Time speeds up A year represents less perceived time to someone in their 90s than it does to someone in their teens. You can see how time accelerates as we get older in this interactive visualization by Maximilian Keiner. Keiner argues that to human beings, the first 18 years of life seem just as long…
The “Lord of the Flies” argument The “Lord of the Flies” argument goes like this. Let’s say I want to lower the voting age, or give students more constitutional protections in school. Someone using the argument would reply, “Bad idea. That would undermine adult authority and lead to a ‘Lord of the Flies’ scenario.” However,…
In the 1980s, states decided to raise their drinking age to 21. Surprisingly, it wasn’t because of safety, public pressure, or even their own emotions. The main reason states raised the drinking age was because they risked losing 10% of their federal highway funds to the National Minimum Drinking Age Act (NMDAA). The Supreme Court…
I recently found a secondhand book called, The Manager’s Pocket Guide to Generation X, by Bruce Tulgan. The publication date was 1997 — not surprising, as the cover looked like a screenshot from one of the Health videos I watched in middle school. Much of the book deals with misconceptions about Gen X, which at that…
I recently got into an argument with a stranger who was trying to cut through my bike lock with a torch. This was in the middle of a crowd, and I knew he would be long gone if I waited for the police to show up. When I saw him at work, I figured that…
Until very recently, I thought neuroscience had put up barriers to youth rights that no argument could cross. If the teenage brain is physically incapable of handling freedoms, then that’s the end of the discussion. It doesn’t matter how much we argue about the Constitution and equality under the law—no amount of arguing can make…
In his book, Teen 2.0, psychologist Robert Epstein gives an account of the medical profession’s complicity in the movement to marginalize young people: “In short, my own colleagues have long played and continue to play a leading role in the maintenance of the artificial extension of childhood. They have pathologized socially induced behavior and…
*A few spoilers below, but not too bad In The Force Awakens, J.J. Abrams brings a volatile new villain to the screen: Kylo Ren, the latest apprentice of the Dark Side, plagued by fits of rage and the same family hang-ups faced by many characters in the Star Wars franchise. But unlike most other Star…
