Social maturity

This morning my wife and I were talking about social maturity during our breakfast. Our younger son just turned 13 a week ago. We think he is still very young. Every morning when I try to wake him up, I enjoy looking at his innocent face. Sometimes he makes excuses to sleep a bit more. He even might get bad tempered, but still he shows his childish character which is adorable. I cannot believe he has reached an age to get married or go to war! Mentioning these examples might seem odd, but it is true. Not very long ago (30 years ago or so) we faced to such things around of us. Speaking of which, my wife said a real story which was shocking: when she was just a 9 or 10 year-old child in a primary school, one of her classmates got married. She even was invited to this wedding party with her parents. She said, it was like a birthday party to me. They were living in a slum area. The groom was around 13 years old, exactly the same as our son. It seems unbelievable now, still true though. Nowadays most people have reached to this conclusion that marriage in an early age is inappropriate. However, this is not my main concern here. My argument is that the youth are more dependent now. They depend on their parents, their friends, their schools or universities, even on their gadgets! More than it used to be in the old times. It is peculiar because the youth's knowledge have definitely increased, thanks to the internet and accessible informative devices. The society feels the youth are less independent. This is another paradoxical dimension of the new world: more knowledge, less abilities. Am I right?