I won’t lie; when I was younger, I never thought my voice mattered much. Who was going to listen to a chubby-cheeked, loud, eccentric elementary schooler on anything? As I entered middle school, the belief walked in right with me; I was a bright-eyed middle schooler who believed I would never be able to make a difference.  

Our society believes in order to speak on something, you must hold authority over a subject. Authority, rather than education on a subject, is where we run into problems. There is a difference between prioritizing educated opinions in conversations rather than only considering “expert” opinions as valid contributions.  

Expertise is subjective, and often the ones who decide that an opinion can’t be listened to are typically opponents of said opinion (granted that the opinion doesn’t hope to take away one’s life, liberty or pursuit of happiness). Most commonly, this is seen in adults silencing youth’s voices, ignoring their ideas, opinions and quite possibly, solutions.  

Regardless of whether the world wants to hear youth voices, the world needs to. Children are often compared to sponges, constantly soaking up information and stimuli around them, processing it and deciding how that information will affect them. If we give our youth platforms to educate themselves on topics, we are not only preparing them to make a difference later in life, but we allow them the opportunity to make a difference right now at this point in their lives.  

Why should we discredit youth voices simply because they are youth? Society has no room to bash younger generations while, in the same breath, refusing to educate children on pressing issues due to the fact that “they’re just children.” If we give youth the space to learn, what better way to learn how to hold civil, respectful conversations than through hands-on practice? 

If youth learn early how to form an educated opinion, we won’t have to worry about what so many older generations currently condemn: fake news, false arguments and rampant, misleading information from conflicting sources. The youth aren’t only the generation that that will impact tomorrow. When provided with the right tools, anyone can be an inspiration, regardless the scale of said influence. 

Youth voices have always mattered. They matter now, and they will matter when this generation is old. What has not always occurred is society listening to this important, relatively untapped input. No matter who decides to listen, youth will keep speaking their minds, eventually growing into well-read adults who will shape a world that finally gives young people the long-deserved microphone.