What would society be like if there was no age of consent?
Posted: Wed Aug 19, 2026 1:25 am
What would society be like if there was no age of consent at all? Would it be the same as now?
I can't really imagine how different it would be.
I believe that much of the way our society is built is reliant on hierarchical age structures. Age determines the sort of responsibility you have; it can determine the opportunities you get access to; it can determine your status and authority, etc. The age of consent ties heavily into youth rights and liberation, and its continued existence is either a symptom of or cause of society's general desire to deprive younger people of various rights to the benefit of older people. Assuming the age of consent never existed, society would likely have developed in an incredibly different fashion, as it would not be able to so easily coast age hierarchy as a platform to develop outwards from.
This is why, I think, that people feel so strongly about the age of consent. Everything they think of when it comes to age — such as deploying restrictions and control on youth — is centered around there being an age where they can finally do "adult" things. If people had to stop thinking about the age of consent, there's so many aspects of society ingrained that would need to be recontextualized.