
==== Front
Dev Cogn Neurosci
Dev Cogn Neurosci
Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience
1878-9293
1878-9307
Elsevier

S1878-9293(24)00096-3
10.1016/j.dcn.2024.101435
101435
Original Research
The role (and limits) of developmental neuroscience in determining adolescents’ autonomy rights: The case for reproductive and voting rights
Maslowsky Julie jmaslow@umich.edu
a⁎
Buss Emily b
Wray-Lake Laura c
a University of Michigan School of Nursing, University of Michigan School of Public Health, United States
b University of Chicago Law School, United States
c University of California Los Angeles Luskin School of Public Affairs, United States
⁎ Correspondence to: University of Michigan School of Nursing, 426 North Ingalls Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, United States. jmaslow@umich.edu
31 8 2024
10 2024
31 8 2024
69 10143511 12 2023
6 6 2024
12 8 2024
© 2024 The Authors
2024
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).
Neuroscientific evidence documenting continued neural development throughout adolescence has been leveraged in advocacy for more lenient treatment of adolescents in the criminal justice system. In recent years, developmental science, including neuroscience, has progressed and enabled more nuanced interpretations of what continuing neural development in adolescence likely means functionally for adolescents’ capabilities. However, oversimplified interpretations equating continuing neural development to overall “immaturity” are frequently used to make the case that adolescents should have fewer legal rights to make decisions on their own behalf, including regarding reproductive and voting rights. Here we address ongoing debates about adolescents’ autonomy rights and whether such rights should be expanded or restricted. We review extant neuroscientific and developmental research that can inform these debates. We call for: (1) a more nuanced application of developmental neuroscience to specific rights issues in specific contexts; (2) additional research designed to inform our understanding of the developmental benefits or harms of rights-based policies on young people over time; and (3) the grounding of developmental neuroscientific research on adolescents within a human rights framework. We offer suggestions to developmental and neuroscience scholars on how to discuss the science of adolescent development with those seeking guidance in their design of law and policy.

Keywords

Adolescent
Neuroscience
Reproductive health
Voting
Policy
==== Body
pmc1 Introduction

A young woman wakes up and smiles brightly at her partner. “Happy 25th birthday, honey!” he says, “You look different this morning. Did something change?” She grins and replies, “It’s my prefrontal cortex! It finally developed!”. This humorous skit depicted in a recent popular TikTok video may produce a chuckle, but the oversimplified view of adolescent brain development it represents threatens to have significant consequences for U.S. policies affecting adolescents.

Misapplications of neuroscience threaten adolescents’ autonomy rights in a range of contexts. For example, the American College of Pediatricians (ACPeds), a small non-accredited pediatric professional organization, has invoked brain development research to argue that adolescents must involve parents in their decision to have an abortion stating, for example, “Clearly, child and adolescent psychiatrists note differences in brain development between adolescents and adults that affect judgment, behavior, impulse control, and decision-making ability. They also point out that teens, with their still-maturing brains, rely more on impulse than rational and goal-oriented thought. Based on this research-derived data and its implications for adolescent decision-making capacity, there should be no debate regarding parental involvement in a minor’s abortion” (ACPeds, 2016, par. 9). Mischaracterizations also appear in the peer-reviewed literature. For example, Anderson (2015) argues that adolescents are incapable of medical decision making without parental involvement: “Given that every area of the adolescent brain is immature, and the neurotransmitters are overly active, it is extremely difficult to argue that adolescents are capable of independent medical decision making without parental involvement. Because the adolescent brain is immature, the parent must become the teen's brain - providing assistance with problem solving, interpretation of events, judgment, protection from danger, and virtually every area of life” (Anderson, 2015, pp 194–195).

Lack of nuance in policy makers’ understanding of adolescent development has also created some reluctance among youth rights’ advocates to support efforts to expand adolescents’ autonomy rights, such as voting rights, for fear that contradicting the widely held neuroscientific idea that teenagers have under-developed brains could end up harming youth by leading to the removal of important legal protections. For example, Baird Silbaugh (2020, p. 1689) argued that lowering the voting age would ultimately “undermine the protective commitments we make to youth in school, in the justice system, and in the child welfare system,” and the League of Women Voters (LWV) of Maine, which supports a lower voting age, has expressed a similar concern (LWV of Maine, n.d.). Meanwhile, 2024 Republican Presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy called for an increase in the voting age to 25 years (Allison, 2023). Although Ramaswamy’s primary argument for moving voting eligibility to 25 focuses on younger people’s lack of lived experience necessary for voting, the choice of 25 likely derives, at least in part, from the growing conventional wisdom that full brain maturation occurs at that time (Arain et al., 2013).

These simplistic characterizations of adolescents’ brain development and ability to make decisions as “immature” fail to reflect the nuance of current scientific understandings of adolescence. Specifically, behavioral research has demonstrated for decades that by mid-adolescence, young people are comparable to adults in their ability to make deliberative decisions, including specific abilities in working memory, logical reasoning, weighing risks and benefits, and anticipating consequences of their actions (Icenogle et al., 2019; Reyna et al., 2015; Steinberg, 2013). Whereas early characterizations of the adolescent brain included a focus on individual neural structures (e.g., referring to the amygdala as the “reward center”), neuroimaging research now clearly delineates interconnected systems that develop and function in concert with each other (Galván, 2021). Relatedly, models of adolescent behavior focused on “dual systems”—that is, the existence of a prefrontally-based cognitive control system that exerts functions such as decision making, judgment, and response inhibition (Casey and Jones, 2010) and a limbic-based incentive processing system that responds to emotionally arousing and rewarding stimuli (Van Leijenhorst et al., 2010)—have been challenged as overly simplistic. Neuroscientists have pressed for more integrative characterizations of both structural and functional neural development (Pfeifer, 2012). However, these more integrative characterizations, with their greater complexity, have been slower to catch on with policymakers and the public.

Although developmental science has articulated adolescents’ competencies and adopted a strengths-based approach to understanding and promoting adolescent development (Committee on the Neurobiological and Socio-behavioral Science of Adolescent Development and Its Applications et al., 2019; Crone and Dahl, 2012), the above examples demonstrate that the public and policy makers do not yet have the language with which to apply specific neuroscientific and developmental evidence to different types of real-world decisions adolescents face and the policies that govern them. In popular and policy rhetoric, the simple message that some parts of the brain are still maturing into the twenties has been adopted without regard to context and has been used to justify limiting adolescents’ rights.

In this article, we aim to make progress in filling the gap between science and public rhetoric by applying more nuanced understandings of adolescents’ development to debates about adolescents’ rights, with a particular focus on the developmental science that bears on reproductive health decision-making and voting. Before turning to our consideration of adolescents’ autonomy rights in these contexts, we lay out the application of developmental science in the criminal context, as the declaration of adolescents’ immaturity in this context has inspired the challenges to adolescents’ autonomy rights in other contexts. Beginning with a consideration of how developmental science has been applied in the criminal context allows us to derive lessons from that experience and to offer distinctions between the developmental issues present in that context and in the context of the autonomy rights we address. Our discussion of the law’s application of developmental neuroscience to the juvenile justice context also allows us to highlight the limits of developmental science in resolving important issues of children’s and adolescents’ rights. We derive three lessons from the application of developmental neuroscience to youth-related policies in the criminal legal context that can help to inform policy debates about adolescents’ autonomy rights. We call for: (1) a more nuanced application of developmental neuroscience to specific rights issues in specific contexts; (2) additional research designed to inform our understanding of the developmental benefits or harms of rights-based policies on young people over time; and (3) the grounding of developmental neuroscientific research on adolescents within a human rights framework (see Table 1).Table 1 Recommendations for developmental & neuroscience research on adolescents’ autonomy rights.

Table 11. Apply Neuroscience Research in Nuanced and Contextualized Ways to Avoid Overly Restricting Adolescents’ Rights	
Consider specific types of decisions in specific contexts rather than over-generalizing neuroscientific evidence.	
2. Conduct Longitudinal Research on Developmental Benefits and Harms of Rights-Based Policies for Adolescents	
Build evidence for the impacts of affording or denying rights, which can then be used to inform policy decisions.	
3. Ground Neuroscience Research in a Human Rights Framework	
Start research and its interpretation from an assumption that adolescents inherently have rights and only justify curtailing those rights where research demonstrates that they lack the necessary capacities to exercise those rights.	

2 Juvenile justice

At the turn of the 21st century, developmental psychologists and criminologists began to collaborate with lawyers and legal academics to argue against the imposition of the death penalty for murders committed by individuals below the age of 18. In this collaboration, lawyers educated scientists about the important criteria in law that mitigated culpability, and scientists educated lawyers on aspects of adolescent development that bore on those criteria. The argument presented to the U.S. Supreme Court reflected this careful application of well-conducted research to the very specific issues addressed by the criminal law. The Court’s decision in Roper v. Simmons embraced this interdisciplinary analysis focused on culpability, but in a notably reductive form. Careful legal and psychological analysis was reduced to the Court’s identification of “three general differences between juveniles under 18 and adults,” listing as characteristics of adolescents their “lack of maturity and … underdeveloped sense of responsibility [which often leads to] impetuous and ill-considered actions and decisions,” their greater vulnerability to “negative influences and outside pressures including peer pressures,” and their less formed characters (Roper v. Simmons, 2005). The unqualified nature of the declaration made it vulnerable to the misapplication we are seeing in other areas of the law.

Five years later, in 2010’s Graham v. Florida, when the Court rejected life without parole sentences for most juvenile offenders, it introduced the emerging neuroscience as an identifiable physical source in the brain for these differences (Graham v. Florida, 2010). Again, the science was somewhat reductively applied, and even more reductively represented in the press and in popular perception: Adolescents had “immature brains,” and were like cars with accelerators and no brakes–a metaphor that captured the ground for finding youth less culpable for their offenses, but also oversimplified the workings of adolescents’ neural, cognitive, emotional, and behavioral systems in ways that have led to undervaluing youths’ capacities for decision making in other contexts.

The Supreme Court’s embrace of developmental and neuroscience research launched significant additional reforms in states’ juvenile justice systems, but these reforms, importantly, were based at least as much on other social scientific research, which supported the interrelated conclusions that severe punitive prison-focused sentences of juvenile offenders was detrimental both for youth development and for community safety (Mulvey et al., 2014, Smith et al., 2004). An understanding of adolescents’ ongoing development was an important component of these reforms, but the focus of reforms was not on their limited psychosocial maturity and related capacities justifying reduced culpability but rather on their capacity for change and their vulnerability to social influence, both positive and negative, as they continued to grow up (Buss, 2022). Policymakers have embraced the neuroscience that shows ongoing brain maturation into the mid-twenties, and advocates have endorsed the neuroscientific justification for extending decarceral responses to crime into young adulthood, as it conforms with other research suggesting the efficacy of less punitive, more development-enhancing responses to the criminal offending of young adults (Scott, Bonnie, and Steinberg, 2016).

Decarceral policies for young people are also entirely in line with the broader, human rights-inspired move away from the United States’ mass incarceration policies (Griffin and Wolff, 2015). Even as early as the Supreme Court’s decision in Roper, the Court noted that “Article 37 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child … contains an express prohibition on capital punishment for crimes committed by juveniles under 18 (United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, Art. 37 Nov. 20, 1989). It is proper that we acknowledge the overwhelming weight of international opinion [in assessing what constitutes cruel and unusual punishment under the 8th Amendment].” And while the United States stands alone in not ratifying the Convention, reforms undertaken in juvenile justice policy find support in parallel reforms, throughout the world, that are based on the rights the Convention sets out.

We draw three lessons from the application of adolescent neuroscience in the criminal legal context to law that highlight successful ways in which developmental science can be used to inform adolescents’ autonomy rights issues and that avoid the hazards of applying developmental science in ways that are too broad or ill-specified to appropriately address particular issues.

The first lesson is that any analysis and application of developmental research to an area of law or policy must be tailored to the specific questions relevant to that law or policy. Developmental scientists would never rely on studies of youth crime to reach conclusions about adolescents’ ability to make decisions in other contexts, and developmental and neuroscientists must work to ensure that their research is not misused in this way in the policy sphere.

The second lesson is that developmental scientists should help policy makers understand the developmental impact of affording or denying rights, not simply adolescents’ current capacities, as a simplistic focus on capacities can lead policymakers to lose sight of the ongoing nature of development and the importance of adolescents’ experiences to the maturation of their capacities. Just as reforms in the juvenile justice system have increasingly focused on the benefits of more community-focused and therapeutic responses to juvenile offending and the developmental harms to young people imposed by periods of incarceration, so policy makers addressing adolescents’ autonomy rights should address what benefits and harms can come from affording or denying those rights.

The third lesson is that a human rights framework is an important lens through which to look in applying developmental and neuroscientific research to policies related to adolescents’ rights. Developmental science, which aims to understand and optimize human development, and human rights, which define the rights inherent to all human beings, are complementary frameworks for understanding adolescents’ rights, and we will invoke both here as is commonly done in law and medicine and is increasingly prevalent in developmental science work as well (Casey et al., 2020).

We apply these lessons to two different autonomy rights – adolescents’ right to control their own reproductive health and adolescents’ right to vote – to suggest how developmental neuroscience can appropriately be applied to policy making.

3 Reproductive rights

Reproductive justice scholars and advocates have for decades championed the ability to make decisions about one’s own body and reproduction as a fundamental human right (Ross and Solinger, 2017). The extent to which that right extends to adolescents, however, has long been a source of controversy, and this issue has received renewed attention since the Dobbs v. Jackson Supreme Court decision (Ziegler, 2023, Dobbs v. Jackson, 2022). Specifically, whether adolescents should be allowed to make their own decisions (without involving a parent or guardian) about reproductive health care such as contraception and abortion is a frequent subject of public and political debate. Since Dobbs, even among states where abortion remains legal, there are only 14 states in which adolescents can access confidential abortion care independently (Ralph and Hasselbacher, 2023). Amid active and contentious legal cases and debates about adolescents’ abortion and contraception rights, this policy area can benefit from an application of our three lessons: a more nuanced and tailored consideration of neuroscientific and developmental evidence, the consideration of developmental impacts of reproductive health decision-making, and the application of a human rights framework.

Court decisions pertaining to adolescents’ reproductive rights have not drawn on the most up-to-date developmental and neuroscientific evidence. Recent cases addressing minors’ abortion rights continue to cite the Supreme Court’s 1979 decision in Bellotti v. Baird, which concluded that parental consent can be required for a minor adolescent seeking an abortion so long as the state offers some form of “bypass” alternative, should an adolescent wish to avoid parental involvement (Bellotti v. Baird, 1979). This qualification of adolescents’ autonomy rights in the abortion context was based in part on assumptions about adolescents’ “impaired decision-making capacity” and the important role played by parents in helping their adolescents make important decisions. Bellotti was issued at a time when research addressing adolescents’ relevant decision-making capacity and their actual decision-making behaviors in the abortion context was limited. Today we have a far greater understanding of how and when relevant decision-making capacities develop and what forms of adult involvement are well-designed to support and facilitate this development. This newer research calls into question the imposition of limits on adolescents’ ability to access abortion services on their own and the appropriateness of judicial bypass as a method of offering some supervision and support for adolescents' abortion decisions. This research also calls into question certain disparities in the laws governing adolescents’ reproductive rights, such as some states’ greater protection of adolescents’ ability to access sexually transmitted infections (STI) testing and treatment than their ability to obtain contraception. For example, all states allow minors to consent for STI testing and treatment but only 27 explicitly allow them to consent to contraception (Guttmacher Institute, 2023, Nelson et al., 2022).

The apparent contradiction between supporting limited punishments for adolescent offenders and expanded reproductive autonomy for pregnancy-capable adolescents was addressed in a classic paper by Steinberg and colleagues (2009). They argued that most crimes are committed in situations in which the adolescent brain generally performs differently than adult brains – highly emotional situations requiring immediate reactions, often in the presence of peers. To the contrary, reproductive health decisions occur under conditions in which the adolescent brain generally performs similarly to an adult. The decision about whether to use contraception and what type to use and the decision about whether to carry a pregnancy to term or have an abortion are deliberative decisions, and adolescents have demonstrated capacity to make deliberative decisions (Icenogle et al., 2019; Reyna et al., 2015; Steinberg, 2013). The abortion decision, for example, involves seeking, receiving, and processing information about one’s options, weighing costs and benefits of alternatives, and executing a plan that occurs over a period of days, weeks, or months, all capacities that most teenagers have.

In addition to what is known about adolescents’ capacities in general to make deliberative decisions, as set out above, studies examining adolescent decision making in reproductive health care situations also demonstrate that they have and use these abilities. Studies have shown, for example, that most adolescents can comprehend package labeling on emergency contraception (Raymond et al., 2009) and medication abortion drugs (Biggs et al., 2022), can accurately assess the gestational duration of their pregnancy when seeking abortion (Ralph et al., 2023) and demonstrate high levels of capacity to make a medical decision about hormonal contraception in a pharmacy setting (Wilkinson et al., 2023). Further, adolescents are aware of the changes to U.S. abortion policy that have resulted from Dobbs and its implications for abortion access, demonstrating their attention to and knowledge of the issue in general (Allison et al., 2023).

Well acknowledged among medical professionals and developmental scientists is the value of supportive assistance from adults where adolescents are facing difficult decisions. The Bellotti framework that allows states to require either parental involvement or a judicial bypass procedure reflects an interest in providing this system of adult support when an adolescent seeks an abortion. In a judicial bypass hearing, a judge is asked to rule whether an adolescent who is seeking an abortion but is unable or unwilling to obtain parental consent is mature enough to make that decision. The judicial bypass process is designed to protect “mature” adolescents’ ability to control the abortion decision themselves and to support “immature” adolescents’ ability to access abortion when it is determined by a court to be in their best interest. However, extensive empirical literature suggests that judicial bypass is poorly designed to achieve this end. Lacking any standard guidance in assessing maturity of an adolescent, courts are free to draw on whatever information they deem relevant, whether it is the adolescent’s grade point average, their clothing or posture, or even simply the judge’s own attitude about the appropriateness of abortion (Coleman-Minahan et al., 2019, Hendin, 2023). Adolescents’ documented experiences with the bypass process reinforce what should be obvious to any professionals working with teens: Requiring adolescents to navigate a judicial process by themselves and make their case for abortion to a stranger with considerable authority cannot be expected to offer meaningful decision-making support to an adolescent and, indeed, has been shown to impose considerable stress (Coleman-Minahan et al., 2019). Going through judicial bypass also delays the abortion procedure such that abortions are completed at later gestational age, sometimes making a procedural rather than medication abortion necessary (Janiak et al., 2019).

While most young people choose to involve their parents in their reproductive health care decisions (Ralph et al., 2014), those who do not often cite safety concerns, stating that they do not believe that their parents will approve or be supportive of their choices and sometimes expressing concern that revealing their pregnancy and or desire to obtain an abortion will subject them to abuse (Ehrlich, 2003, Hasselbacher et al., 2014, Ralph et al., 2021). In recognition of the dangerous conditions created for some youth (Human Rights Watch, 2021), states including Illinois and Minnesota have recently repealed the requirement for parental notification or judicial bypass (Burnet, 2021; Minnesota, 2023). The state of Oregon recently took a different approach focusing on health care providers. In its new law, adolescents ages 15 and up can consent to all reproductive health care including abortion, and adolescents under age 15 can consent if the medical provider reasonably believes that obtaining parental consent could cause harm to the adolescent (Oregon Legislative Assembly, 2023). This approach is consistent with recent research documenting that most parents want medical providers to be involved in their adolescents’ sexual and reproductive health education and care and approve of confidential care when they are given information about what it is, why it is important, and how it works (Durante et al., 2023, Kannappan et al., 2023).

Considering the developmental impact of adolescents’ reproductive health decisions and of the restrictions potentially imposed on their decision making is also important for informing these policy debates. Parenthood is a fundamental change to any life trajectory, but particularly that of a young person and especially a young person who does not want to become a parent. Research from the landmark Turnaway Study, which included participants as young as 15, showed that being denied a wanted abortion was associated with later financial difficulties, including poverty and food and housing insecurity, and greater likelihood of staying with an abusive partner (Foster et al., 2022, Miller et al., 2023, Roberts et al., 2014). Adolescents are aware of the potential impact of pregnancy and parenthood on their future and name it as a primary consideration when they consider contraception and abortion. Young people desire to avoid parenthood in order to focus on their own education, professional development, relationships, and other aspects of their lives (Finer et al., 2005). They also demonstrate their concern for the well-being of their potential children, noting their concern for their ability to provide for them adequately (Coleman-Minahan et al., 2020).

A human rights framework goes beyond research evidence to conclude that the right to a safe and legal abortion is a human right. The United Nations and others have declared that abortion is a fundamental human right, and preventing safe and legal abortions is a threat to health and autonomous life choices (Center for Reproductive Rights, 2018). Human rights experts note that allowing women and girls bodily autonomy is essential for ensuring non-discrimination and ensuring the dignity and equality of people who can become pregnant (Looi, 2023). Reproductive justice scholars and advocates have also clearly outlined the importance and utility of a human rights perspective on reproductive rights for all (Cohen et al., 2021, Ross and Solinger, 2017). If we take as a starting point that adolescent girls have a fundamental right to bodily autonomy, equality, health, and life, we should not compromise these rights in the absence of some affirmative demonstration that they lack the necessary capacities to exercise these rights or that they run a substantial risk of experiencing life-long harm if allowed this level of control over their own bodies. In other words, rather than needing sufficient evidence to prove that adolescents are capable of being granted this right, a human rights framework would ensure the protection of these rights, absent compelling scientific evidence of harm counseling against this. In the abortion context, an understanding of the relevant decision-making capacities, how they are exercised by adolescents, and the developmental harm imposed on adolescents when this decision-making control is compromised all align with, rather than counter, human rights commitments.

4 Voting rights

Unlike debates about adolescents’ reproductive rights, the appropriateness of limiting voting rights to adults is not a topic garnering substantial political, legal, and public attention. There is, however, a growing interest among youth, youth rights’ advocates, voting rights organizations, and political leaders to expand voting rights to 16- and 17-year-olds (Meng, 2023; Vote16USA, n.d.). Primary goals of expanding voting rights to adolescents include strengthening democratic participation, supporting youth development, and granting youth an opportunity to have input on social issues that impact them (Douglas, 2016). Some adolescents in the U.S. already have the right to vote in some elections: Currently, seven municipalities in Maryland, one in Vermont, one in New Jersey, and two in California have laws permitting 16- and 17-year-olds to vote in school board and other local elections. These voting teenagers join youth across 25 countries where the voting age is lower than 18. Local, state, and national campaigns are actively underway around the U.S. to advocate for youth voting rights (Eichhorn and Bergh, 2019).

Prevailing assumptions may support the idea that adolescents lack the capacity to make adult-like decisions about how to vote, similar to narratives around reproductive decision-making. However, a more nuanced application of the developmental and neuroscience research addressing adolescent decision-making capacities, and research capturing the developmental value of extending the right to vote to adolescents, argue in favor of this extension. Like decisions about abortion and contraception, voting is a deliberative, reasoned decision. In contexts of reasoned decision making where peer pressure and opportunities for sensation seeking are minimized, adolescents’ capacities for decision making are indistinguishable from adults at and before age 16, the target age for most voting expansion initiatives (Icenogle et al., 2019; Steinberg et al., 2009). Voting is the antithesis of the impulsive behavior that justified the qualification of youths’ maturity in the criminal context, as voting involves multiple steps that require planning and commitment, including registering to vote, finding one’s polling place, and determining when to cast a ballot. The relatively new field of political neuroscience is examining the neural processes of political cognition and decision-making among adults and identifying nuances in the neural underpinnings of political decision making in different circumstances (Haas et al., 2020, Nasrallah, 2020). This research illustrates vast individual differences in the ways in which adults process political information and engage in political decision making. Although similar research with adolescents has not been attempted to our knowledge, such inquiries would shed light on the specific and complex processes involved in adolescents’ decisions around elections and politics. Political neuroscience focused on adolescents could help the field, and the public, move beyond assumptions that adolescents lack maturity for voting and may reveal that individual differences between voters of a similar age are larger than group differences between adult and adolescent voters.

Developmental science supports a determination that adolescents have the capacities required to engage appropriately in the voting process. As reviews of the state of the evidence have articulated, teenagers demonstrate levels of political knowledge, interest, and action that are reasonably comparable to the levels of young adults (Eichhorn and Bergh, 2019; Wray-Lake and Oosterhoff, 2021). One study compared the political reasoning of adolescents ages 16–17 and adults on the issue of lowering the voting age. Using an established method from cognitive science to quantify the cognitive complexity of arguments, the study found that adolescents showed more integrative complexity (i.e., incorporating multiple perspectives into one’s judgment) and more elaborative complexity (i.e., providing multiple reasons to support one’s judgment) compared to adults (Oosterhoff et al., 2022). Other studies have found that young people are better at discerning fake news online than adults (Guess et al., 2019) and seek and remember more political information than older adults (Lau and Redlawsk, 2008). There are likely other cognitive tasks related to voting on which adults outperform adolescents, such as tasks building upon accumulated political knowledge (Wray-Lake and Oosterhoff, 2021). Even if there were consensus on the importance of certain capacities such as political knowledge for voting, there are numerous ways to measure political knowledge, and adolescents’ and adults’ assessed competencies vary depending on which measurement is adopted (Hart and Youniss, 2018). Moreover, there is in fact no level or type of knowledge or capacity required for adults to vote, and evidence suggests that if any such capacity test were imposed, many adults would likely fail the test, given vast variability in adults’ political knowledge and political reasoning as well as their susceptibility to influence by others (Riccards, 2018). Most importantly, any such knowledge or capacity requirement would violate the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and a denial of the right to vote to anyone, including adolescents, on that ground is unjustified (Grover, 2011).

That said, some of the most compelling sources of evidence for adolescents’ civic capacities come not from any developmental experiment but from their actual demonstration of these capacities through civic engagement. Examples abound in the research literature and in the public eye of adolescents who are actively engaged in building community resources, helping others in their community in sustained ways, challenging injustices in their schools and communities, and organizing and leading movements that lead to local or larger-scale policy change. For instance, Black boys and young men have exhibited transformative agency by collectively working to challenge anti-Black racism and advocate for change in school and community policies (Turner, 2021). And youth led the March for our Lives Movement, even using their status as adolescents to demand an end to gun violence in schools. This movement has registered thousands of voters and has led policymakers to work toward gun control legislation (Bent, 2019). Adolescents have successfully employed a broad range of strategies to engage in social change, which can range from influencing individuals to improving communities or advocating for national or global policy changes (Ho et al., 2015). The same forms of activism by 18–20-year-olds in protest of the Vietnam War played a role in garnering support for the constitutional amendment lowering the voting age to 18, along with the recognition that 18-year-olds were being drafted to fight in the War.

Extending the right to vote to 16- and 17-year-olds is also well supported by its impact on ongoing development. Research from countries that have lowered the voting age, such as Austria, Estonia, and elsewhere, demonstrates that people who vote at younger ages have a higher-than-expected voter turnout rate years later and have increased political knowledge, interest, and efficacy (Eichhorn and Bergh, 2019). This international evidence base suggests substantial benefits to young people in terms of their civic development and specifically their enhanced capacity to participate in civic life over the long term. Because civic participation is highly valued by democratic nations such as the U.S., lowering the voting age should be recognized as a welcome reform because it expands the range of those represented in elections and because it fosters civic learning and instills voting habits that may lead to better voter turnout across citizens’ lives.

The benefits of extending voting rights to adolescents seem clear, and it is difficult to conjure developmental harms that would be imposed by this extension. We might worry, as some evidence suggests, that some young people may choose not to vote, given a lack of investment in the system that can arise among youth who see the government as dysfunctional and failing to meet their needs and interests (Brady et al., 2020), but this would reduce the developmental benefit rather than impose an additional harm. Some argue that expanding voting rights to adolescents will lead to the reduction of legal protections afforded to children at or above the new voting age (Baird Silbaugh, 2020). For example, when the voting age was lowered to 18, child support obligations that used to extend through children’s college years were terminated at age 18. This concern takes us back to the central point of this paper: namely that our application of developmental science to law and policy must be nuanced and tailored to the particular issues at stake. Although many rights have been traditionally tied to a single “majority” age, there is no such requirement in law and, in fact, the law draws different age lines (compare, for example, a driving age of 16 and a drinking age of 21) in different contexts. Nor does developmental science endorse a universal age of majority, as determinations of rights and responsibilities must be placed in the context of the specific demands and potential benefits and harms that are implicated by assigning these rights and responsibilities. There is no reason that granting voting rights at younger ages should lead to lessened protections for adolescents in other legal and social contexts where the issues presented are importantly distinct.

From a human rights perspective, lowering the voting age aligns with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, Article 12, which protects children’s right to express their views in matters that affect them and provides that their views should be given weight according to their age and maturity (United Nations, 1989). Voting itself is a fundamental human right, recognized as a central aspect of “the right to take part in the government of [one’s] country, directly or through freely chosen representatives,” set out in Article 21 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (United Nations, 1948). From a human rights perspective, young people deserve a voice in issues that most affect them, and voting is one clear way to exercise these rights. Applying this human rights perspective, adolescents should be afforded the right to vote at an earlier age unless developmental and neuroscience research on youth capacities argues persuasively against it.

5 Discussion

We have summarized the ways in which overly simplistic characterizations of adolescents’ brain development and maturity impact popular and public policy discussions about adolescents’ autonomy rights, focusing on the examples of reproductive and voting rights. We argue that a more nuanced consideration of the most recent developmental science, including both developmental and neuroscientific evidence, supports adolescents’ ability to engage in the deliberative decisions inherent in both reproductive health and voting decisions. A human rights perspective also supports the expansion of adolescents’ rights. We conclude by offering suggestions for developmental and neuroscientists on how to discuss adolescent development in ways that counteract the oversimplification of the science and for future research directions to inform policy decisions on adolescents’ rights.

5.1 Discussing adolescent development with policymakers

We recommend that developmental scientists avoid using simplified, dichotomous frames such as “all gas pedal/no brake pedal” and broad statements such as “the brain is not fully mature until age 25” and correct these when we hear them in academic or public contexts. There is a growing shift in the description of the developing brain from simple dual system models of cognitive and emotive brain systems to circuit-based accounts of development and function that may account for nuanced, yet significant, differences in the capacities of children relative to adolescents, adolescents relative to young adults, and young adults relative to older adults (Casey et al., 2016, Casey et al., 2020). A more nuanced characterization would be that adolescents generally are able to make decisions comparable to adults’ when they are given time to consider their options, complete and accurate information, and social support to work through their decisions. This nuanced characterization would also acknowledge that the conditions under which it is challenging for adolescents to make decisions or to inhibit impulses are those that are immediate, highly emotional, and occur in the presence of peers. It is helpful to give specific examples to illustrate this more nuanced discussion. As one example, negotiating condom use in the heat of intimacy may be challenging because of the emotions and the involvement of a peer. In contrast, choosing to use a contraceptive method that does not require action in the heat of the moment is a deliberative decision that adolescents are prepared to make. A worthwhile endeavor for the field of adolescent development would be to develop intuitive language that better captures the nuance of adolescent brain development and the context dependency of decision making. While catchy, phrases such as “all gas pedal, no brake pedal” and “hot and cold cognition” lend themselves to oversimplification. A more qualified invocation of such metaphors may still be helpful, but they should never substitute for a more careful and nuanced account of adolescents’ neurodevelopment and its relevance to the legal or policy issues at hand. Just as the field of early childhood has clarified core concepts in early brain development and their policy implications, the field of adolescence can do the same (Center on the Developing Child, n.d.). The Center for the Developing Adolescent has initiated this work through its report, The Core Science of Adolescent Development (Center for the Developing Adolescent, n.d.). We recommend building on this work by developing specific talking points and language about adolescents’ maturity and competence to use in discussions with policymakers around issues of adolescents’ rights.

Developmental scientists are also in a strong position to suggest ways that policy and practice can create environments that support adolescents’ decision making. For example, providing comprehensive sex education ensures that adolescents are informed before they face decisions about sex and supports their ability to fully exercise their decision-making skills. Ensuring that adolescents have confidential time with their health care provider during visits is a longstanding best practice recommendation in pediatrics that offers one source of social support as adolescents take on increasing responsibility for their own health care, including the making of reproductive health-related decisions (Ford et al., 2004). Similarly, structured civic education provides a forum where many different ideas can be expressed and where adolescents can gain information and experience to prepare them to exercise their right to vote.

Finally, in educating policymakers about developmental science, scientists should be mindful of the limitations, gaps, and biases that have shaped research to date. Neuroscience research has historically largely reflected small and homogeneous samples of participants and has had limited ability to integrate social context into its protocols (Falk et al., 2013). Existing neuroscientific evidence cannot be assumed to generalize to the total population of adolescents and their experiences but must be considered alongside behavioral, sociological, legal, and epidemiological evidence to arrive at policy conclusions. Further, in large part inspired by a well-motivated interest in protecting youth from harm, particularly in the juvenile justice system, deficit-based stereotypes and understandings of adolescents have guided the research questions that are studied and most well-supported by funding agencies. There is relatively less research support – neuroscientific or otherwise – examining adolescents’ strengths and capabilities. More recently, neuroscientific research is starting to embrace a more balanced view of young people (Casey et al., 2020; Galvan, 2021), demonstrating ways that the existing research can be framed and expanded.

5.2 Age demarcation

A common question a developmental scientist might hear from a policymaker is, “At what age are adolescents mature enough to do X?”. A more extreme challenge might come in the form of “So you are arguing that 10-year-olds should be able to [vote, access reproductive health services]?”. Developmental scientists understand that specific age is a relatively weak marker of cognitive competencies and neural development. Given the nuanced and complex developmental systems at play during adolescence, and the variability across individuals and contexts, research will never yield developmental information tightly tied to specific ages. And yet the law must often draw a line somewhere. Our call for more nuanced application of developmental and neuroscience is not meant to suggest the work is over for law and policy makers in determining where lines should be drawn. Where a developmental argument could be made that the voting age should be lowered dramatically, policy makers might sensibly conclude that taking a conservative approach, and only lowering the voting age by two years, at least initially, would allow for productive experimentation and an opportunity to observe the anticipated benefits some suggest the age-lowering predicts. Moreover, any existing age demarcations in policy should continue to be re-examined if and when new scientific evidence emerges, especially given their loose correspondence with complex developmental growth.

In the context of reproductive health care, however, the developmental research may support abandoning an age-line altogether. In this context, the need for contraception and abortion services is rare among young adolescents. Fewer than 1 % of youth ages 13 and under have ever had sex, and a substantial proportion of those who have may be in abusive situations that warrant separate, serious consideration. Where an adolescent, regardless of age, seeks reproductive health care when they are sexually active, however, the adolescent is making a deliberative decision that in itself demonstrates decision making capacity. Further, despite frequently voiced public concerns to the contrary, evidence clearly indicates that providing access to sexual health information and services does not hasten sexual initiation or increase sexual frequency or number of partners (Dreweke, 2019; Wang, 2018).

5.3 Human rights

We encourage developmental scientists to embrace a human rights framework to guide research with direct policy implications and to inform research that seeks to optimize human development. It is not unscientific to conduct research with a foundational belief that all individuals deserve basic human rights, nor to connect our scientific findings to existing human rights frameworks (Ruck et al., 2016). We have argued that researchers should use a human rights framework as a starting point for guiding research questions and interpreting research evidence. Although human rights, and particularly the human rights set out in the Convention on the Rights of the Child, extend beyond autonomy rights to address rights of survival, protection, and development, our focus here is limited to autonomy rights. Such a focus means starting from an affirmative assumption that young people should have the right to bodily autonomy and societal participation, unless research demonstrates that relevant capacities are insufficient or points to long-term harms that outweigh any developmental benefits. The same approach should apply to an analysis of other autonomy rights.

5.4 Future directions for developmental neuroscience research

Both developmental and neuroscientific research can inform policy. Neuroscience research is most useful in shaping policies addressing adolescents’ rights when presented alongside relevant, contextualized behavioral work. Importantly, the use of developmental science in criminal law developed in this same way, beginning with the behavioral research and then extending into neuroscience. Overreliance on basic, decontextualized neuroscience can lead to oversimplified interpretations and misuses such as those discussed in the opening of this article. Looking at one slice of evidence will never give us a full picture of age-related capacities. We need holistic understandings of adolescents’ biopsychosocial development and longitudinal research that considers how contexts and experiences shape youth’s developmental trajectories.

That said, future neuroscience research can be designed to better inform policy addressing youths’ autonomy rights. For example, most of the existing brain research that informs policy is experimental and cross-sectional. Longitudinal research that maps adolescents’ brain development over time and links developmental changes to behavior and decision-making would further illustrate when and how brain development shapes adolescents’ decisions or actions across different domains, how experience shapes brain development, and to what extent these processes are rooted in individual differences rather than common patterns of development across youth in general. The Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study, for example, is taking a longitudinal and relatively more context-informed approach to understanding brain development (Luciana et al., 2023). That said, this study is notably focused on the development of substance use, a problem behavior, and other data sources may be necessary to undertake research in relation to youth rights.

Further scientific research can also help move policymakers away from excessive attention to the issue of capacity, which eludes any simple categorization, and toward a better understanding of the developmental impact of various rights. In addition, to formulate research questions and designs that are most informative to policy considerations, scientists should seek out collaborations with lawyers to develop research that addresses the unique developmental issues implicated in these distinct legal contexts. Just as the developmental and neuroscientific research on adolescents was developed with attention to the relevant legal questions addressed in the criminal law, so research should be developed with attention to the legal questions pressed in the context of autonomy rights.

It is our hope that a more careful and comprehensive study of the relevant developmental issues will ensure that policy makers can gain wisdom, rather than oversimplified sound bites, from the developmental and neuroscientific research.

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Laura Wray-Lake: Writing – review & editing, Writing – original draft, Conceptualization. Emily Buss: Writing – review & editing, Writing – original draft, Conceptualization. Julie Maslowsky: Writing – review & editing, Writing – original draft, Conceptualization.

Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
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