification badge (im not saying what website). I certainly believe the intellect to communicate their boundaries and what they are after, distinguish who and how much to trust, when to respect/yield AND has the capacity to balance confidence and comfort with trust and respect is what I am looking for, and the amount of exposure to the facts (knowledge) about the experience is more important than the amount of experience (wisdom) the person already has so long as there is sufficient wisdom in terms of the way actions and intentions play out even through witnessing. Again the amount of wisdom intrinsically means there is less knowledge on the overstanding part but the overstanding comes after the under and innerstanding NATURALLY. So exposure to the experience is the only way to grow the knowledge with the wisdom at a certain point, and THAT is the part where self control and things like that play in. But there are 40 year olds who dont care who they hurt just the same number if not that number and a third of it teenagers. Likewise there are so many empathetic individuals on the planet and humans are not the only one to form bonds where we sacrifice our self for others and or we trust. We are not the only animal who does wrong nor are we the only animal that does justice. Let's talk beestingality while we're at it, since we like to sprinkle the amount of things we have already been exposed to into account for a topic where you only get exposed to more if the environment lets you? Thank you and if you read this you have a heart and soul in you
The exact limit for when we should allow full autonomy to people is unclear but not having a good means of delineation between mature and immature isn't an excuse to assume everyone mature. That's not an argument I see anybody making but I'm sure that quietly there are some MAPs (I'm just using that term because it might be less likely for TH-cam to flag.) that want to justify their identity with this new narrative. So. The prefrontal cortex develops fully anywhere from age 17 to 28, brain maturity indexes can falsely flag children as young as 8 as more mature than some adults, and some people develop smaller prefrontal cortexes than others and go on to lead fulfilling lives. What's to say our current narrative about the brain being the root of intelligence and wisdom isn't the full story the way people of old thought of souls and hearts? What if there's other parts of the brain that are more currently associated with the body? The stomach sends all kinds of signals to the brain... what's the difference between that and being an organ that hosts neurotransmitters? Same can go for skin, blood vessels, thyroid glands, you name it. What if the entire body is the brain? The body is certainly not finished developing when one is small... but we need to be careful to not be Ableist to dwarves. Intelligence is environmental adaptive advantage.
If Jotaro from stardust crusaders was a real guy I think quite a lot of people would hate his guts. But he would deem that to be but a petty controversy in his conquest to defeat Dio.
I hate how people pick and use this idea. Like okay you dont want trans kids to have medical access.....then ban nosejobs and whatnot. Equal playing field lads. You cant just pick and choice what your going to apply it to
While watching the video I felt a sense of guilt because I tend to infantilize myself a lot. I deny most of the responsibilities that I actually know that I'm capable of but I feel an overwhelming sense of the "this task will never gonna end" and sometimes its just about something perspectively lighter like school projects or my own projects about the fields I'm interested in or something much heavier like dismantling the patriarchy. If you, the viewer, also feel like this time to time I would like to share a quote, "Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it." - Rabbi Tarfon.
There is also some other point on the video I wish to talk about, towards the end about the media we consume (I'm also very baby in that field). My favourite show of all time is Sailor Moon and its gonna be my favourite till I die I think and its for children obviously but I still watch it whenever I feel like it. When Elliot said "the problem is not strictly the media that you consume its the messages that you internalize about yourself". Now a quick background about me, I used to think me an usagi had so much in common; we both crybabies, we both clumsy, we both eat a lot of sweets, we both blonde (I live in turkey so this was also a big deal at the time). So when I watched Usagi fight with evil people with so little fighting skills she had and get better at saving the world episode by episode, when I watched Usagi dont want to fight but she will do it anyway, when I watched Usagi try to befriend evil aliens because maybe all they needed was a good company and understanding, my 5 year old ass thought she was the role model and will live my life trying to make Usagi proud know that I'm saying the truth and only the truth. And like Elliot and Lily mentioned it is ok to go back to medias that make you feel warm inside but its important to acknowledge that all those medias that we consumed when we were little and got fascinated were such big deals because most of them had encouraging messages for children and youth, like yes you are young but check out this high school girl who saves human kind every episode, yes you are young but look at your nerdy neighbor who is hero and saves people because he got bitten by a spider (not everyone who has superpowers choose to be heroes). Most of the characters we loved when we were young were loved so dearly because the encouraged us. And it is fine to let yourself be a baby time to time, remind yourself who you looked up to when you were actually baby. Omg such a long comment I'm sorry, orkhon inscriptions revisited, why I wrote this much I do not know. But this video made me feel and think things and I wanted to share I guess so by by and have good time.
i also often struggle to know left from wrong :(
Nuero-engineering student here, the study that concluded that said brains develop until 25 was actually in regards to things like nuero plasticity and if brains continue to improve but the study didn't test if it actually stops at 25 that was just the age of the participants in which the study was concluded. Later studies about nuerodiverse folk confirm that the brain keep developing until you are 27~28.
I don't think we should infantalize people under the age of 25 however, I did observe that getting older does make the day to day struggle easier, it might be partially the continued brain development but it might simply be just be learning how to cope better. While I don't believe that all decisions should be deferred until your are 25 on the topic of having children I think it's recommended, something that effects more than just yourself, could be provided that you spend that time learning and preparing, things like gentle parenting and some practical psychology feel like a near necessity when dealing with children.
These studies dont exist lmao
Dude, I really like your videos !
i haven't watched the video yet but that quote in the thumbnail is absolutely golden
I can’t believe the ending with the microwave sound- currently microwaving my breakfastlunchdinner meal
I would agree with you but many young ppl dont wanna listen to what older ones have to say unless those older ppl have more or less the same way of thinking as themselves (cognitive bias?) You can be super polite and they will still run with their hands on ears saying "nanannaa I dont hear you", I can talk to my younger sister about these things bc she respects me in that way, we listen to each other so we know in what aspects we are here to teach each other through our differences, but if I tell someone on the internet (which is this generation's teacher) that they are smart for their age it will sound weird to them and will start coming up with conclusions about how I'm a proshipper for shipping something they see as some sort of non related siblings, just because they see everything they don't like as "the enemy", specially if they are non conventional adults (in their mind, an adult's place is working to maintain a family of their own, when the reality a lot of us don't even wanna get married, let alone have children). I see a lot of "we as adults should stop judging the young ones" but I dont see ppl admitting that those young ones tend to have crappy expectations and no respect for adults, and I dont mean it in an authority way, just basic common sense, basic politeness, basic "don't go wishing ppl to KYS", specially when they wish that to the same kind of ppl they claim to protect, they can't even be that much coherent in a lot of cases. I can be my sister's big sis, but where's these children's big sis?
Idk how to tell you this. But most older people are exactly like that or worse, and barely anybody is actually polite to younger people, in a way that isn't purely performative.
@@i.cs.z sucks to be you or live where you live.