Can confirm. My life has really dramatically changed for the better once I finished schooling and got a job. While in school (and uni) I felt a lot of ennui - it went away after I got tasked with doing real things that actually matter. Of course, not long after that I learned how imperfect the "grownup" world actually is, and some of the bad feelings came back - but it was still better than being in the infantilised state.

> For almost the entirety of human history, 12 was old enough to get a job and look after a family.

And a lot of those kids ended badly, exploited and literally had no future. The people who could afford it, did not had their 12 years old working in factories nor being responsible for "looking after a family".

In good times in family farms, the kids contributed to work basically from 5 years old (and yes, 5 years old had higher incidents rates then they have now). But they were not treated as adults at 12 at all.

> For almost the entirety of human history, 12 was old enough to get a job and look after a family.

Pretty sure the point of progress in society is to avoid repeating historical ills just because we did them in the past

> The anomie that teenagers experience is a result of them having nothing meaningful to do.

This is only true when you define "meaningful" as "wage slavery".

I grew up in East Germany and we were given lots of opportunity - no pressure, don't claim "child work evil communism" - to work early, for example during holidays. It was a great time every time I could work in actual factories. The bottling part of a brewery, sausage factory, a chemical fiber plant, assembling stuff, various jobs. One of my grandmothers had a SERO collection shop, which was were all kinds of reusable materials from paper to all kinds of bottles (all standardized across the country) were collected for a small reward. Some of the best times I had was when my grandmother gave me some real responsibilities in her shop, including managing the money. I was just above ten. At home my grandfather was a craftsman and I started helping with painting early on too, not at work, just around the home. Helping with real adult work, as in "jobs kind of stuff" and not just chores, especially when I could do it in a real work environment and even get paid, was just the best. I think children like getting adult responsibilities at least as much if not more so than even the best play time. It's a different part of your self that is addressed, if its missing I think one will be less complete. It's conjecture, but I think less shelter and more real responsibilities, including actual "command" over others on a small scale helps tremendously with personal growth. Maybe the opposite tends to create more drones that fit in very well and are easy to work with from a top-down loving boss point of view (more conjecture)?

Now, much older, getting more command and responsibilities does nothing for my ego, I pass unless I think it's actually necessary for the company (of which I own a share). But as a child every bit of "adult level" responsibility, especially in a work environment, was bliss.