Two trends that taste worse together re youth inclusion

[vcmw]

This morning I read that more commercial spaces (theme parks, malls) are banning attendees under 18 unless accompanied by adults, often defined as adults over 21. And my mind instantly put this together with the recent news that more states are weakening laws that protect children from exploitative labor.

And here is what that gets me: there is every chance that these malls and amusement parks want to hire people under 21 to work hours that they are forbidden from being in the same space as customers rather than employees. And that feels deeply creepy and unethical to me.

Making  it harder to exist in public threatens the lives of young people. It is vital that young people be able to take public transit to public places where they can spend time because often home is not a safe space. And being able to go somewhere else is part of what young people need to do to survive to adulthood. Also: many parents are younger than 21! Whether this is an ideal situation or not, under these commercial rules an 18 or 19 year old parent working full-time cannot take their child out to a movie or to a food court after work. That is horrible. My mom was not yet 21 when she had me, so I take this idea very personally. And many babysitters and older siblings are not 21, so of course they cannot bring children to events either in this scenario. A college or high school kid should be able to take their little sibling or cousin to the movies or buy them a shirt.

Rules like this are enforced more against poor people and people who aren’t white and that rich white kids are unlikely to get in serious trouble, so this feels like just another way to criminalize the kids who are already over-policed.

We live in a world where many people would rather have children work unsafe jobs for unsafe hours than allow them to go to the movies unaccompanied and that just really makes me mad in a way I don’t know how to process.

Comments

[mrissa]

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.

[vcmw]

I have been thinking about this all week, everything you said makes so much sense and also highlights trends that really worry me for the people affected.
My initial thoughts were very focused on the effects on people right now, but then as I reflected on your comment... there's so many kinds of loss going forward, right? Because if teens now lose those chances to learn in small increments, that affects them today and then also affects their ability as adults to draw on a knowledge of how to engage with situations and learn incrementally, which affects their ability to then offer that incremental support to people younger than them.

(Also I think your last thought on brain development sounds very very plausible and just sort of haunts me a bit.)