Should the voting age be changed from eighteen to sixteen in the U.S. as some people are suggesting it should be today? It definitely took me quite a bit of time to figure out where I stood on this controversial topic. After weighing all the options, I believe that sixteen-year-olds should not be allowed to vote.

There’s a concern that teenagers are not responsible enough to vote and it’s not unfounded. This generation has not proven to be very responsible. A lot of the articles I read on the topic were talking about how it’s not fair that sixteen-year-olds can’t vote and how this is age discrimination. I don’t agree with that at all. All those articles were written by adults who didn’t even bother to ask teenagers what their thoughts were.

All of the many teenagers I spoke to about this topic think it’s a bad idea to let sixteen year olds vote. The teenagers I polled immediately responded with something along the lines of, “No, we should not be able to vote at sixteen.” Another popular response I received was that teens would just mirror their parents’ vote.

People are taking this way too far. Teenagers shouldn’t have to add voting to their busy schedules. At sixteen, you are able to start driving, work, pay taxes, and still have school to worry about. They really don’t have time to research the candidates and what they stand for.

Eighteen is a perfect age to start voting. We don’t need to lower the age limit because some adults think it’s “age discrimination.” There are plenty of privileges that have higher age limits in this country without much controversy.

There are many teenagers that are more than responsible enough to vote, but as a whole it would not benefit our country to treat them all like the minority of responsible sixteen year olds.