To add to this never-ending disintegration of the original topic, I'll bring back the issue of fear that grey and Q were discussing. While I am inclined to agree that many 18-year-olds in the first world have not really
contemplated their real fears yet, remember that with the highly variable lifestyles we all have, age is not really the factor that matters. It is more dependent on class and even gender.
From experience, and talking to various kids in high school, by 18 many of us had experienced:
The fear of being homeless.
The fear of parental or other family friend abuse.
The fear of one of us or a friend losing their life or ability to walk in a car accident.
The fear of our house burning down with us in it.
The fear of drowning.
For women, the fear of being raped or sexually assaulted (in the U.S. one out of every three women is sexually assaulted.)
The fear of failure (I mean this seriously- I knew kids with anorexia and drug problems that arose primarily because their parents harped so badly on them about any little imperfection in their performance.)
The fear of overwhelming depression (you'd be amazed at how many kids have suicidal thoughts and help each other climb out of that hole).
The fear of gangs and violent crime.
The fear of a war starting and the draft being instituted.
The fear of being pregnant at the wrong time (generally, despite birth control use).
It's sad, but it's true. And I didn't even grow up in the inner city, but went to a nice suburban high school. Maybe for those of y'all in your 50s, life was better when you were a kid? I don't know. But I can say definitively that life in high school about 12 years ago had more or less all the fear you get to experience in adult life, minus a few significant ones like fearing for your kids. But in terms of death and disease and all that-- I saw more deaths and accidents in high school and college than I have since. And sadly, many many kids experience relatively extreme poverty (with worries about bills and homelessness) before they are an adult. A lot of high school kids work to help pay their family's bills.
Perhaps saddest of all, is that most kids by the time they graduate have had a friend or acquaintence experience the what I consider the worst of the worst: abuse of some sort, mental illness, and violent crime. At the larger high schools, there seems to be at least one or two people from each class that commit suicide or are murdered. You'd be amazed at the overwhelming number of girls that have been raped by 18 (not to mention all those who have been simply taken advantage of by older men- sometimes teachers- that have been sexually assualted but not raped, etc.). This seems to result in a ton of depression and mental illness among young women, and frequently the only people they feel they can talk to are their friends. It's not like I've taken an extensive poll of young women in the US, but the statistics bear it out, and about half the young women I knew in high school had been raped or mentally coerced into having sex by the time they graduated.
I won't say all the things I witnessed or had happen to me, it's too personal to share on a forum. But suffice it to say that there is nothing since that has added to my fears. By the time I was 20, I had experienced or been a close observer of nearly every horrible thing I could imagine. I've spent the remaining decade or so overcoming them and dealing with it. And I was a good kid. Went to a good suburban high school, got straight As, went to college on a full scholarship. I wasn't reckless, didn't do drugs, and all my friends were honors students and mostly middle to upper middle class.
If most kids don't experience what my friends and I did, then I concede the point. But the statistics say otherwise... And remember that in the third world, kids often watch brothers and sisters die before they are even a teenager, and often are displaced due to war and other violent conflict. I'm amazed there is a functioning generation of adults in these places at all- testimony to what the human spirit can endure.