Hypothetically speaking, what’s the worst that could happen if all age requirements for buying alcohol, smoking, viewing movies of certain ratings, buying porn and gambling were suddenly dropped? (Say, if the entire Ben Franklin Elementary School third grade class wanted to, after an all-night session at the MGM grand, wanted to catch a showing of Deep Throat, bottles of Jack Daniels in their left hands, cigarettes and a copies of Swank in their right, they could… not that they would necessarily want to.)
Meaningfully answering your question requires understanding society (and memetics ) accurately. Below is a cursory attempt, not really thought through.
For an initial period after said legislation, all these activities will show spikes in usage. This will probably be a period with strongly polarized groups. But the widespread availability and the drop of formal restrictions will foster enculturation of some of the obvious dangers and other aspects of these practices. These activites might also lose their deviant status. After this initial period, I haven’t thought out how that would affect future society.
We’d all learn how to have a goodtime much sooner…
Parents might have to get off their duffs and start taking responsibility for their childerns behavior instead of letting the state do it.
golf clap
Good form.
Props to Slartibartfastt.
Indeed. More props to Slartibartfastt.
Either what he said, or society would colapse within 3 minutes of the new legislation being passed.
16 year olds already watch porn, smoke, drink, and gamble. Those that don’t, in general, don’t because they have no interest in doing so. The few that avoid these activities because they’re prohibited would start, possibly, but even some of them would be restricted by their parents.
Dropping all that legislation would doubtless lead to a short-term spike in parental awareness, too, so kids who smoked without getting caught before will suddenly be in for one hell of a grounding when their parents actually paused to smell them.
Oh, and God might smite us, but I doubt it. He’s too busy trying to explain things to the Mormons.
Another Kudo to Slartibartfastt.
We would probably see an upsurge of Darwin Award nominees as well.
Presumably you’re talking about the U.S. In some countries, at least some of these prohibitions don’t exist now. France, I believe, has no minimum drinking age. (I’m sure someone will correct me if I’m wrong.) Several years ago we were in French Polynesia with our then 16-year-old daughter, and she was able to order anything she wanted.
IMHO one of the problems with the alcohol restrictions now is that it creates the “forbidden fruit” syndrome that equates such activities with being a “real adult,” so some young folks feel the need to consume mass quanties to prove their alleged maturity. When wine is just another beverage that you have a glass of with your dinner, it becomes no big deal. I have been told that in such countries actual sloppy drunkenness is highly frowned on. A person who got so drunk he passed out, as some college students here will do on occasion, would be considered a real jerk by his peers, which is of course the one thing no young person wants. Of course, a lot of this is due to many factors in the culture, not just availability or legality.
I don’t know if Russia has a legal age limit, but alcohol is a major part of that culture, and I believe they do have alcoholism problems there.
MLS is right about all these age restricted things becoming “forbidden fruit.” It was real cool when we were 15 to try go sneak into R rated movies, even if the movie was something you didn’t really want to see. It’s not like everyone undergoes a huge shift in maturity once they turn 17 that will make it ok for them to see more violent and graphic movies. In the same way, I’ve heard many drunken teenagers remark that once they’re over 21 it won’t be as cool to drink because it’s allowed, and getting smashed every weekend will become pathetic.
Of course, there are still plenty of adult alcoholics. I don’t think relaxing age restrictions would mean that some younger people wouldn’t still abuse such things.
As far as pornography goes, when Sweden, (if I’m remembering correctly) lifted restrictions the usage spiked for a while afterwards, then went back down to previous levels… the reason supposedly being that after viewing pornography for so long, people just got bored… the novelty wore off.