Youth rights

Of primary importance to advocates of youth rights are historical perceptions of young people, which they say are oppressive and informed by paternalism, adultism and ageism in general, as well as fears of children and youth. Several of these perceptions made by society include the assumption that young people are incapable of making crucial decisions and need protecting from their tendency to act impulsively.[2] Youth rights advocates believe those perceptions inform laws throughout society, including voting age, child labor laws, the right to work, curfews, drinking/smoking age, gambling age, age of consent, driving age, youth suffrage, emancipation of minors, medical autonomy (the right for youths to make their own healthcare decisions, as opposed to that power being given to their parents or legal guardians), closed adoption, corporal punishment, the age of majority, and military conscription. Restrictions on young people that would be considered unacceptable if applied to adults are viewed by youth rights advocates as a form of unjustified discrimination.

There are specific sets of issues addressing the rights of youth in schools, including zero tolerance, "gulag schools", In loco parentis, and student rights in general. Homeschooling, unschooling, and alternative schools are popular youth rights issues. A long-standing effort within the youth rights movements has focused on civic engagement. Other issues include mandatory allowance[3] and non-authoritarian parenting.[4] There have been a number of historical campaigns to increase youth voting rights by lowering the voting age and the age of candidacy. There are also efforts to get young people elected to prominent positions in local communities, including as members of city councils and as mayors. For example, in the 2011 Raleigh mayoral election 17-year-old Seth Keel launched a campaign for Mayor despite the age requirement of 21.[5] Strategies for gaining youth rights that are frequently utilized by their advocates include developing youth programs and organizations that promote youth activism, youth participation, youth empowerment, youth voice, youth/adult partnerships, intergenerational equity and civil disobedience between young people and adults.

First emerging as a distinct movement in the 1930s, youth rights have long been concerned with civil rights and intergenerational equity. Tracing its roots to youth activists during the Great Depression, youth rights has influenced the civil rights movement, opposition to the Vietnam War, and many other movements. Since the advent of the Internet, the youth rights movement has been gaining predominance again.

Certain youth rights advocates use the argument of fallibility against the belief that others can know what is best or worst for an individual, and criticize the children's rights movement for assuming that exterior legislators, parents, authorities and so on can know what is for a "minor"'s own good. These thinkers argue that the ability to correct what others think about one's own welfare in a falsificationist (as opposed to postmodernist) manner constitutes a non-arbitrary mental threshold at which an individual can speak for his or herself independently of exterior assumptions, as opposed to arbitrary chronological minimum ages in legislation. They also criticize the carte blanche for arbitrary definitions of "maturity" implicit in children's rights laws such as "with rising age and maturity" for being part of the problem, and suggest the absolute threshold of conceptual after-correcture to remedy it.[6]

These views are often supported by people with experience of the belief in absolutely gradual mental development being abused as an argument for "necessity" of arbitrary distinctions such as age of majority which they perceive as oppressive (either currently oppressing or having formerly oppressed them, depending on age and jurisdiction), and instead cite types of connectionism that allows for critical phenomena that encompasses the entire brain. These thinkers tend to stress that different individuals reach the critical threshold at somewhat different ages with no more than one in 365 (one in 366 in the case of leap years) chance of coinciding with a birthday, and that the relevant difference that it is acceptable to base different treatment on is only between individuals and not between jurisdictions. Generally, the importance of judging each individual by observable relevant behaviors and not by birth date is stressed by advocates of these views.[7]

NYRA Berkeley voting age protest

Minimum age convention 14 years: purple 15 years: green 16 years: blue

Children's rights cover all rights belonging to children. When individuals grow up, they are granted new rights (such as voting, consent, and driving) and duties (such as criminal responsibility and draft eligibility). There are different minimum limits of age at which youth are, situationally, not independent or deemed legally competent to make certain decisions or take certain actions. Some rights and responsibilities that legally come with age are:

• Voting age
• Age of candidacy
• Age of consent
• Age of majority
• Age of criminal responsibility
• Drinking age
• Driving age
• Legal working age
• Right to work
• Student rights
• Youth suffrage

After youth reach these limits they are free to vote, buy or consume alcohol beverages, and drive cars, among other acts.

The "youth rights movement", also described as "youth liberation", is a nascent grass-roots movement whose aim is to fight against ageism and for the civil rights of young people – those "under the age of majority", which is 18 in most countries. It is ostensibly an effort to combat pedophobia and ephebiphobia throughout society by promoting youth voice, youth empowerment and ultimately, intergenerational equity through youth/adult partnerships.[8] Advocates of youth rights distinguish their movement from the children's rights movement, which they argue advocates changes that are often restrictive towards children and youth, and which they accuse of paternalism, pedophobia, and adultism. They point out distinctions between 1970s youth liberation literature and child rights literature from groups such as the Children's Defense Fund.[9]