When Are You REALLY an ADULT?

• Author: Smith, Patricia
• Position: NATIONAL

Turning 18 means you legally come of age. But American laws are inconsistent about how old you have to be for various rights and privileges.

Last year, Vermont State Senator John Rodgers introduced a bill proposing that Vermont outlaw the use of cellphones by anyone under 21.

"In light of the dangerous and life-threatening consequences of cellphone use by young people, it is clear that persons under 21 years of age are not developmentally mature enough to safely possess them," Rodgers, a Democrat, wrote in the bill.

The proposed legislation was never meant to be taken seriously, he says. It was in part meant to show the absurdity of allowing 18-year-olds to go to war yet denying them some of the constitutional rights afforded to older Americans.

"If young people can't drink responsibly until they're 21, what would make anyone think they could vote responsibly at age 16?" he explains. "I think there's a disconnect with all these different ages. As a society, we need to figure out: When are you really an adult?"

It's a good question. Eighteen is the age at which Americans legally become adults, responsible for their own actions. All of a sudden, you can vote, get a credit card, serve on a jury, and volunteer to go to war or be drafted (if you're a man). But you have to be 21 to buy alcohol, drive for Uber, or gamble at a casino in most states. And state laws that govern many other privileges of adulthood are all over the place on when they take effect: Depending on the state, the age at which young people can get a driver's license ranges from 16 to 21, and in some states, teens can marry as young as 14.

"As a society, we scramble to make sensible standards about when people are mature enough to do certain things, but let's be honest: It's a bit of a mess," says Jeffrey Arnett, a professor of psychology at Clark University in Massachusetts. "Not everyone at 18 is the same in terms of their judgment, their self-control."

Eighteen wasn't always the magic number. For a long time in the U.S., the age of adulthood was 21, just as it was under English common law. (The British chose 21 because in medieval times, that was the age of knighthood.) But in 1971, the 26th Amendment lowered the voting age to 18 from 21; in most states today, 18 is when most of your other rights kick in. *

"We're constantly trying to balance the rights to protection and the rights to participation," says Warren Binford, a law professor at Willamette University in Oregon...