16-year-old brain not ready to run B.C.

The first thing I thought of when I heard Liberal leadership candidate Mike de Jong saying we should give 16-year-olds the vote was me at 16.

 

I asked myself if I would want this province run by a bunch of 16-year-old me’s. The answer came swiftly — are you kidding?

 

Next I went to the Jacob help line. Jacob is my son and a frequent source for consultation on matters of youth, politics, philosophy and the human condition. He’s now 20, but he used to be 16.

 

When Jacob’s down time is interrupted by a phone call, he answers with something that sounds like “Uwwwafgh?”

 

“Could you have run British Columbia when you were 16?” I asked him.

 

When he’s interested in a subject, Jacob can rouse himself to a state of full consciousness with admirable rapidity.

 

“Probably not,” he said. “I don’t think I could do it today, either. I’m not sufficiently well informed.”

 

“A surprising assessment,” I replied, “since you’re one of the smartest people I know and a second-year political science major to boot. Let me ask the question another way. Would you have wanted to run the province at 16 if you’d been given the chance?”

 

“Maybe,” Jacob mused. “It might have been a lot more interesting than what I was doing at the time. Don’t forget I was in high school and coping with excessive boredom.”

 

“I did forget,” I admitted. “That was when the public education system was an adult conspiracy to suppress the hearts and minds of the young.”

 

“You say that in a goofy voice, but you can’t deny it because it’s obvious,” said Jacob.

 

I decided to try another tack. Some scientists contend that certain parts of the teenaged brain develop more slowly than others, accounting for the changes they go through as they mature.

 

The teenaged brain doesn’t work as a unit to make decisions. It doesn’t assess risks and consequences the same way an adult brain does. It sort of goes madly off in all directions.

 

This is good news, since it exonerates me for getting drunk and rolling my dad’s truck when I was a kid, plus a lot of other things for which I now have an excuse.

 

An article on the Discovery Health website puts it this way: “For comparison’s sake, think of the teenage brain as an entertainment center that hasn’t been fully hooked up. There are loose wires, so that the speaker system isn’t working with the DVD player, which in turn hasn’t been formatted to work with the television yet. And to top it all off, the remote control hasn’t even arrived.”

 

Uh, isn’t that a definition of B.C. politics?

 

Walrus magazine puts it another way: “Two different MRI studies indicate that teenagers do not process emotions the same way adults do. In fact, one study shows that the adolescent brain actually reads emotions through a different area of the brain.”

 

Much has been written about the self-centered teen years of temper tantrums, fast driving, strange sleep patterns, experimentation with drugs, and pre-occupation with sex. We’re now being told that teenaged priorities and choices aren’t just about growing up, but more specifically about the brain growing up.

 

Jacob is of a more traditional view. “I would be more inclined to attribute it to socialization and conditioning than to biological factors, and a natural need to explore boundaries,” he said of the way in which teens settle in to being human beings.

 

“After a certain point, as they experience more of life, they don’t have so much to prove.”

 

Mike de Jong must not know much about teenagers. Allowing 16-year-olds to vote is “a logical step,” he says.

 

Well, based on the science, it’s not logical at all. Yes, we let them drive, but that’s a topic for another day. I say, leave the politics to us adults — we’re doing a fine job on our own, aren’t we?

 

For the last word, I go back to Jacob. “It’s arbitrary,” he says of the ages at which we legally let people do things. “But people should at least have reached a certain maturity.”

 

mrothenburger@kamloopsnews.ca

 

http://www.armchairmayor.wordpress.com