Unpopular Opinion:

Saying someone is X years young is just a way of saying they are so old and decrepit you feel like you are insulting them by even uttering their age without trying to offset this by saying young instead of old.

The day people start referring to my age in this way is the day I know im an old geezer.

@freemo

In my view, age is nothing. Mindset and the value a person show to others matter.
value maybe not a good word here, I mean vision and attitude.

@codepuppy

@Sphinx

I tend to agree. Even when we talk about children I often find age is not relevant but it becomes relevant only because of how people treat kids.

A 100 years ago a 14 year old would be doing things a mature adult would do and would handle the responsibility just fine. But we treat our kids like they cant match an adult, so they mature much later than they otherwise would.

@codepuppy

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@freemo @Sphinx @codepuppy People mature under independence, adversity, exploration and free social interactions. When any of those is constrained, kids grow up more slowly.

Such as:
- Overplanned schedules
- Not facing problems alone with real consequences
- Being sheltered from bad feelings
- No unsupervised socializing with peers
- Lots of prechewed questions and answers (answer the homework with quotes from the textbook, or using a formula)
- Lack of exposure to open ended questions and exploration
- Not enough unmoderated hot debates
- Too few viewpoints
- Too many structured, fake activities (school, sports, games) and not enough real world ones (part time jobs, side hustles, leadership roles, buying used items, fixing things)

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