Teenagers Voting Rights Of Sixteen-Year-Olds

Teenagers are society’s punching bags.

Whether it’s the media, the general public, or even other members of their own peer group, nobody seems to give adolescents any credit. For a long time, I was frustrated with these attitudes but was unable to make a public statement about them -- that is, until I formed my own PAC to advocate for the voting rights of sixteen and seventeen-year-olds within my city. This all began in December 2014, when I read an article by Neil Howe on Forbes.com about the traits of the generation that would be born after the Millennials. Since opinions differ on the start date of that cohort, I could be part of it. Sixteen-year-olds like me who were born in ‘99 would be included in the “Generation Z” version, which
How could he have the gall to predict that? I wondered. If he’s making this claim about American children as a whole, shouldn’t he adjust for factors of ethnic background, socioeconomic status, and geography? I learned that Howe was responsible for revitalizing “generational analysis” in the American professional sphere with the start of his consulting firm, LifeCourse Associates. Knowing that Howe was making monetary gains by disseminating generalized and unfalsifiable information about a young generation made me angry. Social analysts like Howe should include information about children of all upbringings in their reports, or not issue reports at all. In fact, I struggled with writing an essay about this topic because I couldn’t decide the scope of the argument (Should I go back to Howe’s 1992 book Generations? Or the original 1923 “The Problem of Generations” essay by Karl Mannheim?). It was while I was googling publications which accepted articles from minors that I discovered the Teens for Teens PAC, created by a fifteen-year-old in Southern
In Howe’s world, teens are walking products, consumers, and advertising space. Their representation matters only in regard to how much exposure or revenue they can net for an interested party. Therefore, it’s no wonder that LifeCourse Associates and other consulting firms make so many sweeping statements about adolescents: whether the institutions who purchase their reports decide to call us idiots or innovators, so-called generational analyses can be used to support either narrative regardless.

On the other hand, allowing sixteen and seventeen-year-olds to vote in their local elections gives them the power to represent themselves as members of their community. As real people, they are influenced by their families, neighborhoods, and life experiences, not just consumerist trends (as some would have you believe). Teen suffrage is not just a moral imperative, either; it actually works. In the 2013 Takoma Park, MD elections, 44% of registered sixteen and seventeen-year-olds voted, quadruple the 11% overall turnout. In the 2015 Hyattsville, MD elections, 25% of registered teens voted, nearly double the 12.8% overall turnout. Currently, these two satellite municipalities of Washington DC are the first in the country to allow older teenagers to vote, but other cities (including San Francisco) may