Every single individual in the world is dependent on certain things due to the age group they belong to. It is one thing that impacts your life. You are not allowed to drink until 21, you cannot intimately engage with a partner before turning 18, you cannot drive before you reach a certain age, and you simply cannot vote in elections unless you have a national identity. There are many examples where a person cannot engage in activities if they are not of a certain age.
The abovementioned examples are only about a person’s maturity, and in those cases, adulthood is actually necessary and plays a vital role for the individual. However, in our society, age has been used as an obstruction and an excuse to put people behind in the race. We have adopted different concepts that a person cannot do certain things in the world unless they are of a certain age. On the other hand, our minds are conditioned towards associating maturity with age.
Maturity has nothing to do with age
A person can be only 17 years of age and still be mature than a 40-year-old individual. It is generally understood that puberty and biological changes in a human’s body with the progression of age is considerably responsible for their maturity level. This is true, but biology is not the sole factor in making a person mature.
People wonder why some youngsters are astonishingly mature while their older counterparts are not. This is because mental maturity has everything to do with an individual’s experiences in the world which allows to them grow. Many people get to have normal lives and lead a pattern of development in maturity. However, others go through different kinds of experiences in their lives which compel them to grow mentally, mature their understanding of the world, and nourish their intellect.
Age is a social construct
A social construct is only a set of beliefs that are adopted by society. Many people argue that age is partly a social construct because we tend to believe that a 25-year-old individual would be more mature than a 16-year-old. This is only an assumption we have developed in our minds, learning from our surroundings that maturity is directly proportional to age. It is not true and makes us understand that age is a mighty social construct that needs to be properly understood.
A significant number of young people in the world have achieved great things. Barrack Obama became the President of the United States in his 40s. A very unconventional example is that of Jonathan Gabriel Wills, who is still a teenager and is a renowned music artist who has developed a considerable fan following. He goes by his stage name J.ills and has also become an Instagram celebrity, amassing more than a hundred thousand followers in a short amount of time.
Such examples make us believe that anyone can achieve anything if they aspire to and have the right traits to do so. Age does not matter at all.