&gt;then you have to learn how to form and argue it in a way that will convince people Most people don't get convinced by well-formed arguments but by evoking to their emotions. A teenager will always be perceived as inferior, thus his or her arguments won't have any emotional impact on that kind of listener and will be discarded by default. Sorry, younger folks, no matter what you say, most people will not listen to you. Sometimes, I say more or less the same things I said ten years ago, but then those things were stupid, and now these things are very insightful. In fact, as I'm thinking about it now, the only people who treated me seriously were teachers - probably because they are the only people who are required to actually follow their students' thinking.