Most of the time when people say they have an unpopular opinion, it turns out it’s actually pretty popular.

Do you have some that’s really unpopular and most likely will get you downvoted?

  • Teal Dragon@lemdit.com
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    1 year ago

    Teenagers Are Adults

    (not sure this is an opinion. it’s biological fact. but peeps get VERY Angry when I write it)

    • Squirrel@thelemmy.club
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      1 year ago

      Physically yes (at least in late teens), mentally no. Their brains have not finished developing.

      From a less biological standpoint, they’re also still (typically) living with their parents and attending school, largely insulated from the real world.

      But it’s really the brain development that kills the argument. Any argument about whether a teenager is an adult is almost guaranteed to revolve more around the mental/emotional aspects of adulthood than the physical.

      Let’s stick to unpopular opinions, not incorrect facts.

      • Teal Dragon@lemdit.com
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        1 year ago

        “finished developing” is a stupid red herring. Our bodies and brains never stop changing. There is literally no point of “finished developing”

        Our brains are largest around age 13. We get adult brains along with our adult bodies during puberty. This is a well-known scientific fact.

        If anyone is “insulated from the real world” that was a choice society made. Was it the intentional infantilization of young adults? Keeping them locked out of adult society means they stay mentally children. We created this problem. We can remove it.

        • foo@programming.dev
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          1 year ago

          Parts of our brains don’t finish cooking until your early to mid twenties. By the time you are 18 19 you are mostly cooked but a 16 year old still has a lot of developing to go

          • Teal Dragon@lemdit.com
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            1 year ago

            Brains don’t “finish cooking”… they change continuously throughout our lives (just like our bodies do)

            and even if there was some magical point of “finish cooking” that wouldn’t make people below that age mentally incompetent.

            you are jumping thru tons of illogical hoops in order to justify demeaning and degrading young adults. Stop it.

            • thetreesaysbark@sh.itjust.works
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              1 year ago

              I think the point is that things like impulse control improve as we get older. This continues to evolve.

              ‘Mature impulse control’ would be when the majority of people have reached a level that is acceptable for them to behave ‘responsibly’.

              I’d argue there are teenagers that have already reached this level, and that there are many 30 year olds left to reach the level, but a best-fit age needs to be decided upon to avoid many with low impulse control being given too much responsibility.

              I think I see your point, but I do feel there are aspects that stop this one from being true.

              • Teal Dragon@lemdit.com
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                1 year ago

                Never before in human history have teenagers been as intensely infantilized as they are in the USA right now.

                Look at pre-literate societies too.

                The idea that we are children until some time in our early twenties is brand new. Nobody ever considered such ridiculous bullshit until about 20 years ago. Now there are huge numbers of Americans thoroughly convinced of this obviously false, vile, bigoted dogma.

                • thetreesaysbark@sh.itjust.works
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                  1 year ago

                  Okay. Let’s calm down. You can make your argument without calling it emotional words like ‘bullshit’. Talking emotionally makes others less likely to listen to your point. Funnily enough it also makes you appear less mentally mature 😉

                  Just because it’s a new idea doesn’t mean it’s wrong.

                  I’d also wager that the 'point of maturity ’ is a little high in the US, but not that all teenagers are mature enough to be called ‘adults’.

                  • Teal Dragon@lemdit.com
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                    1 year ago

                    Do people really believe that 20 year olds are children and no one ever in the entire history of the world ever noticed this, and the only people who ever got this right are in the USA in the last 20 years?

                    That is just astoundingly ridiculous.

                  • Teal Dragon@lemdit.com
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                    1 year ago

                    If a child is raised by wolves do they ever become “mature”?

                    “maturity” is purely subjective. there is no way to measure it. what is perceived as mature varies a lot from culture to culture.

                    Nature makes us adults through a process called puberty. Society cannot change that. It is biological reality.

            • foo@programming.dev
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              1 year ago

              arguing semantics to win an argument must make you great at parties and nothing I said was illogical. Just because you feel you are right doesn’t automatically make other points illogical.

              Simply put your “constantly changing” is as much a hand wave over complex topics as my cooking metaphor and allows for significant development of cognition and decision making.

              frontal and parietal cortices aren’t developed until mid to late teens with maturation continuing for another decade. Maturation is an important part to consider because just because it’s developed doesn’t mean you are capable of using it effectively.

              The frontal lobe is generally where higher executive functions including emotional regulation, planning, reasoning and problem solving occur.

        • Live Your Lives@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          How does your brain being biggest at 13 prove adulthood? I think it would better prove the opposite: brains are biggest at that age because they need the space to restructure things.

    • wischi@programming.dev
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      1 year ago

      So a 13 year old person is an adult? I can see how that opinion is unpopular because it’s just wrong.

      • Teal Dragon@lemdit.com
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        1 year ago

        Many 13 year olds are still pubescent. None are children. Nature turns children into adults. There is lots of individual variation.
        What turns a kitten into an adult cat? Puberty. What turns a puppy into an adult dog? Puberty. What turns a child into an adult human? Puberty. This is not difficult.

          • Teal Dragon@lemdit.com
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            1 year ago

            That’s exactly how all of this works. It is in fact #BasicBiology

            You can do all the #ScienceDenial you like. Won’t change the facts.

            • Mr_Dr_Oink@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              I guess its not practical to define a 14 year old as an adult when most people dont feel like an adult until they are like 30 or something.

              People tend to use school and university vs jobs and mortgages for example as a barrier to adulthood.

              I think it makes more sense to go with what people believe in general rather than to bog ourselves down with technicalities.

              • Teal Dragon@lemdit.com
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                1 year ago

                There are clear obvious scientific facts at work here. They are not technicalities.

                How I feel does not make reality real. If I feel like a dog, I am still human.

                Nature makes us adults. The process is called puberty. There are several visible objective secondary sexual characteristics which make pretty damned clear who is where in the process.

                • Mrs_deWinter@feddit.de
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                  1 year ago

                  How I feel does not make reality real.

                  Nice Freudian slip you’ve got there. How you feel, indeed, does not make your reality real. You keep claiming it’s a scientific fact while rambling about something no professional in the field would ever agree on.

                  At one point you’ve learned about one aspect of measuring (purely physical) development - the tanner scale - and decided to forever discard everything else. Keep rest assured this is not how the world or science actually works.

                  • Teal Dragon@lemdit.com
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                    1 year ago

                    The Tanner Scale measures puberty.

                    Puberty is the line between childhood and adulthood.

                    It’s really that simple.

                    If you think there is some other better line, then present your case. Casting dopey aspersions on me just makes you look like a fool.

            • R0cket_M00se@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              Whenever people like you go this “its just biology/science!” route they always conveniently forget that the animals you’re comparing us to aren’t sapient and don’t require the time for mental development that humans do. a sixth month old dog might be physically and mentally an adult but human psychological development doesn’t end until about 23-25, our level of intelligence requires a longer incubation time.

              You pretend biology is on your side by ignoring psychology entirely.

              • thetreesaysbark@sh.itjust.works
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                1 year ago

                This and puberty takes time. It isn’t ‘puberty not started’ or ‘puberty done’. There’s also 'puberty on going ’ which takes a long time in most mammals.

              • Teal Dragon@lemdit.com
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                1 year ago

                re: “human psychological development doesn’t end until about 23-25”

                This is an urban myth. It has been thoroughly debunked.

                re: “our level of intelligence requires a longer incubation time”

                Your example was dogs. They reach adulthood in around 1 year. We take longer, yes, about 14 years.

                  • Teal Dragon@lemdit.com
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                    1 year ago

                    I want people to respect each other. and unwarranted infantilization is very damaging. Our teens are having a massive mental health crisis right now. They are depressed as hell and killing themselves at rates never before seen. The way we treat them like shit, tell them they’re idiots and will be for 10 more years contributes to this.

      • Teal Dragon@lemdit.com
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        1 year ago

        I wrote “Teenagers Are Adults” and you respond by moving the goalposts to make a strawman. I never wrote “All of the youngest teenagers are always adults” You made that up so you could knock it down.

        The vast majority of teenagers are adults. That’s just science. The median age of reaching Tanner 5, adulthood, is 14 now. So most of us are fully adult before our 15th birthdays.

        • wischi@programming.dev
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          1 year ago

          So now you are trying to use the Tanner scale to determine if somebody is an adult? There is no strawman here, you are writing those ridiculous comments yourself.

    • Misconduct@startrek.website
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      1 year ago

      That’s not unpopular that’s just gross unless you’re a teen yourself. Then it’s like whatever because of course you think you’re grown. There’s no acceptable reason for an adult wanting a teenager to be considered an adult.

    • wallmenis@lemmy.one
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      1 year ago

      They are not mature enough adults though…

      Edit: What I mean is that we should talk to them like they are adults so that adulthood sets in more smoothly. I do not think they should have the same rights as consent and stuff like that. They should learn about this stuff but not be able to do them and participate since they are not mature enough to make these descisions. For example, they can take sex ed classes but not consent to actual sex.

      • dianne@beehaw.org
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        1 year ago

        I mean I’m gonna be 40 in a couple of years and I am not a mature adult. I think maturity might be a lie we tell the young adults tbh.

      • Teal Dragon@lemdit.com
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        1 year ago

        Everybody has tons of opinions on what they are mature enough for or not mature enough for

        but as a matter of simple fact, they are adults.

        • wallmenis@lemmy.one
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          1 year ago

          I am scared as to how consent is being implied here… I don’t think they have the life experience and maturity to consent to sex and maybe drinking alcohol.

          • Teal Dragon@lemdit.com
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            1 year ago

            If you lock people out of adult society they gain no life experience.

            Strictly keeping youth out of bars because they have no “life experience” means they’ll never get the “life experience” you think they need to be considered adults and allowed into bars. It’s a system for maintaining child status permanently.

            • chemical_cutthroat@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              So, based on your post history, the age of consent is too high, teens are more mature than what society believes, and we should let children into bars? Bro. You are a pedo. You are trying to justify your bullshit. I will follow you. I will continue to call you on your bullshit. Everywhere you go on the fediverse, I will reveal your nature.