
Trashing Teens (2007) - apsec112
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/articles/200703/trashing-teens
======
dcolkitt
I think one major reason that modern adolescents can be so moody, impulsive,
and irresponsible is widespread chronic sleep deprivation.

Adolescents naturally have very late-shifted chronotypes. I.e. compared to
older adults they tend to wake late in the day and stay up late at night. Yet
American high schools have ridiculously early start times. For example it's
not unusual for schools to start at dawn. Which means students taking the bus
may have to leave before dawn.

We have decades of research demonstrating the impact of sleep deprivation on
cognitive functioning, decision making judgement and emotional stability. It's
little wonder that a segment of society that we're forcing into chronic sleep
deprivation acts "immature".

We just don't recognize the problem because it's too easy for us old folks to
write off the symptoms as the "foibles of youth". Yet it's us old folks
pushing these torturous schedules onto teens, despite mountains of scientific
evidence saying otherwise.

~~~
watwut
I pretty much guarantee you that neither rural farm teens nor city factory
working teens in past centuries were allowed to sleep till 10. They had to
wake up when everyone woke up to work.

~~~
Ma8ee
And in the evening they were exhausted by physical labour. If they still
didn't feel like sleeping, they could read the a candle lit bible.

~~~
gowld
Being exhausted by labor probably helps falling asleep earlier.

~~~
Ma8ee
That was my point.

------
rsp1984
Paul Graham actually wrote about this in 2003:
[http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html)

 _Adults can 't avoid seeing that teenage kids are tormented. So why don't
they do something about it? Because they blame it on puberty. The reason kids
are so unhappy, adults tell themselves, is that monstrous new chemicals,
hormones, are now coursing through their bloodstream and messing up
everything. There's nothing wrong with the system; it's just inevitable that
kids will be miserable at that age._

I could not agree more. Adolescent education is completely and utterly broken
in most developed societies and is causing pain and misery on a vast scale,
but fixing it is a complete non-priority for those who could.

Greta, when you're done with climate change, can you fix schools please?

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Are you/pg defying the mood-altering effects of high hormone levels (or
perhaps it's a high rate of change of hormones?)?

Observing my own children there has been a clear point where
social/interpersonal interactions have become more fraught; and these "moody"
periods are relatively arbitrary, not depending on tiredness AFAICT.

Now, that's not too say tiredness is not also a factor in mood, but denying
the hormonal effect seems at odds with my personal observations, at least.

~~~
Nasrudith
It is denying the inevitability of it. I mean considering women to be
inevitably miserable and moody because of their menstrual cycle would be
rightfully called ignorant and misogynistic. The fact some women may suffer
crippling menstrual issues because hormones are a very real thing.

Why would the invalid hormoned as destiny expectations be assumed valid for
youth as well? View as a possible obstacle to overcome rather than destiny.

------
mmcgaha
My grand mother was born in 1894 and was tenth of eleven children. She spent
here early years on a farm helping with her younger brother. She attended
school until the 4th grade. At 11-years-old, she was working full time in a
cotton mill. At 14 she had her first child.

My grandmother and grandfather maintained a farm while both worked in the
mill. Mornings started at 4:30am six days a week.

Grandma had a picture with all of the young girls at the mill, and would
always point out a couple of the unmarried girls who were 16 in the picture
and say that they were old maids.

It is possible, maybe likely, that we have extended childhood too far, and I
am sure that given the right upbringing, my 11-year-old daughter could
function just as well as my grandmother, but I have not prepared my daughter
for that type of life. My daughter has never been required to start the day
with chores; she has never been responsible for others. If we are going to
change how we treat teens, we need to start a lot younger and change how we
raise children.

~~~
simonsarris
I plan to do this: Give my kids lots of responsibility from a very very early
age, starting with collecting small sticks to start the fire every morning (we
heat with a wood stove). By teenage years they should be able to make things
to sell or gift to others.

My wife currently nannies children and her "field notes" are just incredible.
Children _want_ to have responsibility. They want to have jobs. Not that I'm
suggesting they go into factory work, but there's no reason a 12 year old
can't learn to start perfecting something like a croissant.

Instead if young kids clamor for something to do, some parents do stuff like
help them setup a lemonade stand. This is hardly DOING something, its mostly
sitting there waiting for cars(???) to stop so they can sell sugar water. It
is already below their skill level and a waste when they could be learning
something more meaningful.

We have definitely extended childhood too far. We basically park child bodies
into little feedlots called schools, which seems generally to only be because
of a total lack of imagination on the part of adults. Children should be DOING
things.
[https://twitter.com/simonsarris/status/1192477007986221057](https://twitter.com/simonsarris/status/1192477007986221057)

~~~
WalterGR
> Children want to have responsibility.

This article made the rounds last year:

Families In A Maya Village In Mexico May Have The Secret To Getting Kids To Do
Chores - NPR

[https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2018/06/09/6169288...](https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2018/06/09/616928895/how-
to-get-your-kids-to-do-chores-without-resenting-it)

Discussion here on HN, with 382 points and 202 comments:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17280710](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17280710)

(Disclaimer: Having read neither, I cannot vouch for their contents.)

------
voldacar
Really interesting article! This quote was particularly insightful and
thought-provoking:

"Teens in America are in touch with their peers on average 65 hours a week,
compared to about four hours a week in preindustrial cultures. In this
country, teens learn virtually everything they know from other teens, who are
in turn highly influenced by certain aggressive industries. This makes no
sense. Teens should be learning from the people they are about to become."

~~~
onion2k
_Teens should be learning from the people they are about to become._

That's only true if the objective of learning is to maintain the status quo.
Given the older generations prepensity for ignoring serious problems (climate,
housing, etc) and their rampant materialism, I'm not sure teens should be
learning from them.

Also, figuring things out from first principles without all the received
wisdom of experience has value. You might make a bunch of mistakes and get
things very wrong sometimes, but that's OK. You can find things people missed
the first time around. That can be useful.

~~~
Mirioron
> _and their rampant materialism_

Is this really that bad? How well do you think teens understand the issue from
both sides? It's easy to be against materialism when you yourself don't have
to worry about bills and food. It's a lot harder when you have to make choices
in what you can and can't get because of your lack of resources.

Perhaps if teens understood money better there wouldn't be such a huge problem
with student loans. But there is, which indicates that they're not very good
at managing money.

Edit: this applies to teenagers of today. Perhaps if they are handed more
responsibility as they grew up they would be better at managing money?

~~~
ben_w
I cannot reconcile your words with my understanding of the world.

“Materialism” (as a social issue rather than a philosophical worldview) is bad
because it focuses on endless consumption of unnecessary things. Not food and
shelter, but designer sunglasses and pre-ripped jeans.

As for the student debt problem in the US and the UK, that’s because education
now costs as much as the deposit on a very nice house — never mind a starter
home! — whereas in the UK a generation ago it was free and two generations ago
the government paid you to attend. This education has been sold as “getting
you a good job” but then it turned out to be necessary for even for jobs that,
a generation ago, didn't need a degree. So we have young people starting the
same jobs three years later and in massive debt despite having followed the
advice of their elders which everyone concerned was expecting to give them a
career boost.

I got lucky. I picked software engineering because it seemed fun, but it
turned out to be the quickest route to one of the highest income professions.
If I’d been on a “normal” salary while burdened with the £36k of tuition fees
my niece can expect to pay, there’s a very real chance I would reach
retirement age without clearing that loan, and no amount of playing games with
myself about spending £0.50 a day on food or looking for the lowest rent room
and putting up with rats eating my bedsheets (real examples from university
life) would fix that.

------
stereolambda
One of the factors may be the desire for indoctrination, from many sides. As
long as you're legally a child, your time and attention is effectively someone
elses's property. The school system can have you schooled for n*10 hours a
week on whatever it considers objective truth. There is lots of political
tampering with this everywhere. Parents can (legally) control what media you
consume, what information you get and who you can interact with. It's partly
about the power to make young people what someone else wants them to be. (Not
that it usually works as expected.)

I'm not saying adolescents should not be educated (in fact, I think there is
lots of unrealized opportunity for society in public education), just that
this is a tasty quasi-political power that's hard to give up and tempting to
expand.

~~~
dangerface
True too much focus on what you should learn with no interest in teaching how
to learn.

I think it's very telling the intention behind the institution when you see
this.

------
esotericn
I vividly remember being frustrated as a teenager that I essentially lived my
life as a vassal until age 18 or so.

The school system felt utterly farcical. Like being trapped in a cage with a
bunch of idiots.

In adult life you can quit a job, leave a town, change yourself. As a teenager
your most expressive period is robbed from you.

~~~
ThrowawayR2
> _In adult life you can quit a job, leave a town, change yourself._

Only if you've got the wealth. Most adults are wage slaves chained to
grinding, unfulfilling jobs just to pay the bills and feed their families.
Childhood might not seem so bad to them.

~~~
esotericn
A 14 year old would have a hell of a time trying to 'set up' in a different
town at all.

That an adult might find it difficult, or potentially end up in a worse
situation, is besides the point.

And obviously I'm not talking about running away from a family.

------
friendlybus
Definition of adult depends on your values and culture. Some people staying
with parents taking care of family would be adult in east Asia, but not having
your own house and mortgage lacks maturity in the west. What it means to be an
adult in the west is up in the air at the moment. We don't have easy
institutional or cultural markers for what the American dream is or what
adulthood should be. The old institutional rites of passage through college
and graduation milestones is looking less attractive as the internet grows.
Marriage can be seen as uncertain.

The only thing I can suggest is the idea of picking up your own cross and
bearing it. Kid/job/mortgage has a lot of uncertainty built into it at the
moment.

------
aklemm
My pet theory on teens, and one I'm brainstorming for my own kids, is that
they don't have enough meaningful responsibility within their families or
communities. Somehow I want to find them work that is critical for the family
and let them be in charge of it.

Whether they are more competent than we assume is an interesting angle, but I
look back at my teens and feel like I was both competent enough for most work
but also utterly useless compared to what I am now.

Edit: I'd reform school to add in lots of responsibility for older kids to
teach and care for younger kids. Also perhaps get them helping with food
production in gardens, farms, grocers, restaurants. What other meaningful work
could we find for teens?

~~~
arandr0x
There is a French psychologist called Françoise Dolto who agrees with you, she
even write a book about it. She says a great deal of the problems with
adolescents today (where today is in the past century, this is not a recent
book) is that they are not needed. So, exactly like adults who are not needed
and left to their own devices, they develop para-social hierarchies, and/or
turn to crime and develop mood problems.

Your teen can probably balance a checkbook and pay bills. Teens also
eventually come to a point where they're really interested in driving and, in
America, you can use that to make them run errands, take younger siblings to
school, and so on. Even a scooter works fine for a lot of that.

Also, to use an example from my real life, as a teen I just... stayed with the
other women and talked about their lives and offered emotional support, helped
smooth over relationships, that sort of thing. Yeah I wouldn't have been able
to negotiate someone's salary or something but most teens can tell Aunt Marie
that Aunt Alice wants her coffee machine back while eliding the "and thinks
you're ungrateful and live in a hovel" part. And I helped them with math too.

~~~
aklemm
I love it! Thanks for the Dolto tip.

------
noobermin
I remember reading sentiments like in the late 00's and early 10's and feeling
justified in feeling that I at that age was being infantilized by society and
that teenagers and people in their early twenties are more capable if they
were given just, as the article puts it, not just more _freedom_ but more
_responsibility_. Today though, more than 10 years later, it seems the
pendulum has continued to drift even further, with some people suggesting, as
the article hints, that adults aren't really adults until perhaps 30.

~~~
eitland
> teenagers and people in their early twenties are more capable if they were
> given just, as the article puts it, not just more freedom but more
> responsibility.

Agree. Although it probably should come gradually, a 15 y.o. probably
shouldn't be judged as hard as 25 y.o. or a 55 y.o.

I've read before that a theory is that choosing 18 years (or 21 or whatever it
is where you live) as the age of adulthood was done in a time when people were
actually held responsible for their actions after they were 15.

I also think I read that certain parts of the brain didn't develop until a
person start being held accountable for their actions.

I cannot find it at the moment so for what I and you know this is pure
speculation (unless anyone remember it or care to find it) but to me it
doesn't sound to unreasonable

~~~
Mirioron
> _in a time when people were actually held responsible for their actions
> after they were 15._

Interestingly enough, people are legally held criminally responsible at ages
of 14-16 in quite a few countries. But even in those countries they're often
treated as just kids with no say.

~~~
Nasrudith
Really the age of responsibility is transparently bullshit based upon whatever
is more convenient to the rulemakers and enforcers than any unified principles
- and occasionally lapses into Kafkaesque insanity.

------
Smithalicious
>In recent surveys I've found that American teens are subjected to more than
10 times as many restrictions as mainstream adults, twice as many restrictions
as active-duty U.S. Marines, and even twice as many as incarcerated felons.

What does this even mean? I don't feel as though "restrictions" are countable,
fungible things.

------
blablablerg
I think the artificial extension of childhood is caused by the rapid increase
in complexity of modern society, while our biological makeup is pretty much
the same as 10.000 years ago.

To hold an avarage job and participate in society as an informed citizen you
seem to need at least ~20 years of education in western economies.

We can't just go around by our instincts like animals any more without getting
in trouble, I think that is what caused the extension of childhood.

~~~
aklemm
That's intriguing enough that it might stick with me. Thanks!

------
misja
I'm sure that a lot is wrong with our current eduction system for teens and
that giving some amount of responsibility to teens would be good. But the
claim that adolescents are as good or even better than adults when it comes to
decision making or responsibility is just plain wrong and there is plenty of
physical evidence that disproves it.

When teens reach their adolescence, the functioning of the frontal lobe in the
brain is tuned down. The frontal lobe is what gives people self control; tune
it down and you become more impulsive, emotional and risk seeking. The frontal
lobe only returns to its normal mode when people reach their early twenties.

Source: e.g
[https://www.urmc.rochester.edu/encyclopedia/content.aspx?Con...](https://www.urmc.rochester.edu/encyclopedia/content.aspx?ContentTypeID=1&ContentID=3051)

~~~
olau
The source you cite does not seem credible to me. It starts out with this
statement which is obviously false:

"Good judgment isn’t something they can excel in, at least not yet."

~~~
chuckgreenman
Would you care to provide any evidence that a publication from the University
of Rochester medical center, reviewed by an MD and two RNs is not credible?

------
Animats
What do the younger readers think of this?

What got me is "30 is the new 20". That may be mostly economic, driven by
student loans keeping twentysomethings broke and the decline of middle class
job openings.

~~~
clarry
Loans did not keep me broke, but unemplyment did. I feel like I got a very
"late start" in life and I still haven't been able to shake off the feeling of
uncertainty regarding future, employment, money, etc. At least I got a middle
class wage now, but no property to speak of. It's long road from here on to
something like home ownership.

I'm more concerned for my little sister who's accumulating student loans.

------
watwut
The article makes many strong but dubious claims. Like, I am inclined to
believe that many teens and kids could handle more responsibility, but a lot
written in article just does not sound trustworthy. (The part where I disagree
is the part where author promotes early marriage, I dont think it is good idea
to marry as teen.)

Like:

> American teens are subjected to more than 10 times as many restrictions as
> mainstream adults, twice as many restrictions as active-duty U.S. Marines,
> and even twice as many as incarcerated felons.

> It's hard to keep a marriage together when there is constant conflict with
> teens.

Are conflicts with teens really cause of that many divorces?

> The factory system doesn't work in the modern world, because two years after
> graduation, whatever you learned is out of date.

That is highly exaggerated statement. I am pretty sure 2 years after you are
just find.

> Unfortunately, most people learn in those classrooms to hate education for
> the rest of their lives.

Is this actually true that over 50% of people hate school in America?

> young people are integrated into adult society as soon as they are capable,
> and there is no sign of teen turmoil

Is this result of actual study of teens in those societies? Or just reflection
of assumptions? Because from what I read about history, in European societies
where young people worked in the past, young people were still quick to join
revolutionary movements or just get drunk and fight it out in streets. Plus,
they often lived and work with families for economic reasons.

> Teens in America are in touch with their peers on average 65 hours a week,
> compared to about four hours a week in preindustrial cultures.

Were they really "in touch" with siblings and cousins only for 4 hours a week?

\-------------

Plus, the reason teens are not considered adults is not that their IQ would be
low. The reason is impulsivity and similar considerations.

~~~
normalnorm
> Plus, the reason teens are not considered adults is not that their IQ would
> be low. The reason is impulsivity and similar considerations.

Maybe what we call "impulsivity" is just an healthy reaction against absurd
constraints and monotony? We forget very easily that we are animals, and the
way we have been living for the last few centuries is radically different from
the way we were evolved to live.

Perhaps factory-like schooling is inherently painful, and what we call
"adulthood" is just learned helplessness...

~~~
watwut
1.) My life was way less monotonous when I was a teenager. The most monotonous
period started when I had children. You dont get more monotonous then that
currently. In school, at least you learn about something different every day
and can do different things during breaks or read or play games.

2.) Before factory like schooling, I guess we mean feudalism and traditional
farm households, teenagers were not free at all by any meaningful definition
of that word. No one was.

3.) How far exactly in history do you want to go? Because you really have to
go so far that we dont really know how people lived. But, it might involve
getting pregnant at 14 by a strong dude who decides restrictions placed on you
due to being stronger.

~~~
jtolmar
Medieval peasants (and serfs) had a lot of freedom with how to spend their day
to day. They had chores, and several weeks a year of grueling sun up to sun
down labor. But it's not usually harvest season or planting season, and they
had nearly half the year off. Working hours increased dramatically during the
industrial revolution.

~~~
watwut
Winter was not off. You still have to care about animals and you still have to
care about tools and you still have to cook and care about toddlers and
babies.

You still need to sew cloth, create shoes, create candles, feather-bed and
what not.

------
baud147258
> two years after graduation, whatever you learned is out of date

I don't get this point? Does algebra get outdated in two years? History?
Grammar? Big O notation? Design Patterns? Concrete pouring techniques? Basic
chemistry?

~~~
themaninthedark
There are people who memorize only what is required to pass a test and once
they do so, they think they have learnt the subject matter.

So you end up with someone who "knows" Big O because they memorized the
current algorithm and and what works best in each situation but if you present
them with a new algorithm, they will not be able to tell you if it is better
or not because they can't do the analysis.

There are alot of people who just want what is required to do their job now,
are not interested in how the tools they use work and resent it if you change
the tool or make it work differently.

~~~
baud147258
But that's not a failure of education

------
paulryanrogers
Didn't see a lot of citations in that a article. Still I'd agree that parents
may have too much authority over teens.

Growing up in a very religious household did some damage to me. But thankfully
the schools taught us to break out of group think, the scientific method, and
exposed us to a lot more viewpoints.

Though I doubt letting younger teens enter into long term contacts. Teens can
be impulsive and lack the experience to comprehend the consequences.

------
scottlocklin
One of the things which blew me away as a yoot; reading about Alfred Krupp,
who built a small family business into the Krupp empire ... starting at age
14.

For whatever reasons, no real english language Wiki entry (this is all there
is:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krupp#Alfred_Krupp](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krupp#Alfred_Krupp)),
but there are multiple books on his incredibly productive life. Makes any
modern entrepreneur look like a wantrepreneur. He did it as a teenager.

I don't think the PT article is exactly right, but history teaches us it is
_obviously true_ that teenagers are capable of much more than we ask of them
now. Alexander won his first battles at 16. Augustus was active in politics as
a teenager. Keeping kids cooped up playing video games and skateboarding is
just keeping competition caged in, rather than unleashing human fire on the
world.

------
rjkennedy98
I have to think that the cause of our overschooling is the fact that for the
most part there is nothing for teens (and now even young adults) to do. We
don't have jobs for the vast majority of young people. We don't even have
enough jobs for people over the age of 26 (even though we saw the unemployment
level is at record lows). If we put all these people in the work force it
would cause a huge economic and political crisis.

~~~
aklemm
Nearly 100% agree that teens having nothing meaningful to do is the problem,
but you're conclusion is scary. How about reforming school so that older kids
spend about 25% of their time teaching and caring for younger kids? I'd
probably start there.

~~~
Nasrudith
That still wouldn't work - to be frank that sounds like neglect on a massive
scale and wasting everyone's time in a paternalistic way. How would you like
it if the government decided to handle homelessness and the foster care by
assigning you an orphan and/or homeless stranger? Or being assigned after you
lost your job? Yeah I would think that would generate plenty of work - police
work.

There are twofold issues with it - one is the level of career education for
the demands and the lack of true entry level ladders - most jobs skilled up
and automated and two that existing areas which need labor aren't funded as
much as they should nor alternatives chosen.

~~~
aklemm
Schools already do it in small ways with older kids mentoring younger kids.
The concept of mixing ages is well-known and well-regraded, for the reasons
I’m suggesting.

Your objection is out of place considering there’s been no discussion of
details; certainly those need to be hammered out. Unfortunately, your comment
is baselessly dismissive and unhelpful.

------
otakucode
Prejudice based upon age is the last remaining socially acceptable form of
prejudice. Most articles about adolescents read exactly like opinions about
various races, women, etc in the past. The arguments are the same, and the
conclusions are the same. The lack of scientific evidence is, also, the same.
Repeatedly they observe some limitation and conclude, without any evidence at
all, that the limitation is not due to lack of education or socially-inflicted
lack of experience but endemic and unavoidable.

One of the most popular misunderstandings of neuroscience going around
recently is the "brain isn't fully developed until age 25" idea. This is often
parroted and repeated, often by otherwise quite knowledgeable people, without
any understanding of what brain development is, or how it occurs. The idea is
used to support notions of restriction and sheltering, which is totally at
odds with every understanding of how brain development actually occurs. The
brain develops in response to novel experience, and solely in response to
novel experience. Lack of novel experiences leads to lack of brain
development. When an infants visual cortex is immature and incapable of
stereoscopic vision, the exactly wrong course of action would be to cover one
eye. Doing so would prevent the brain from developing the ability to integrate
vision from both eyes into a coherent single image. The issue is even more
problematic when you look at what criteria is used to judge the brains
"immaturity" in the material supporting the "immature until 25" claim. What
they examine is neuroplasticity. They observe that neuroplasticity reduces
substantially after age 25. They interpret that as a sign that the brain is
'done' with it's primary development, but that's a bit of an arguable point.
It is just as likely, in my opinion, that neuroplasticity in a high state is
the desirable condition and that its reduction is a consequence of the end of
introduction of large quantities of new experiences due to most people
entering the working world and settling into a 'routine' life.

On a lighter note, just imagine if this perspective were to change, socially.
If in 10 or 20 years time prejudice against teens were viewed with as much
disgust as racism and sexism are now. Old tweets griping about teens being
surfaced and people being 'cancelled' over them, etc. It would be quite
different. But, there would probably be markedly less school shootings.

~~~
dragonwriter
> The issue is even more problematic when you look at what criteria is used to
> judge the brains "immaturity" in the material supporting the "immature until
> 25" claim. What they examine is neuroplasticity

No, it isn't neuroplasticity, it's capacity for executive function, which
reaches a basic level in early adolescence, but continues to develop through
adolescence and early adulthood, is at its peak from about the mid-20s to
early-30s, and regresses slightly thereafter back to a level similar to the
late teens by about the 70s.

Neuroplasticity is usually what people point to when claiming the young have
an advantage in learning or adapting to new environments, but not when talking
about teens not being ready to be trusted with the full responsibilities of
adults.

------
hamolton
Youth rights is something I wish liberals would get behind publicly. I know
nobody wants to make controversial statements supporting people that can't
vote, but at least teens control a decent portion of the online political
activity. Instead, we're watching a mass crackdown on teen vaping and college
drinking in fraternities. At least Bernie is willing to fight off people
trying to let employers pay teens less than minimum wage as they do in
Australia.

------
Balanceinfinity
We can't go back (and who would want to) - the challenge for a modern parent
is to give the kids as much rope as humanly possible. It's tough and can be
terrifying - when are they old enough to cross the big street two blocks from
the house or walk to school alone. I did those things at 7 (with my 9 year old
brother), but my daughter was around 11 when we got up the nerve to let her.
But the role of the parent should be constantly pushing the little birds
closer to the edge of the nest, even when the thought is unsettling.

------
nomorerul
One of the issues I see is that teens usually don't think about the future,
and that is bad if you think that they are the future... does this make sense?

~~~
wavefunction
Is short-term thinking a problem limited to teenagers? It seems even more
problematic in adults who wield the power and from what I've seen short-term
thinking is very prevalent at any age group in humans.

~~~
Nasrudith
Lets put it this way - we should probably be using the term long term thinker
instead of short term thinker from a compression standpoint

The ones getting shat on for taking student loans are long term thinkers
relatively speaking - and also illustrate that it doesn't always work out.

------
basicplus2
emerging science about brain development suggests that most people don't reach
full maturity until the age 25

[https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=141164...](https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=141164708)

