Alan Greenblallats

There are many different opinions on the age of responsibility and adulthood. In Alan Greenblatts article, “What is the Age of Responsibility?”, he discusses how people often think 18 is too young to be considered an adult but yet there are many contradictions against the claim. With so many factos influencing what people think maturaity means, people should be considered adults at 18 because that is when teens start experiencing adult things and start making real life decisons. The age of maturity should be measured not by age but by the persons life experiences. Robert Epstein, a psychologist, completed a study with, “... More than 30,000 people showing that 30% of American teens are more competent than the median adults in a variety of ways”. (Greenblatt, 29) Many 18 year olds now are more capable of adult actions and can handle the more …show more content…
Setting the drinking age to 18 will make 18 year olds feel more comfortable and responsible drinking without having the thought that they are doing something wrong. McCardell, a former president of Middlebury College, says the problem is, “... That underage kids don’t actually consider themselves underage”. (Greenblatt, 13) 18 is the age where people start taking things more responsibly and having to go behind the law to drink, when they can make authoritive decisions, does not help them to be more comfortable. One may defend that 18 is not a good age to start drinking because they will not be responsible with it. “The people who are advocating going down to 18 should ackowledge that they’re willing to risk an extra thousands death per year and double that number of injuries”. (Greenblatt, 14) While I recognize that there are many accidents having to do with underage drunk drivers, there are still adults who do the same thing. If 18 year olds were given the responsibility of drinking sooner, they would take it more