Should the voting age be 16?

Young people are easily influenced and manipulated

Question: Should the voting age be 16?
Position‹3 of 3: No, the age requirement should be raised
Argument‹4 of 4: Young people are easily influenced and manipulated

As seen in social media and other forms of online content, young people can too easily be taken advantage of to be entrusted with this right.

The argument

We live in a world full of ads, influencers and promotions, and this argument holds that the youngest potential voters are the least insulated from it. In such a "razzle dazzle" society, persuasion arrives constantly and is designed to work without being noticed — which is precisely the kind of pressure that experience and settled judgement are needed to resist. Proponents point to evidence about adolescent development in support of the claim. Harvard Magazine has stated that the impact of technology "leaves teens easily influenced by their environment and more prone to impulsive behavior". Both halves of that description bear on voting. Susceptibility to environment means the views a young person expresses may be those of whatever they have most recently encountered rather than conclusions they have worked out; impulsivity means the decision is more likely to be taken quickly and on immediate appeal. Applied to an election, that yields votes cast on the wrong grounds — following advertising, following whichever candidate celebrities picked, or following whichever candidate a parent selected. None of those is the voter's own judgement about the country's interests, and a ballot cast that way carries exactly the same weight as one cast after careful consideration. The conclusion proponents draw is not that young people's interests do not matter, but that the franchise presupposes some capacity to weigh competing claims independently of whoever is pressing hardest. If that capacity is still developing, extending the vote further down the age range adds precisely the voters most easily reached by manipulation. Because young people are easily influenced and manipulated, the argument holds, the voting age should not be lowered to sixteen; if anything the age requirement should be raised.

Premises

[P1]Young people live in a world of ads, influencers and promotions that makes them easily manipulated. [P2] Research cited by Harvard Magazine finds technology leaves teens easily influenced and prone to impulsive behaviour. [P3] They are therefore more likely to vote based on ads, celebrities or their parents' choices rather than their own judgement. [C] Therefore, because young people are easily influenced and manipulated, the voting age should be raised, not lowered.

Counter-arguments

Although it may be true that many teens are easily influenced, they are able to see and discover many different aspects of politics through social media and people they know and see everyday. By being involved in politics early, they can learn and grow from mistakes they make in voting early on in order to find their political stance sooner rather than later.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Young minds are not easily influenced. [Rejecting P2] Education about the votes also comes through technology.