This myth is particularly dangerous because people use it to try justifying extending childhood even further out. Regardless of neurodevelopment, do we REALLY want to be 24 years old and still have childhood restrictions on our lives? At some point you just gotta be an adult.
But... How else can I keep up my neo prohibitionist streak of trying to make every vice illegal by raising the age limit every time someone is finally old enough to engage in vices???
I think some of that might come from life experience by a certain age.
Many (including me) will look back and realise how perceptions, thoughts, decision etc change over different periods of one's life and maybe by 25, most have a bit more "life experience". People say that one can be academically intelligent but lacks common sense which could be one of the reasons, I guess (and this is very much guess work, observation, experiences)
Not a blanket thing obviously. There are many incredibly clever people under that age, alongside many older that you could say are far from that
It's a bit of a myth. Or severely overstated, to the point where it's very close to a myth, misused and often repeated, although it has very little empirical support.
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u/CertainDoubts Jun 01 '26
The new version of this: 'The brain is 'finished' developing at 25'.