According to psychologists, most of us aren’t fully-formed adults until 25

By law, Australians are considered ‘adults’ at 18 years old. When the clock strikes 12 on your 18th birthday, suddenly, you earn the right to drink, vote and make make your own life decisions. However, many young adults — present company included — aren’t fully cooked, emotionally-speaking, until their mid-twenties.

Recently, psychologists in the UK came to the conclusion that in the modern age, adulthood doesn’t begin until 25. To account for the fact that young adults are maturing later than their predecessors, the NHS has released a new directive that raises the age range for child psychologists from 0-18 to 0-25.

“The idea that suddenly at 18 you’re an adult just doesn’t quite ring true,” Laverne Antrobus, a child psychologist at London’s Tavistock Clinic, told the BBC. “My experience of young people is that they still need quite a considerable amount of support and help beyond that age.”

Recent developments in neuroscience back up these claims. “Neuroscience has made these massive advances where we now don’t think that things just stop at a certain age, that actually there’s evidence of brain development well into early twenties and that actually the time at which things stop is much later than we first thought,” Antrobus continued.

We welcome this news with open arms, mostly because it gives us an excuse to delay taking on any real responsibilities for as long as possible. Thank you, science!

FromElle Australia

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