While I'm not particularly in favor of age-of-consent laws setting such high bars as they do in most states, I suspect that this particular environment selected for a significantly higher-than-average degree of emotional maturity for that age range.

I would suggest that our teens would be better off if adults would offer them guidance in how to handle sexual relations responsibly, given the exceptional potential they can hold for interpersonal strife, rather than simply declaring them off-limits until a certain age and then assuming they're mature enough to conduct themselves responsibly, except that it occurs to me that most adults probably aren't competent to offer good advice on the subject even if they were willing to discuss such matters with teenagers.