"Give young people a greater voice. They are the future and they are much wiser than we give them credit for."
desmond tutu
There seems to be a common misconception that we, as the youth of this generation are not engaged in politics. When looking at trends and statistics gathered by findings from voting elections, young people aged between 18-24 seem to have the lowest rates (Kimberlee, 2002). As the leaders of tomorrow and the recievers’ of all future decisions, you’d think we’d have more of a say in the societal and political changes being made!
Yet, data provided by the results from The British Election Study (2017) face to face survey illustrates the lack of participation in voting by young people. This lack of engagement of voters aged between 18-24 is an ongoing issue globally (Harrison, 2018) and is evident in the measurements that a supposed increase in youth engagement is in fact inaccurate as the graph below evidently portrays the low increase of voter turnout.
(Figure 2, British Election Study)
The graph above shows that both the years of 2015 and 2017 had youth voter turnout between 40% and 50%. Although there was a slight increase, the overall turnout shows to only have gone up by 2.5%.
As the world progresses, so do the methods of political participation used by the youth and the argument that there is a lack of engagement from young people in political matters is ongoing. However, is it case that we as the youth of today's generation do not engage in politics, or have we simply adapted with the changes in society and embraced new tactics to create change?
The developments of not just politics but also the world, have resulted in the access to various forms of political participating. An example of this is modern technology and the use of social media; a continuously expanding platform highly popular amongst modern day youths. This enables young people of today to not only raise awareness but create political change through simple gestures such as sharing a post. The opportunity to share politically motivated knowledge such as petitions, protests, etc., not only allows young people to engage in politics but also reaches out to a majority of this specific target demographic. There is a strong debate of whether online participation fits into existing concepts of political participants (Gibson and Cantijoch, 2013). This has been ongoing since the 1990s where modern society began to blur the lines of the political and non-political tactics, such as volunteering and social engagement with conventional forms of creating change such as voting (Van Deth, 2001).
Due to the fact that this is a modern invention, young people are much more experienced and conditioned in using online participation. As the current form of global communication and news sharing, this may mean that we as the youth are more aware of what is going on, what needs to be changed and how we can change it.This has given us a way to be empowered by sharing knowledge, debating ideas and challenging those in power (Gilder, 1994). However, this form of engagement is argued to not be political by Rojas and Puig-i-Abril (2009) but as “expressive participation.”
(Figure 2: The Mirror, 2020)
As a generation of the internet, mobile phones, apps such as, instagram; we young people are now able to free ourselves from the controlled propaganda, see what is really happening for ourselves, share it with other people and create political change the best way we know how!
It seems that political parties and leaders are also beginning to understand the power this has given our voice, as social networking sites are now being used to interact with the youth as well campaign sites. This is clearly seen in cases such as Barack Obama’s youth orientated campaign. David Cameron has also used a range of online tools to interact with young people, for example, through videos. The one which always hits close to home as young, British and working class citizen is Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party 2017 general election campaign. The proportion of young people who voted for Labour had sky rocketed from the 43% 2015 voter turnout to 63% of 18-29 year olds in 2017 (BBC News, 2017). Social adverts were said to of benefited the Labour campaign immensely, as there was a clear youth target and emphasise on social movements, reflecting on the all the young voices on social media platforms (Therrien, 2017).
(Figure 3: Sloam and Ehsan, 2017)
The power social media now has over political participation of young people and their ability to gain access to information, has resulted in severe youth engagement in politics. Without the knowledge i have gained from platforms and people reaching out to raise awareness about what is going on and how we as citizens can help, I, as a young person from this generation feel as though i would’ve missed out on taking parts in decisions made for my future. And decisions I can also have an impact in; for example, signing and sharing petitions for new policies. However, do we think this truly helps us create real change if a majority of our youth are not voting?
How has online engagement influenced your ability to partake in political participation?
REFERENCES
Boyd, M., 2022. Students march through London chanting ‘Get Gav Gone’ in A Levels protest. [online] mirror. Available at: <https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/breaking-hundreds-students-march-through-22530125> [Accessed 24 February 2022].
Brooks, R. and Hodkinson, P., 2008. Introduction. Journal of Youth Studies, 11(5), pp.473-479.
van Deth, J. W. (2001). Studying Political Participation: Towards a Theory of Everything? Paper presented at the Joint Sessions of Workshops of the European Consortium for Political Research.
Gibson, R., and Cantijoch, M. (2013). Conceptualizing and measuring participation in the age of the internet: is online political engagement really different to offline? J. Politics 75, 701–716
Gilder, G., 1994. Life After Television, New York: W. W. Norton & Co.
Harrison, S., 2018. Young Voters. Parliamentary Affairs, 71, pp.255-266.
Henn, M., Weinstein, M. and Forrest, S., 2005. Uninterested Youth. Young People’s Attitudes Towards Party Politics in Britain. Political Studies, 53, 556-578.
Rojas, H., and Puig-i-Abril, E. (2009). Mobilizers mobilized: information, expression, mobilization and participation in the digital age. J. Comp. Med. Commun. 14, 902–927.
Hi Bia, I love your take on how the lack of participation in voting can be viewed as taking political action, rather than failure to engage in politics. As someone who believes in the power of protests and by participating in a few myself, I agree with your point on how these alternative forms of being politically engaged does have input within society. I think social media has heavily influenced this as social media has made it easier for people to reach out to raise awareness about what is going on and how we as citizens can help. However, youths are only using social media for political engagement if they are already interested in politics. Those youths who are not interested in these political matters will simply avoid these topics on social media as they may feel it does not concern them. What are your thoughts on how to encourage youths to become politically interested so they would want to use social media to politically engage?
Hey Arooj,
I am so glad that the different perspectives on why young people might not be voting is of interest to you. If you loved this point of view, you will definitely enjoy watching this Youtube video on young people’s voting turn out.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bS4uBQt6tQ8
The fact that you are also someone who believes in the power of protests and are actively participating in this form of political engagement, is great to hear! Are there any recent demonstrations you attended and for what cause? I personally took part in the BLM protests and noticed there were a range of people who have never shown interest in politics present. This is an example of what I think, is the power of social media. When politics is brought onto platforms where our generation spend majority of their time on, I think it has heavy influence on their ability to understand the causes that require their participation.
You’ve asked such a great question as it gives me the opportunity to touch on more ways we can advocate political engagement in young people. I think when it comes to the youth, it is important to implement political causes in the institutions they spend most of their time in. For example, in their place of education. Schools need to put more emphasis on why politics actually concern students, as a common misconception young people seem to be having – is that politics relates more to elderly people. As a young person who seems politically active, what areas do you think specifically affect us?
Thank you so much for your comment, I can’t wait to hear more on your point of view!