I shouldn't have said that teenagers are stupid, it's more that their brains are still developing.

I think you should indeed have said that, because it's clearly what you meant. People's brains continue to develop and change until they are into their 40s, that is a known biological fact. Do 40-something-year-olds make inherently better and more competent decisions than younger people do? Get heavily involved in politics, my friend, and study voting stats in particular, and this ageist prejudice of yours will be gone fast. Also, get on a help line and give advice on a regular basis to people who are approaching middle age, or simply hang with many of them socially, as I do. I interact with many people in that age group in those manners, and trust me, dude, they make the same foolish mistakes that adolescents routinely do, despite their "superior" brain development. The only difference is, when older people mess up, we blame the incompetence on the individual; in contrast, when younger people mess up, we (meaning, our gerontocentric society in general) cast aspersions on the entire age group.

Also, younger people routinely display mental traits that older people are encouraged by our society to give up as they "mature"--such as creativity and idealism, as well as a greater willingness to embrace change, which is precisely why so little beneficial change occurs at a prompt rate in our society.

In calm situations a teenager can make just as sound (and yes, sometimes better) decisions then adults. But when they are put into stressful situations their brains get hijacked.

Um, cococa, do you realize that the exact same things used to be said about women prior to the late 20th century? Are you not aware that women were not even trusted to vote until the year 1920 due to their "over-emotionalism," nor to hold positions of authority for the same reasons? I'm sure you will say, "Well, maybe so, but society was proven wrong in the case of women, but they are right in the case of adolescents." Mmm-hmmm. Your statements have no basis in science, but are pure exercises in cultural beliefs and bigotry masquerading as "conventional wisdom."

You also need to do some heavy research on the origins of the social conception of adolescence, as well as the modern and historically unique paradigm of childhood, something you have clearly not done, and something our society certainly does not encourage in the course of our education. So I have some book recommendations for you, all written by brilliant researchers who were not MAAs:

Teen 2.0 by Robert Epstein, where you will not only study some genuine, extensive scientific research that proves young adolescents are perfectly competent in every ways adults are, and challenges the non-scientific notion that an "undeveloped" brain makes teens inherently prone to bad decisions, but it will also give you a historical overview of how the concept we today call "adolescence," and explain in detail how it didn't even exist until the turn of the 20th century, and how social and economic factors contributed to its conceptual emergence. here ⚠️ ↗ is a link to a PDF-formatted version of Epstein's early '00s article "The Myth of the Teen Brain" that led to his books which very effectively refute the culturally-derived ageist rhetoric you have been spewing forth in this thread.

Harmful to Minors by Judith Levine. This extremely important 2001 book challenges the anti-sex conceptions surrounding children and adolescents that have been going on since the beginning of the 1980s decade, and traces the historical development of the present ongoing sex abuse hysteria.

Centuries of Childhood by Phillipe Aries. This book revolutionized the study of younger people by tracing the changing cultural conceptions of "childhood" centuries prior to the Industrial Revolution, and showing that how we perceive children today, and their overall role in society, is a relatively recent invention related to the same forces that eventually created the concept of "adolescence."

Escape From Childhood by John Holt. Holt is a renowned and multi-award winning teacher who wrote the primer on reasons for treating children as human beings instead of the equivalent of glorified pets, and his views should be studied.

Birthrights by Richard Farson. Published around the same time as Holt's first book--the 1970s--this tome is perhaps the earliest in the then-emerging youth liberation movement to be penned, and Farson's views are at least as relevant today as they were in the '70s, before the movement was derailed by the conservative takeover of the political sphere with the election of Reagan in 1980 and the rise of the sex abuse hysteria, only to re-emerge in the late '90s with the advent of the Internet.

You need to acquire the above books and read them so you are exposed to scientifically objective views on this subject that go outside the typical cultural biases that you champion in this thread. All of these books can be acquired affordably, and those out of print are not hard to find on Amazon.com or Bookfinder.com.

Their frontal lobes are not fully developed and constantly changing which is the reason there decision making is brought in to question. The frontal lobes are also the part of the brain that puts the brakes on risky behavior and controls decision making and they're also one of the last parts of the brain to become fully developed.

Empirical evidence and a lot of scientific research does not bear out any of what you say up above. Again, read the detailed studies of Epstein in "The Myth of the Teen Brain" and Teen 2.0 that challenges and refutes all of that nonsense.

Teenagers are four times as likely as older drivers to be involved in a crash and three times as likely to die in one, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. It's because they can't see how their actions might affect their future, even in life-threatening matters.

That is utterly ridiculous. Teenagers tend to be more prone to accidents because they are new drivers. Older people who get their licenses for the first time later in life show many problems too, as to Asian Americans. It's also a well known fact that teen boys have twice as many car accidents as teen girls do per year, and have higher insurance rates as a result; does this mean teen girls are twice as competent as teen boys when it comes to making "judgments that affect the future"? No, it means there are social factors underlying the situation, including how much more boys are subject to peer pressure than girls when it comes to undertaking risky behaviors. And no, teens aren't more subject to giving into peer pressure than adults due to a "faulty," "underdeveloped" brain, because adults very often give into peer and societal pressure in general when it comes to relationship decisions, financial decisions, marriage decisions, how to raise their children, how to vote, etc. If adults were superior critical thinkers in general, they wouldn't be so prone to embracing hysteria or routinely voting against their own interests politically.

In fact, if you would like some very good and solid evidence that older people do not regularly make decisions that account for their future in a positive way, read this article ⚠️ ↗ by Michael Moore from 2004 that caused him to begin supporting youth liberation.

And yes, being an adult doesn't suddenly bring all the answers and stop adults from acting in immature, and frankly stupid ways. But don't you remember ever looking up to an adult when you were a kid or teenager that you look at now and go, that guys kind of an idiot... Teenagers are influenced by those around them, adults, other teenagers, the media.

And what about all of the adults that have looked up to the likes of George Bush, Rush Limbaugh, Joseph McCarthy, Pat Robertson, Adolph Hitler, etc., et al? Think before you speak, cocoa, my friend! I wish we did live in a world where adults were less influenced by idiots than teens can be!

I'm not saying teenagers are mindless being who don't know anything until they're adults. Sometimes they have much more insite [sic] and self-awareness. They are more able to change and create new and unique ideas. Their brains aren't fully developed, and so they make decisions based on how thier brians [double sic] are taking everything in.

Please read my above statements, as well as seek out the book recommendations I gave you, and you will see how the attributes you praised them for above make a far greater difference than you may think.