Would giving 16-year-olds the vote improve democracy or just change the way campaigns are run?

My standpoint is going to be on lowering the voting age in the UK from 18 years old to 16 years old. I think that the British legal of the United Kingdom voting age should be lowered due to the fact that different sides of parliament present different ideas that may benefit older people or adults. I think that if we introduce teenagers to the voting system, we can get different types of votes for different sides of parliament. Teenager would have more modern views and would have new opinions on what is right or wrong; they may also be able to take in lots of different people’s opinions because of social media they can get good views and information from the social networks.

On the other hand, these teenagers may be influenced by false information they have found on social media or online, this may then spread misinformation. This is then a valid point because there could be a rumour saying, ‘So and so is actually lying’. This could then heavily influence many teenagers’ opinions.

An example of a country that has lowered its voting age is Austria, this country has got a very good, stable economy that has proved that having 16-year-olds vote is not a problem and this country has made having 16-year-olds vote work, why can’t we.

Something that I think we could try is a simulation vote where we pick out 10,000 teenagers at random, from all across the country and we then have them vote but then the people at the mock voting menu would then ask them what has influenced their vote and most importantly, why they have voted for this candidate. We then gather up all their responses and think if they make sense and are they logical.

To summarise my standpoint, I think that we should lower the voting age to 16 in the UK because we can get new diverse votes and opinions from a younger generation and many more generations to come.