We get no choice in world we will inherit

If you stopped reading because I am an ‘inexperienced child with no knowledge of what the world is like outside of school’, shame. Shame on you for your prejudices. Shame on you for jumping to the conclusion that I don’t know how the world works, because I do.

From my point of view, the world works towards our elders, those who supposedly have more experience just because they are older. It works against people my age, as we are young and new, and cannot be trusted with the decisions of our country’s future.

Our elders view my kind as self-obsessed, selfie-obsessed fools who are oblivious to our country’s politics and what is happening towards our future, and you all use this against me and my age group.

We are not trusted with the vote for our country’s future because we are too young to understand, too young to know how the world works, too young to make our opinions count.

We are not given the vote until we reach 18, so until our 18th birthdays, until we are registered to vote, until we are faced with elections, our opinions do not matter.

My opinions have been dismissed countless times on all subject matters from feminism, the EU and LGBT rights, to trivial matters such as books and TV shows by my elders.

This is always because I am too young, I am 15, how could I have possibly made my mind up about such things, how could I know what is best for the world while I am still a child?

How can we preach for an equal society when young voices feel unheard? How can we become a better society when we don’t listen to our younger generations no matter their age on how they think their world should work? Because that’s what it will be one day – our world.

You may shiver at the thought of those self-obsessed, selfie-obsessed youngsters one day taking the world, but that is what will happen.

Myself and my peers will one day be those voting for the future of our children’s world, but by then it will be too late.

Our world will have been made, shaped, in some cases ruined by the elders of our current society and we will have no say in the world we are going into now.

Today is the biggest vote in my lifetime; the EU referendum. If I had the choice, I would vote OUT, but the people who this vote matters to the most will not get the chance.

We get no choice in the world we will one day inherit, no say in our future.

Olivia T’Gan, aged 15