My experience with undergrad was that most of my classmates were living away from their parents for the first time and their parents were paying for their school. So it's a situation with almost total freedom and very little responsibility. Not exactly real life experience.

Kids that I've known that were out on their own even at 16 have had a unique demeanor. Probably they could be perceived as very mature for their age, but I think there was some real trauma, as well, and mostly at that age were (just like their college-educated counterparts) busy getting established as adults with careers and shit, even if they were having to do it the hard way.

All that to say yeah, a lot of college-educated folks view it through that lens, but in general the vast majority of the time a person isn't fully cooked at 22 either way.

no it's a fair question. I'm not trying to inherently tie it to that, just using it as an age ballpark based on my personal experience because most people in my country attend college as soon as they finish high school. I've simply never had to make a judgement like this with someone who wasn't in education. if someone didn't go to college my line would be the same... purely anecdotally I went on a date with a 20yo when I was 23 and decided I would never do that again... wasn't a morality thing! we just had very little in common. and I'm older now.

it's not the college that makes the difference, it's just being Not A Highschooler for a few years in my view. obviously there's no numerical line we can point at, all I really wanted to say is that I think, at least given our current sociological environment, 19 is too young to be dating a 30yo. someone who dodged college would be getting presumably just as rich of an expanded life experience (probably more so in plenty of cases), my point is just that at 19 I think most folks are basically still a high schooler and very socially stunted. I just think a bit of a "learning actual independence" grace period is needed after high school, not saying it should be mandated by law just that's the way I see it. a couple of years.

once 20s hit things change, fwiw I was just stating my personal view of who I would date there, not trying to say the age of consent should be 24 lol. "real adult" was meant to be tongue in cheek but it may have come across wrong. I should have been more clear about that, and also that it wasn't the education at all that was the key factor, just the few years of escape from high school/true independence.

so yeah, sorry if I was like, painting everyone with the broad brush of having gone to college, that was a little narrow-minded, I was just using it as a catchall for age demos but I probably shouldn't do that. i also can acknowledge I have some Catholic brainworms on this issue broadly that I probably should try to work out before seriously discussing it in future. raising the age of consent is probably regressive in some ways in reality and I don't advocate for it... but I also think until capitalism goes in the trash can and our social structures and mores get some revolutionary overhauls, it's a challenging topic to approach and discuss in a revolutionary mindset. hope that makes sense. +sorry it's kinda a jumbled mess of thoughts.