The prefrontal cortex is not fully mature until the mid-20s, well past the legal threshold of adulthood.

At 18, legal protections end, but neurological vulnerability to AI remains high.

Universities are the last chance to build cognitive protections before true adulthood.

I have spent the last year building a case for protecting children from the worst effects of AI in schools. Whether that’s age restrictions, usage policies, tool limits, etc., the entire apparatus assumes the danger is greater for the younger users and decreases as the child matures toward adolescence. By 18, these protections are largely removed because the law determines you are now an adult. Thus, you're now on your own.

How Brain Development Continues Beyond Age 18

The developmental science says the opposite. The prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain responsible for planning, impulse control, and weighing long-term consequences, is not fully mature until the mid-20s. This is the region needed for the kind of independent decision-making and thinking a university education is supposed to build: synthesis, evaluation, judgment, and the capacity to hold two competing ideas and navigate the nuance.

Thus, the window for building higher-order cognitive capabilities begins in childhood, but continues through the 20s. Knoll and colleagues trained 633 people on relational reasoning and found that 16-........

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