Maturity doesn’t have a single definition so it’s hard to say, but I would say that maturity is indelibly tied to both age and experience, and that you cannot be emotionally mature with just one of those factors addressed. Age helps you better know yourself, and that in turn influences how you see others and how you internalize what you perceive of the world. Conversely, if you spend life immersed in your comfort zone and interact with only a select group of people, you won’t be worldly and/or wise enough to have a mature perspective on the world.
I think both play a factor, but a lot of it has to do with personality. I know some relatively mature 5 year-olds but that have no more experience than the other 5 year-olds. It’s just who they are.
And as asmonet says, I know some 50+ people that should really go jump off a bridge or something.
I have meet a 10 year-old with adult maturity, and a 50 year-old who has never grown up. It is also true that with knowledge comes the need for play.
I think the rate of maturity is different for everyone, and it is measured not by our experiences, but by how we use the information we learn from those experiences.
naturally, with time (age) comes experience. but i think if there was an either-or situation, experience plays a much bigger part. an older person with no experience is much less mature than a person half their age who has seen more. i definitely don’t think age causes maturity, it’s just more often associated with it because older people tend to have more experience. but obviously it’s not always the case.