The whole adolescence thing is also quite a ridiculous social construct (it didn't exist in the 19th century). Young people (13-21 year olds) should be seen as

The whole adolescence thing is also quite a ridiculous social construct (it didn't exist in the 19th century). Young people (13-21 year olds) should be seen as adults in training. Instead they are given the role of adolescents, a role that they gladly take on. When you call someone an adolescent you set a very, very low bar. An adolescent doesn't want to grow, its pleasures are vain, its world secluded. The adolescent doesn't become an adult, since it is already "there" (the place that pop-culture glamorizes). Adolescence is thus seem as an end in itself. Now if we lived in world where people didn't get old, and bills didn't need to be paid, we could all be adolescents forever and maybe there would not be any problem (though I would object on aesthetic grounds). But the world being what it is, letting a young person live its youth as an "adolescent" and then forcing it to become an adult is a cruel thing. (And lets not forget all the kids for whom "adolescence" is far from pleasurable.)