Blog 1: Young People and Political Engagement

Why do young people tend to be more politically disengaged?

As a young person, politics feels like an old people’s game that they just keep winning at and with the bad taste of Brexit still in our mouths and the debacle of the handling of Covid-19, it’s no wonder that Britain’s youth want nothing to do with the traditional political sphere. With the help of social media and its increased shareablility, the main form of communication concerning important political figures or events are more likely to be in meme form or a part of popular culture to young people. Memes are useful in a way as they allow us to compress complex ideas into a simple visual (Tenove and Chiang, 2018), however this makes it easier for young people to not take politics seriously and can be argued to further widen the considerable disparity between the political engagement of the youth and their elders. This blog post aims to further investigate and find out why it is that young people seem to not be present in politics.

Why the youth aren’t embracing traditional politics…

Although being a sizeable portion of the general public, young people statistically do not show up when we look at the voter turnout. The 2019 General Election showed us that there was a turnout of around 47% for voters aged 18-24, which was a decrease of 7% when compared to the voter turnout in 2017(Mashford, 2020) in contrast to the high turnover numbers for voters aged 45 and up as depicted in the graph below. This leaves the age distributions top heavy and legislation in turn comes to reflect the interests and values of said demographic and this further widens the unprecedented divide that we see in politics today.

So what do these statistics truly mean for politics if young people don’t vote?

Well, naturally the rise of a grey vote would mean that there would be a prioritisation on grey issues (Chrisp and Pearce, 2019) these are issues that mainly concern the older members of the population such as legislative action to do with health and social care, pensions and more of a focus on immigration concerns as these issues usually have an obsession with restoring law and order. As a result young peoples issues are essentially neglected as we can see a lack of focus on issues such as tuition fees, the environment, social and economic equality, mitigating the increased cost of living and campaigning for affordable housing, police reform – the list goes on.

Because young people’s issues are not addressed, they feel unheard in the world of politics. A majority of young people from my experience do tend to hold more interest and importance in issues to do with poverty, the environment, social issues and equality but because mainstream actions and traditional political institutions have no interest with our values, young people in turn just don’t have interest in politics- some find it futile to even bother. This growing cynicism about electoral politics could potentially solely account for the dramatic decline in political engagement of young people as it is understandable that widespread apathy, or even alienation, that they feel they receive from the traditional methods of political engagement in traditional representative democracies is enough to make them back away for good (Norris, 2004).

Citizenship Education

The factors that are said to influence and shape an individual’s political behaviour and attitudes are never-ending. However, out these factors, an individual’s school experience is said to be the most influential on democratic knowledge and preparation for the participation in democratic life. Studies show that the effects of citizenship education are long term and the skills acquired are even retained into adulthood (Pontes, Henn and Griffiths, 2017). Citizenship education was introduced into the British curriculum in 2002 where it started out as a national government project, historically created in order to address the decline in political engagement and instil the desired national norms into society through the institution of education. Both England and Northern Ireland have citizenship education on a statutory basis, where they consider it to be a stand alone subject, however it is only compulsory for 4 years, between the ages of 11-16, whereas Wales considers civic education a subject that is not compulsory (Masgford, 2020).  Because of this introduction of civic education the responsibility now lies with the school in terms of having young peoples voices heard by allowing them to have a say in the rules and regulations of the school and where budgets can be spent. It is believed that this can instil confidence in political engagement but political activities in the classroom tend to be more frequent in the schools of the elite where the student body have higher socioeconomic status and todays MPs reflect that. However a low value has been placed on the subject particularly by teachers, students and administration boards where often than not it is taught by those who are not subject specialists. It also doesn’t help that academies and state schools are no longer compelled to follow the national curriculum and so civic education would essentially be scrapped (Hoskins, 2022).

Social media as a solution to disengagement

So, it is no secret that public participation in the traditional forms of political engagement have declined over the years when concerning the demographic of young people, however this does not mean that the youth aren’t politically involved at all. The processes to do with the formal structures of government are just alien to the youth, who instead are using the internet and social media to navigate the digital world as a means to organise and engage politically.

Instead of a seeing it as a decline in political engagement, others would rather look at it as a transformation in democracy, where young people are looking for fresh ways to express their political views and strive for change in their community beyond the ‘outdated’ and limited ways of traditional democracy, and without having to go through established traditional institutions (Keating and Melis, 2017). The alternative methods that young people prefer to politically engage in, in my opinion, are far more influential and impactful and these tend to be in the form of protests, petitions, boycotts, whistleblowing and starting global online discourse in order to enact change on a global level. Some of the biggest social change movements in our lifetimes have started online; BLM, #MeToo to name a few.

What can you do?

Get involved wherever, whenever you can. Start big, start small… you can even start here! Your political engagement doesn’t have to be defined by the traditional routes, so what do you think?

Bibliography:

Chrisp, J. and Pearce, N., 2019. The rise of the grey vote. [online] IPR blog. Available at: <https://blogs.bath.ac.uk/iprblog/2019/05/21/the-rise-of-the-grey-vote/> [Accessed 21 February 2022].

Hoskins, B. 2022. Learning Political Engagement [Powerpoint Presentation for SOC020X331S].. University of Roehampton [Accessed 15 February 2022]. 

Keating, A. and Melis, G., 2017. Social media and youth political engagement: Preaching to the converted or providing a new voice for youth?. The British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 19(4), pp.877-894.

Mashford, S., 2020. Youth turnout – How does the UK compare to other European nations?. [online] 89 Initiative | The first European think-do tank. Available at: <https://89initiative.com/youth-turnout-uk-europe/> [Accessed 21 February 2022].

Norris, P., 2004. Young people & political activism. Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government.(32p).

Pontes, A., Henn, M. and Griffiths, M., 2017. Youth political (dis)engagement and the need for citizenship education: Encouraging young people’s civic and political participation through the curriculum. Education, Citizenship and Social Justice, 14(1), pp.3-21.

Tenove, C. and Chiang, G., 2018. The meme-ification of politics: Politicians & their ‘lit’ memes. [online] The Conversation. Available at: <https://theconversation.com/the-meme-ification-of-politics-politicians-and-their-lit-memes-110017> [Accessed 21 February 2022].