Is it normal most age limits don’t make sense to me?
So I’m 20 now but I have a pretty vivid memory of the past ten years, and one thing that has been a point of contention for me in that time has been age limits. I was constantly told I was too young to be on certain websites like YouTube and Facebook, despite the most damaging content actually being the people being mean to me because of this, being treated like I shouldn’t know what certain dirty words mean (my older sister was surprised that I knew what a pussy was when I was eighteen. EIGHTEEN!)
But it doesn’t stop there. Nearly every place you have to be 16 to work there, even if the job is super fucking easy! And while I understand laws regarding driving and drinking and such, when I asked why I couldn’t drink when I was a kid, the only response I got was “because it’s illegal.” It wasn’t until years later that even learned about brain development, and I was convinced I had the whole world figured out at 10 years old, and everyone who thought I didn’t had some form of prejudice towards kids, which in my mind I likened to a persecuted minority, because no other explanation made sense to me.
I understand more now, but this was such a big deal to me that it still has an affect on me subconsciously. Even when I do things I’m the legal age for, I often think to myself “why wasn’t I able to do this before?”