Seventeen is a young adult, not a child.
Eventually the media and government want to infantilize the entire population, and thereby justify 'protecting' us from ALL dangers real and imagined.
One of my personal favorites is that the courts have basically held that absent advice from an attorney versed in immigration law, an illegal alien would have no idea that committing and being convicted of criminal offenses might actually get him deported. (As if being here illegally weren't enough by itself.)