"I'm not old enough to vote yet, but I wish politicians would listen"

I am less than a year off voting, and yet it still feels as though any talk from politicians about pushing for younger people to vote is done so in passing comments in the midst of a plethora of other campaign tactics.

Just last week, the Guardian released statistics on how 96 per cent of those over the age of 65 have registered to vote in comparison to 60 per cent of 18–19-year-olds, raising the question are older people hearing something that we are not?

I think the answer seems to be yes.

Politicians like Rishi Sunak and David Cameron have been called out time and again for being ‘out of touch,’ and yet very few are actually stopping to consider the lasting effects of this.

As a young person, I know many of us are feeling as though the politics of today are leaving youth as an afterthought, with many party policies feeling irrelevant to the issues we are dealing with, such as the rising costs in higher education tuition, and the impacts of exam pressure on our mental health, under the proviso of a “meritocratic education system.”

Sheffield, the second greenest city in Europe, the first city of sanctuary in the UK, and a city “committed to promoting and enhancing equality, diversity, fairness and inclusivity for all” as stated in Sheffield City Council’s annual equalities report, is a fantastic city for getting young people’s voices heard, and yet in some ways the youth of this city are still not being uplifted quite how we need in the areas that we need.

Sheffield has seen plenty of activism throughout its time, in the 1980s we became known as the socialist republic of South Yorkshire, and over the last nine years of me living here, I myself have seen (to name a few) climate change, BLM, anti-austerity, anti-genocide, and trans rights protests, all examples of the people of Sheffield expressing what they feel is important.

The main thing I have noticed is that right at the heart of these protests are the young people making up a significant proportion of the campaigners.

Protesting has been one of the most effective and accessible ways for us young people to come together and campaign on the issues we feel are important, and to actually have our voices heard, yet I feel slightly bitter sweet about this, as areas in which policies are being made and plans are being set in motion are not quite so easy to come by for those of us under the age of 18.

Even despite the distance between the actions and decisions in Westminster, youths in cities like Sheffield are experiencing the lasting effects of social policies on our education system, our future prospects, our healthcare and our future housing, and whilst these policies affect those who are eligible for things like buying houses now, the thought of having to face these impacts in the near future without even having a say, feels daunting at the very least.

We need the local MPs and the politicians at the top to take a more representative approach when dealing with social policy, and campaign strategies, considering not just the young people eligible to vote, but also those of us right on the brink of voting, as decisions made on behalf of the country cannot be democratic if all of us under 18 are not being considered, despite making up over 14 million of the people in the UK.