The Abusive Effects of US Politics on Young Americans

As moral panic over public schools sweeps the country, teenagers make tentative steps towards re-emerging as a political subject in the United States.

US Senator Elizabeth Warren reintroduced the Youth Voting Rights Act on Friday, a bill she promised would “ease many of the barriers young people face in voting.” The draft legislation proposes a number of measures to encourage youth electoral participation, including requiring states to accept student IDs at polling places and establishing on-campus voting locations.

Amidst widespread moral panic over public education and the contents of school libraries, the bill is a small step towards making young people political subjects rather than merely objects of parental anxieties.

“Children’s oppression is the new problem that has no name,” researcher Mich Ciurria says. Ciurria is one of a handful of academics who writes on youth liberation, a movement that emerged in the US in the liberal 1970s but has been mostly dormant since. She identifies a number of ways in which young people are oppressed, in a manner similar to other marginalized groups throughout history.

“Children who complain about their lot are called spoiled and ungrateful, and are often pathologized and medicated… Their alienation is stigmatized as brattiness, ingratitude, and mental illness.”

“Today, children are in a similar position to women prior to women’s liberation.”

Psychologist Robert Epstein agrees, arguing that the “laziness” and “irresponsibility” frequently attributed to teenagers may be a response to their societal infantilization rather than inherent qualities of an “unformed teen brain.”

In one study, Epstein found that “teens in the U.S. are subjected to more than 10 times as many restrictions as are mainstream adults, twice as many restrictions as active-duty U.S. Marines, and even twice as many restrictions as incarcerated felons.”

In recent years, efforts have emerged that place young people at the center of activism, such as a movement against the so-called “troubled teen industry” of residential treatment programs that often subject kids to physical, sexual, and psychological abuse.

And activists like Greta Thunberg, Malala Yousafzai, and David Hogg have emerged as powerful voices for social change while still teenagers. Last year, 10-year-old ​​Caitlyne Gonzales became a reluctant but powerful advocate for gun law reform after suffering the trauma of seeing her classmates massacred in the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas.

“I shouldn’t have to be here speaking but my friends have no voice anymore.”

Caitlyne Gonzales, a survivor from Uvalde, shared her story today on the steps of the Texas State Capitol.

She has shown an immense amount of courage. If only Gov. Abbott could find his.#txlege pic.twitter.com/3TBJAjCGsS

— GIFFORDS (@GIFFORDS_org) February 28, 2023

In many countries throughout the world, young people have access to the ballot at age 16. Warren’s bill doesn’t go that far, although its mandated pre-registration of teenagers to vote may pave the way.

Warren would join US representatives Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) and Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) if she ultimately voices support to lower the voting age. In an era where “parental rights” and cries of “save the children” dominate conservative politics, it would be a welcome change for children to be granted some ability to save themselves.

“The problem with ‘parental rights’ is it perpetuates this idea that children are property and not autonomous human beings with their own feelings, needs and experiences,” says organizer Zara Raven. “I personally prefer to talk less about parental rights and more about youth autonomy and youth liberation.”