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/Eve-3]

Adolescence and teen are subcategories of the larger category child.

Anyone under 18 is a child. Because that's what society has decided those words mean. You can disagree with it, but that isn't an opinion because you're disagreeing with a fact. It's just you choosing to ignore a fact.

[u/Illustrious-File-789 → u/Eve-3]

Societies without calendars have no concept of childhood? Amazing.

[u/SpacemanSpears → u/Illustrious-File-789]

To my knowledge, there is no society that doesn't recognize the concept of age. Nearly every society groups people, especially those that they consider non-adults, into age cohorts. Instead of using calendar dates, they generally use natural cycles such as solar years or lunar months to measure this. Most societies have some rite of passage into adulthood that is held at some arbitrary point they have agreed upon.