Interesting Persuasive Essay Topics: New Ideas for You

Are there specific issues today that you care about the most? Do you find yourself passionately discussing social topics over dinner, with friends or online? These are the kinds of topics you should use for your argumentative essay. They are topics you likely already have a strong foundation on, would be willing to research, and can write strongly about.

If you can’t immediately come up with some interesting persuasive essay topics, here’s a list you can use for some inspiration:

• How should schools address bullying? There is a recent upsurge surrounding school bullying and how we fight back socially and publicly. Should schools take on a greater role in protecting against and punishing bullies?


• Does your school reward too many students with “A” grades? Some schools are burdened with overpopulation and have given passing grades in order to move students along to the next grade. As such, the degree of difficulty required to be an “A” student has been diminished.


• Do schools provide students with enough opportunities to be creative? Creativity is a skill that many careers and professions value highly. Yet, creativity is often overlooked in schools and sometimes even discouraged outside of art classes. Should curriculums change to nurture creativity?


• Should people be allowed to obscure their identities online? More and more online applications and websites require you to enter personal information before continuing. But there are even more websites that take your information without knowing. Should you be able to keep your identity private?


• How would you feel about a computer grading your papers? Computers are already used to grade question-answer types of assignments, but are closer to grading papers. Do you believe computers can ever look into the nuances and creativity that comes with grading written papers?


• Do violent video games make people more violent in real life? This debate has raged on for decades and there hasn’t been much headway besides the parental advisory label that is now placed on video game titles. What evidence exists to suggest that people are more violent because of playing violent games?


• Do you prefer young adult book characters to be obedient or contrary? Young adult fiction is a multi-million dollar business and continues to grow, despite a fear of lower literacy among the age group. But characters are in a debate as to whether they should be role models who make obedient decisions or unpredictable and disobedient.


• What should we do to fight sexual violence against young women? Harsher penalties? Greater education for both young women and young men? There are so many options but apparently there is no clear solution to help fight against sexual violence. What can we do?


• Why aren’t more girls choosing to pursue careers in math and science? This is a decades old question without a definitive answer. What can we do to promote the sciences and math to young girls so that they grow within these areas of study and pursue careers?


• When should juvenile offenders receive life sentences? There are more juvenile offenders today than there were a half-century ago. This may be related to our view of crime and our outdated belief that incarceration is the best deterrent. Some crimes, however, are more serious yet aren’t punished as such. Should this change?