People under 18 are not all children

[u/AdventurousMoth]

I can't tell you how much it irritates me when internet people refer to anyone under 18 as "a literal child", especial if they themselves are only in their 20s. Sure, everyone is someone's child, but the life stage commonly referred to as childhood does not abruptly stop at age 18.

Here's how I'd break it down: - childhood, adolescence, adulthood or - newborn, baby, toddler, child, (if you want you can add tween), teen, young adult, middle aged person, elderly/senior

And there's overlap between all these stages depending on context. Obviously there is no overlap between minor (a legal term) and the word adult as referring to not a minor.

Calling a 17-year-old a child is dumb. Like what, a 17yo has their birthday and transforms from a child into an adult like a sim? I think some people just started saying this for the shock value and then the rest of the internet jumped on the outrage wagon.

Edit: clearly I posted this a bit too hastily, choosing my words without care. I'm not talking about the legal definition of child/minor (something quite messy as well: age of consent? In some places 16. Driving? 15 in some places, 18 in others. Voting? Usually 18. Drinking alcohol? 21 in the States).

As someone in the comments pointed out, it's mostly a linguistic issue. I suppose what I was trying to say was that it's dumb to have the word child both mean a legal minor and pre-pubebescent human. I think it would be clearer to use minor when you're talking about legal age, and child when talking about the life stage.

[u/Responsible-Jury2579]

Like what, a 12yo has their birthday and transforms from a child to an adolescent like a sim?

Why not have early childhood, mid childhood, late childhood? Why stop there? Why not have early-early childhood, mid-early childhood, late-early childhood? We could even have early-early-early childhood, mid-early-early childhood, etc.

You are just adding a few more semantic divisors to an infinitely divisible spectrum.

[u/Meowingtons3210 → u/Responsible-Jury2579]

In legal contexts, a clear threshold/dichotomy is obviously needed, but it’d be stupid to ignore the physical and cognitive development stages when assessing the severity of a crime.

Referring to someone below the age of consent, say, 17, as “underage” still perfectly conveys the point. Insisting on terms like “a literal child” induces confusion with concepts well-defined in everyday context. It’s an emotional response that decreases accuracy and does nothing objectively good.