Different ideals and cultures have different views as to when someone becomes an adult. In the United States, it’s legally 18. If you’re Jewish, you have a Bat Mitzvah or a Bar Mitzvah when you’re 12 or 13. If you’re Catholic, you become an adult in the church when you’re confirmed. If you’re Latina, you have a quinceañera when you turn 15 to become an adult. But when does someone really become an adult?

The answer is simple. You become an adult when you have the social and emotional maturity of one.

The word “adult” should refer to the development of someone’s mind rather than their age. I know plenty of people who are fully grown and still don’t know how to think about someone else’s feelings and way of thinking, and people who are not mature should not be considered an adult. 

Just because you’re 18 doesn’t mean you have the brain capacity to make life altering decisions. Studies have shown that the frontal lobe doesn’t even fully develop until someone is around 25 years old. This doesn’t mean you can’t be mature before this, but it does mean that most people will not be reliable when it comes to making decisions. 

There are many children and teenagers who are able to think from multiple perspectives, meanwhile adults can’t think of how their decisions might affect not only them, but the people they care about. 

For example, some people make political decisions based on one thing and one thing only, and they forget to take other aspects into account. They hear one thing that someone stands for that they agree with and they stop listening to the rest of the things they’re saying. 

There are also lots of adults who don’t understand what being a teenager is like, despite having been one. If a child talks to their parents about feeling stressed, some of these “adults” will say something along the lines of “You’re too young to be stressed” or “You don’t know what real stress is like yet”. Some grown people think that just because someone is younger than them, they are inferior. 

Teenagers may not endure the same kinds of stress as adults do but this doesn’t mean they “don’t know what real stress is like”. Teenagers struggle with things like self esteem, grades, extracurriculars, drama with friends, and so many other things that are overlooked by adults because they don’t experience a lot of it anymore. 

If someone can’t recognize that grown ups aren’t the only ones who struggle, they’re not an adult. If someone can’t respect other people’s viewpoints, they’re not an adult. If someone lacks empathy for people just because they’re different from them, they’re not an adult.