Quote Originally Posted by Poptart View Post
Ugh, yes I got that impression too. Her van was decorated with flowers and shit lol.

Also, it’s kind of funny that Gabby is trying to become an influencer and monetize an anti-capitalist lifestyle where you minimize consumption, live off the grid, give up your 9-5 job, practice yoga in the desert, etc. She’s not the first to do this—van life vlogs became over saturated a long time ago on YouTube. She probably saw those videos and thought it would be a fun way to make money and a romantic trip with her boyfriend. I have trouble blaming her for that.

Also, someone call @Braingel because here’s a perfect example of people over 18 not acting like adults.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2779518/

The heightened importance of peer influence is a hallmark of adolescent psychosocial functioning (Brown, 2004). Peer pressure is commonly invoked in discussions of adolescent misbehavior and is implicated in many accounts of adolescent risk taking, because most risky behavior in which adolescents engage, such as delinquency, substance use, and reckless driving, takes place in the company of peers (Chassin et al., 2004; Simons-Morton, Lerner, & Singer, 2005). Although studies of homophily (the tendency for individuals to affiliate with like-minded friends) during adolescence have yielded different estimates of the relative importance of selection versus socialization as contributors to behavioral and attitudinal similarity between adolescents and their friends (Brown, 2004), there is little doubt that peers actually influence each other and that the effects of peer influence are stronger during adolescence than in adulthood. Indeed, one recent experimental study found that exposure to peers during a risk-taking task doubled the amount of risky behavior among middle adolescents, increased it by 50% among college undergraduates, and had no impact at all among adults (Gardner & Steinberg, 2005).
https://www.npr.org/templates/story/...ryId=141164708

I'm Tony Cox and this is TELL ME MORE from NPR News. Michel Martin is away. We'd like to spend this part of the program talking about the passage from childhood to adulthood and how that may be tougher for one distinct group of young people.Most of the privileges and responsibilities of adulthood are legally granted by the age of 18. That's when you can vote, enlist in the military, move out on your own, but is that the true age of maturity? A growing body of science says, no. That critical parts of the brain involved in decision-making are not fully developed until years later at age 25 or so.
In a moment, we'll hear about how child advocates are hoping to use this research to change the laws about their foster care. But first, to learn more about adolescent brain development and maturity, we are joined now by neuroscientist, Sandra Aamodt. She is the coauthor of the book, "Welcome to Your Child's Brain: How the Mind Grows from Conception to College."
DR. SANDRA AAMODT: It's nice to be here.COX: Is this idea that the brains of 18 year olds aren't fully developed a matter of settled science?
AAMODT: Yes. The car rental companies got to it first, but neuroscientists have caught up and brain scans show clearly that the brain is not fully finished developing until about age 25.
COX: To not be too clinical in the spin that we put on this, what parts of the brain are we talking about and what changes happen between the ages of 18 and, let's say, 25?
AAMODT: So the changes that happen between 18 and 25 are a continuation of the process that starts around puberty, and 18 year olds are about halfway through that process. Their prefrontal cortex is not yet fully developed. That's the part of the brain that helps you to inhibit impulses and to plan and organize your behavior to reach a goal.
And the other part of the brain that is different in adolescence is that the brain's reward system becomes highly active right around the time of puberty and then gradually goes back to an adult level, which it reaches around age 25 and that makes adolescents and young adults more interested in entering uncertain situations to seek out and try to find whether there might be a possibility of gaining something from those situations.
COX: So this is important. Are the physiological changes in the brain, in terms of the development of young people, as significant and impactful as the cultural changes and environmental changes that they go through vis-a-vis peer pressure things of that sort?
AAMODT: Well, actually, one of the side effects of these changes in the reward system is that adolescents and young adults become much more sensitive to peer pressure than they were earlier or will be as adults.
So, for instance, a 20 year old is 50 percent more likely to do something risky if two friends are watching than if he's alone.