The other thing I wonder about this is: knowing how to do stuff independently is not instantaneous. Feeling good about it, feeling safe and like you belong and like you know what you're doing, is not instantaneous. When you're 13 and you buy your own ticket ahead of a parent and sit a few rows ahead and then you're 14 and you go with a friend solo and then you have a later curfew the next year, you get to have baby steps. What happens when you get it all dumped on you at 21 and you panic? I think a lot of people won't have the understanding that the 21, 22, 25 year old in front of them has not had the practice they expect for someone that age, is still pretty new to this. So if they fumble, if they seem awkward...yeah.

And if that person shuts down and doesn't go out more, or if they're snappish and rude. Welp.

And I don't think that most parents are going to think, "If they'd been allowed to do this younger, we'd have done it in small increments," and increment it with them." I think it's just going to be a "thrown in the shark tank, go ahead and suffer" situation that will make things harder on everybody. Good decision-making comes with practice. That practice has to happen sometime.

I also really do wonder, given what we know about memory formation, whether some of the brain development happens because we are using particular regions, and whether we will see studies pushing "average full maturity" later as we allow people less freedom to make decisions.