If the World Were Run by Children

What would the world be like if everybody remained as minors (seventeen and younger)? Would the world be a better place, or would it fall in a matter of years? There are many possibilities, and odds are we would probably last longer as a species if we did not advance beyond a certain age.

There is a new show on CBS called Kid Nation, which examines what a country would be like if it were run only by children. In my scenario, relatively older teenagers are present as well, instead of just children, and it is the world, not just one nation, that is consumed by the young. Also, in my scenario, people would die at an average of seventy six years old (assuming the society was run correctly), but they would not progress past the general age of seventeen.

I said earlier that we would last longer if only minors ran the planet. Why is this? Let us start with the environment. Young people, in general, are more aware of environmental problems and would likely have better control over pollution control. Also, assuming advanced technology (that created pollution, such as cars) of the present was available when the scenario occurred (as opposed to humanity starting out in this predicament), the kids would just exhaust it until it was no more, as they would unlikely be able to reproduce or invent new machines. Eventually, the world would turn into a nature-dependent, semi-technological place, and pollution and other similar problems would naturally disappear.

The next part is war. First of all, all ammunition and weapons would soon be exhausted by natural testing, and the further manufacture of ammunition would be near impossible based on the level of knowledge needed to manufacture things. Therefore, war, if it broke out, would be primitive and ineffective. Also, the causes of war such as money, invasion, tyranny, and oil most likely would not be present, therefore causing war to not be present.

You may be wondering, if technology would eventually become absent, how would the youth survive? The answer is simple, the instinct to survive. Humans would adapt as they always had, except backwards, into a more nature-dependent mode. Previous buildings would still be utilized, but electrical and technological integration would decrease heavily. It is possible that the youth would be able to study the machines of the past and keep the vast majority of technology intact, but ultimately some would be lost. The bottom line is that war would decrease, the stability of the environment would increase, and the dependency on the resources of nature would increase in the scenario.