WHAT were you doing when you were 16?

I was making a lifetime’s worth of bad choices, breaking every rule that crossed my path and leaving a trail of hormonal destruction in my wake.

My little sister, on the other hand, was a studious and thoughtful 16-year-old.

She was a nerd, basically. But she’s got two first-class degrees from university while I’m the proud owner of a bad attitude and a bank account that is rarely out of its overdraft, so I think it’s clear who made the better choices.

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I ask because the SNP has a new plan which would allow 16-year-olds to become MSPs and councillors.

It opens the door to the possibility of Scotland having the youngest parliamentarians in the world.

It is a terrible idea.

Though my horror of the thought of somebody so young in parliament isn’t for the reason you might think.

It isn’t because young people lack the necessary (and ill-defined) “life experience” to represent their constituents. Some of our older politicians’ life experiences comprise of nothing more meaningful than being born into a rich family and being sent to the right school.

There are 16-year-olds in Scotland who – with the right support – could fulfil the duties of a parliamentarian as well as anybody else could. But I worry about the emotional toll a job like that would take on somebody so young. Councillors are relatively anonymous outside of the area they represent.

MSPs are not. And the first 16-year-old MSP in the Scottish Parliament would be the subject of intense scrutiny and attention.

They wouldn’t just become a household name in Scotland: this would be a world-first. No amount of pastoral care from the party they represent, or support from family and friends, could adequately protect them from the negative consequences that would come with that.

At a minimum, that young person would endure everything our parliamentarians tell us is unfortunately now part of the job of being a politician. Online abuse, threats and harassment come with the job description.

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And if that parliamentarian happened to be a girl, then we’re into a whole different ball game. We know that – while all politicians receive abuse – the tone of abuse directed towards female members of parliament is different.

Abuse is more likely to be sexualised and violent, and the threats are too. Of course, that shouldn’t be part of the job. But that sad reality isn’t likely to change before the next Scottish Parliament elections, when 16-year-olds could be allowed to stand.

The arguments for lowering the age from 18 to 16 are compelling, provided you remove them from the context of the world we actually live in.

Sixteen-year-olds can vote. They are more politically engaged and informed than previous generations. They have just as much of a stake in the country’s future as any other age group does. And for too long, their interests have been ignored by politicians.

And, as many people have pointed out, we let 16-year-olds join the armed forces, so why shouldn’t they be allowed to fully take part in our democratic processes?

I get it. But I still can’t shake the feeling that this move is more about the appearance of being progressive, rather than something that would actually benefit the interests of our young people. We already have a Scottish Youth Parliament.

If young people aren’t being listened to: strengthen that, improve it, make its voice more influential within Holyrood and the party of government.

Whatever we are trying to achieve by reducing the age to 16 we can achieve through other means. Lowering the age threshold for candidacy is expected to receive cross-party support.

I wonder how many of the MSPs that support this change would encourage their own 16-year-old child to take up such a role.

How many would be content for their son or daughter to become a household name overnight, and how exactly would they prepare them from the bile that would be directed towards them from the moment their victory was announced?

Since the brutal murders of Jo Cox and Sir David Amess, security for parliamentarians has been strengthened.

High-profile politicians (which our first 16-year-old guinea pig would instantly become) have spoken about carrying panic alarms and having security systems and bomb-proof letterboxes installed in their homes.

The threat to their safety is so great that many have adapted the way they hold face-to-face constituency surgeries.

In Scotland, we have been told so often we are a progressive country that we’ve started to believe our own hype. This move might inspire some self-congratulatory speeches from MSPs who think they’re doing something meaningful.

It might generate press coverage across the globe for the party that bags the first 16-year-old MSP. It might make the rest of us feel warm and fuzzy about our wee country being a trailblazer on the world stage. But at what cost to the young people thrown into the bear pit of politics?