[Qiasfah]

Changing the legal age in this manner would have had serious negative effects on my life. Frankly this idea horrifies me.

Let me explain:

-A job I had in highschool enabled me to buy my own car and pay for insurance at 17 (added as a driver to my parents plan of course).

-I got my first credit card at 18 when I went to college, I have never carried a balance on it month to month (I'm now 26)

-The last time I lived with my parents was the summer after my freshmen year in college

-I graduated with an engineering degree at the age of 21

-I've had a steady fulfilling engineering job for 4.5 years since graduation

-I met my current wife freshmen year of college and we got married a year after graduation

-In 2014 I bought a house based purely of my personal credit history and employment status

-I have voted in every presidential election despite not being actively involved in politics

I'm sure I fall well outside the typical statistics for someone of my age, and I've been very lucky so far. Lots of my coworkers are in a similar situation as me, but there's also lots of people in the opposite situation.

Do you see why this horrifies me? Do you think these ideas would be positive for the young adults that have found success in life?

(Edited for line break formatting)

[Kluny]

Agreed, let's not infantilize the people who can function as adults just to coddle those who can't!

I moved out of my parents house at age 17. Although they are good parents, responsible people, and I love them, I was miserable and suicidal when I lived with them. I wasn't able to learn how to be happy and social until I moved out on my own, to a city where there were more people like me, and gained some independence. I've never had any debt or trouble paying bills, I've voted in every election as well. I got all my binge drinking out of my system when I was 19. If I had been forced to remain under my parents control until age 25 (just 2 years ago!) I would have been miserable, resentful and angry about it. It would definitely have destroyed my relationship with my parents.

[btkramer9]

I came here to say the exact same thing. I'm pretty much following the same timeline as you where I'm 23 at the moment. I couldn't wait to take on responsibilities of my own. Bills, rent, everything.

I've always wondered if these stats are partially affected by the 'legal age' itself. If it were changed would the age groups for risky drivers, high probability of crime and debt shift with it?

[davesque]

Shouldn't things like this be based on data and evidence instead of personal anecdotes?

[slavik81]

Nothing he said contradicts the data. What he showed was what you miss when you treat a distribution as if it were a single data point.

A younger person is more likely to be irresponsible than an older person, but that is just an average. There are many young people who are responsible, and to disregard the impact of such a policy would have on them would be disregarding important data.

More to the point, data doesn't make decisions. It gives you the ability to make positive statements, i.e. how the world is or what the result of some policy would be. Normative statements, i.e. how the world should be or what should the goal of our policy be, depend on your personal subjective values. Like, how much you value freedom vs prosperity vs safety, etc.

[davesque]

I feel like only the most naive statistician would make any assumptions based solely on averages so it's kind of meaningless to point that out. The comment just seemed reactionary to me and was mostly anecdotal.