Young People and Politics: Should They be Involved?
I was recently reading a reddit post about a 15 year old speaking out about climate change. In the comments there was a depressing amount of people dismissing her thoughts, opinions, and arguments simply because of age (and possibly because of the topic, but most stated reasons were age). In my own opinion I think young people should have just as much consideration given to their arguments as older people, if not more. They are the ones that are going to live in the world the older generations are leaving behind, and they want to make it a good place to live in. Admittedly, I am biased towards giving her a stage. I myself am still pretty young, especially here on Tildes. Maybe I only view it this way because of that. It's hard to tell, which is why I want some other viewpoints. Do you think younger people should be given consideration, despite their age?
Of course. Everyone's opinion should matter, regardless of their physical features or age. Writing off an opinion based on the person presenting is an ad hominem attack, and a very low way to disregard someone's view.
This exact reason is what makes (in my opinion) the internet so great. There are no strings attached to your view. Who you are, where you're from, it doesn't matter. What you say does.
Young people's voice should definitely not be ignored simply due to age. That said, most teenagers have not yet formed a very nuanced view of the world and often lack wisdom and tact that sometimes come with age. However, their words should be taken and responded to on their merits rather than questioning their validity based on the generalizations of young people. If their arguments do display foolishness or naivety, then that should be addressed and explained rather than dismissing them outright.
In this case, I don't see any problem with a young person being an outspoken activist, but I'd certainly want people who have decades of demonstrated knowledge and experience to be the ones deciding actual policy details.
Herein lies a big part f the problem. When the people deciding policy are ignoring science and even rejecting it to fit their agenda we are destroying all credibility they have as leaders and destroying our children’s futures
The politicians certainly haven't demonstrated knowledge in this case. This is where we need civic-minded scientists to act as lobbyists for legislation and forward-looking legislators to work with them, not ignore them.
The myopic, alternative-facts politicians need to be voted out.
I like the way it works in my country. Voting is mandatory over 18 (though casting blank/invalid votes is okay), but you can apply to vote after 16. Since it takes some effort to apply to vote, only the teens who really care about voting will put in the effort.
Consideration be damned. Give them suffrage. Teenagers with part-time jobs pay income and payroll taxes, but get no meaningful representation in government because they aren't allowed to vote. How is that just?
I agree with this in principle but don't think it would work well under the current mode of liberal democracy. In a more decentralized world I would highly support giving each person, over say, 12, an equal say in their community. (I say over 12 because I feel anyone younger than that probably hasn't formed too many opinions of their own).
Unless you just mean bumping the voting age down to 17 or 16, that would probably be fine.
More like 14-15, which in most states is old enough to legally hold a part-time job after school and on weekends.
That's around the age most states start letting young people drive as well, at least with a temporary license.
The main problem I am thinking of right now is that it is hard enough to get 18-35 year olds out to vote, so it may be even harder to get 14-17 year olds to. Maybe younger people are more politically motivated now, though. At the very least, more people would be participating in the process, which is (ostensibly) better for our democracy, and it would give representation to people already participating in society. Additionally, it may make young people feel like they have more of a voice, and would encourage them to participate in the democratic process more. It's an interesting idea, to be sure.
I'd like to see a lower voting age paired with a renewal of civic education. Every high school student would have a comprehensive overview of the constitution as well as a course focusing on current issues before the election, and their participation in that election would be a mandatory part of their instruction. In fact, even if the voting age remained at 18, they could still tabulate the votes of students and publish the results. We could show young people the influence they can have on the government. Of course, this could only happen if we have politicians who want people to vote...
We don't exactly make it easy for young people and workers to vote, you know. Having the legal right doesn't mean much when other obstacles get in the way.
Under that reasoning, any immigrant with a work visa or permanent residency should be able to vote. I'm not against the idea of allowing all permanent residents to vote (I certainly would have liked that before I became a citizen); I just wanted to point out that there's another demographic unable to vote that are do work and pay taxes.
EDIT: Also, tying the right to vote to paying taxes through a job, even if it is used an argument for increasing the voting block and not to restrict it to tax payers only, seems... not great, to me.
I honestly don't have a problem with that.
You mean, aside from ex-convicts who have served their sentences?
Yes...?
I'm still not personally a fan of using "they pay have jobs and pay taxes" as a part of an argument for why a group of people should be able to vote, since it's pretty easy for someone else to go "well these people don't pay taxes, so why do they get to vote?" For people with felony convictions, for example, I prefer the arguments that they've paid their debt to society and lack of voting rights is a permanent punishment, and that being unable to vote harms their ability to reintegrate into society and participate in democracy.
Absolutely.
Don't get me wrong, young people are typically wrong when it comes to details. I was no different. When you're young and under-educated, you simply cannot have a truly nuanced view of an issue. Arrogance tends to run rampant. As annoying as it is, wisdom is something that comes with age and experience, and even a particularly experienced teenager will tend not to have the level of experience that someone older does.
But, young people also have an important quality that older people generally don't: optimism. They have a spark that the jaded, older parts of society don't. I firmly believe that it's important to nurture that passion and allow younger people to put that optimistic energy to good use. After all, society can only become great when the members of that society put their energy toward propelling it forward.
Should young people be deciding the actual details on policy? Hell no. But they should absolutely have a voice on the matter and be considered as seriously as anyone else.
I think with children's opinions the same rules apply as they do for adults. Most kids don't actually have anything important to say, to be honest, but if one does, we should listen. The problem, however, becomes an issue of determining if the kid has their own opinion, or if they are simply parroting their parents or responding to propaganda. I was pretty pro-George W. Bush when I was 10, because my mom was pro-Bush. That was not my opinion, but a reflection of a name I knew that was important. I was not worth listening to, as far as politics goes because I did not have a reason to vote for Bush, I just said vote for Bush.
Older people do the same thing, though. I have a great-aunt (probably one or two more greats in there) who voted for Gerald Ford because she liked his teeth. She was also somebody whose opinion could probably be discounted, at least as far as who should be president that election cycle. Age is not the main determining factor, but simply through years of living life, we become able to understand the world around us better.
While age can be an indicator of how wise or knowledgeable someone is, to use it as the only reason why someone cannot be right is not an argument. Without context, it's hard to say whether what was happening was an outright dismissal based on age (which is wrong and an indicator of someone who has a poor understanding of the knowledge in question) or whether the person who was younger was unable to understand the realities of what they were proposing due to a lack of experience and that was being pointed out because the older individuals could not adequately explain their experience (or, alternatively they were able to explain it, but the younger individuals saw it as an attack on their age and not their experience).
I actually linked the reddit post in question, so if you want to see some of the comments you can try and find some. That might help with context.
Cheers, apparently I need another cup of coffee.
I just did a quick browse of the thread, and I only see people calling out this behavior you're mentioning as stupid (absent context, it absolutely is).
I didn't bother to sort by controversial, because I don't particularly care about comments that are getting a lot of down votes - its clear that people who think this way are in the minority and likely are using bad arguments in bad faith on the internet.
I do think the one person who works in climate change brings up some good points about experience vs. knowledge. He has experience and he uses it to eloquently explain why the changes proposed aren't going to have an effect. This has nothing to do with the age of the person proposing changes, and everything to do with his real world experience in climate change and how the problem is ever so much more complex than many of us could imagine.
I think 18 works as a reasonable cut-off for naïvety. There are a lot of very naïve 19 year olds, and a good deal of quite worldly 17 year olds, but you have to compromise somewhere, and I think 18 works. I don't agree with the shallow dismissal of the views of young people on the basis of their age alone, just as I wouldn't agree with the shallow dismissal of the views of elderly people - after all, not every young person is delusional, and not every elderly person is senile. That said, I don't agree with the reduction of the voting age. Majority and minority are important concepts, and it makes sense that the privilege of voting should only come with the responsibility to stand on ones own two feet.
Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, the internet somewhat changed the rules on discourse. Now everyone has a place in the discussion. But there are side effects. One is that "everyone" includes those who use rational discourse during discussion and those who will let their biases freely enter the conversation. The young will diss the old, the old will diss the elderly, and the elderly will complete the circle. And that's just the present topic of age level.
The irony is that all parties could accomplish more through rational discourse, but this isn't likely in most forums. We're seeing a great experiment today in Democracy, as all the ground rules have changed and continue to change. That's what this platform is about as well as all the existing ones.