Beyond legal definitions, at which point are your children truly adults? When they decide? When you do?

James Murray, father of Ben, the 19-year-old Bristol University student who killed himself last month, is asking for the relaxation of data protection laws that prevent parents from being alerted about students with mental health issues.

Ben had problems with anxiety and was set to leave Bristol without his family being fully aware of his struggles. The university is now implementing an “opt-in” student contract that allows for next of kin to be contacted – Ben’s father wants such contracts to be “opt-out”. He has questioned how it can be that, while at school, people such as Ben are seen as children, but when they get to college, they’re considered to be adults. “What’s the difference?” he asked. “Ten weeks of summer holidays, that’s all. It’s nothing.”

What a tragedy for the Murrays and families like them. And how valuable for Ben’s father to raise the issue about the point at which a child is supposed to switch seamlessly into student life and adulthood. Many do, revelling in their autonomy. Others, like Ben, are not so fortunate.

After sundry debates (“helicopter parenting”/“umbrella parenting”/“snowflakes”), there are compelling arguments against extended parenting and the culture of adolescence without end. Don’t young people have to grow up sometime, even if it’s hard, even if they don’t want to? It’s debatable how kind it is to underprepare young people for the big, bad, high-rent, zero-hours world that couldn’t care less about nurturing them.

Still, Murray’s observation about the school holiday divide is thought-provoking. If a child stays in education, maturing is supposed to start in sixth form, although what really happens – a bit more responsibility for your studies, wearing your own clothes, enjoying a hot chocolate in the common room? At most, it’s faux maturity, a taster course in adulthood. The big leap is university (moving away; umbilical cords cut; heightened academic pressures). However, for most students, maturity won’t be accomplished on the first day – the child-adult transition is still a work in progress. Yet the law has failed to account for this vulnerability.

Is there an argument for trialling either version of the data protection contract throughout all universities? If some students take this as an affront to their independence, they could always opt out, or not opt in, as the case may be. If others see it as a signal that they don’t have to grow up, their delusions will be punctured eventually.

What matters is the third group – the ones who’d benefit from a discreet restitching of the familial safety net, if only temporarily. While most young people handle the dual shift into student/adult life perfectly well, others, for whatever reason, don’t and they deserve all the help and reassurance they can get.

Class warfare at 35,000ft? Don’t blame those in the cheap seats

Airlines are reporting a problem of people stealing goodies from first and business class. As the number who can afford to travel this way dwindles, the perks are becoming more lavish: silk pyjamas, perfume, champagne, salt and pepper pots. These include items that people are supposed to take home and others they aren’t, including “soft blankets”, of which Virgin Atlantic “mislaid” 24,000 last year, while British Airways requested that people “grab 40 winks when they fly with us, rather than (The White Company) bedding”.

You can understand why this is annoying and expensive for airlines, but does anyone care except to be delighted by the ultimate definition of first world problem? Talk about a victimless crime. Rich people are notoriously cheap, but if someone is shelling out for a first-class ticket then arguably they’re entitled to a “soft blanket” or two. Conversely, if someone from economy class manages to nick such items, like a budget-travel Raffles, then fair play to them.

I don’t normally approve of theft, but these goodies are enraging and provocative to all the people in cattle class, watching episodes of Frasier, dolefully waiting for their scalding lasagne. First-class passengers already have more leg room, horizontal beds and nicer food. Of course people are going to want to steal their free stuff. Just think of it as an airborne peasants’ uprising – Les Misérables at 35,000 feet.

In the meantime, maybe airlines should adopt the tactics of Virgin Atlantic, whose salt and pepper pots are cheekily emblazoned with the legend “Pinched from Virgin Atlantic”. A case of, if you can’t beat them, join them or at least make them flash your logo around.

Beyoncé and Jay-Z fans come for the music, not the latest on their marriage

As someone who has seen Beyoncé perform live, I envy anybody who managed to catch her and husband Jay-Z’s recent On the Run II UK shows. However, shouldn’t Beyoncé and Jay-Z consider shutting up about their marriage now? With this tour’s couple-in-crisis theme, they’re in danger of turning into stadium Relate.

We all know the score now – they fell crazy in love, they fell out, they got back together, he’d better behave from now on… Really, isn’t this becoming just as bad, as tacky, as anybody selling their life, their relationship problems, to the highest bidder?

Beyoncé’s “Angry at Jay-Z” album, Lemonade, was undoubtedly a masterpiece, but that doesn’t mean that there have to be constant updates (live, on stage!) on how they’re getting on now. Certainly, it’s no kind of substitute for the art that both of them are capable of making.

Of course, they’re entitled to draw from personal experience, but are these their only emotions and influences now? As a rule, only the talentless and desperate resort to selling their relationship woes to get attention. If Beyoncé and Jay-Z want to keep it real (not just the marriage, but also the music), they need to move on.

• Barbara Ellen is an Observer columnist