Votes For Sixteen-Year-Olds

Biologists, sociologists, psychologists — basically every esoteric kind of "ist" — can argue over what defines young adulthood. That period when you're no longer a child, but also not quite an experienced grown-up. I have the correct answer — young adulthood means your blood runs hot, your brain switches off, your one-track mind can't seem to pick a direction, and you think (pretend!) that Seinfeld is funny.

For most people, this horrid period starts around fifteen and ends once you've done enough binge-drinking and shagging to mature a bit. The intervening years are an absolute disaster. I cannot understand — and this might be a cultural issue — why American high-school movies present young adulthood as the best years of one's life. This can only be true if you fail to harness them into several subsequent care-free years with actual money to spend. Disclaimer — I was a twenty-something in London before the 2008 financial crash.

I don't know if I have any teenage readers, but if I do, I'll say this: everything you're enjoying now (or hoping to enjoy soon) will be a lot better when you're doing it with confidence in a few years' time. Then again, maybe not — the kids are broke!

Worse than that, the kids know they're broke. I failed my A-levels (equivalent to the last two years of American high-school) because I bunked off, gambled, played bass, and didn't need to care. London was so full of jobs that it took me all of about three minutes to find decent employment. Some of today's kids are failing because they don't see the point in caring.

Why bother to work hard, when hard work no longer pays? A focused sixteen-year-old can ace everything, go to Cambridge, become a doctor/lawyer/engineer and still spend the next decade renting a one-bed flat in Peckham. When you're sixteen, you start to really look at the vast expanse of adult life ahead of you, and if you see yourself living pay cheque to pay cheque, you shrink from it instead of embracing it. You turn inwards and your potential — to produce, innovate, and contribute — withers. If the British economy is to solidify and stay strong, the most important thing isn't stable banks or incentives for tech CEOs to move here, it's optimism among teenagers.

A good start is giving teenagers a sense of control over their own destinies. For that reason, the Labour government's decision to enfranchise sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds is an excellent idea. I know this opens up a few cans of worms. Not least of all, the elephant-in-the-room fact that it's hard enough to get eighteen-year-olds to turn out and vote, let alone a cohort two years younger. But perhaps, a larger combined cohort of very young adults will encourage a political party to target them with suitably attractive policies?

One of those policies ought to be redefining (or finally defining) when adulthood begins. We have a weird patchwork of legislation that defines the minimum age for certain activities. You can join the army at sixteen, but you can't drive until you're seventeen, or buy alcohol until you're eighteen. The age at which you can buy cigarettes and leave compulsory education has risen in recent years, but the age of consent is always on the cusp of lowering. Although having said that, you won't be able to marry until you're eighteen unless your parents allow it. None of this makes sense. Either a person is an adult who is capable of making their own choices, or they are not.

I realize that hot-blooded, brain-dead, sex-mad (but usually unfulfilled) sixteen-year-olds don't look like adults. But we need to accept that they are, and that any poor choices they make are part of life's process. When you think about another "immaturity" episode, motorbike dealerships don't revoke adulthood from middle-aged men who show up sporting ponytails, and asking for a Harley-Davidson large enough to fit a recently impregnated secretary on the back. Adulthood comes in many shades. None of them need Seinfeld.