I think mostly what young fandom types (and I guess younger people in general) who are very very invested in the idea that “20 is still basically a minor” need to understand is that the feeling of “I’m just a child pretending to be an adult, and everyone else around me is a REAL adult” is DEEPLY universal (and won’t stop, ever, by the way, sorry!) and also is not, like, praxis.
Believe me, I get it, but the self-infantilization needs to stop, especially when you’re trying to engage in conversations about actual children and the harms they can face. Yes, it is scary to wake up and realize you’re 22 and you still feel like you’re 15, but it happens to all of us. You’re an adult. You have to deal with it.
Like I'm nearing 40 and I don't feel significantly different as a person than I did at 20, other than being less depressed.
I know I'm different bc i respond in different ways to things now, but there's not a sense of "ah yes I am become adult" that's for fuckin sure. It's normal. It's okay. So stop infantilizing yourselves about it.
And stop infantilizing others about it, too. Yes, you're realizing at 25 that you still don't feel like an adult, but you cannot use that feeling to let yourself think of people who are younger than you as "even less of an adult than I am" when they are, in fact, adults. And you have to be very, very careful not to let that feeling convince you that it's okay for young adults to have fewer rights.
There's no age at which you magically stop being worried that you're not doing it right or well enough. Every single person alive is the oldest they've ever been and we are ALL winging it. Being scared of getting it wrong doesn't mean that you shouldn't be allowed to get it wrong.
It is universal, and it doesn't end.
The only way you feel like an adult is by experiencing these things until you know how to deal with them, not by evasion.
