Young People and Political Engagement

Having already voted three times before reaching the age of 21, I can tell you that I, as well as the people I surround myself with, have been let down when it comes to a large scale election in the UK. It seems that time and time again the youth vote is underestimated. Despite the fact that it is the younger generation that have the most to lose or gain from general election results, it often feels as though our voice is being heard, but ultimately ignored. Of course we are at a great disadvantage, what with the population of youth voters being heavily outnumbered by older generations. For example, in 2015, the population of people aged 24 and under, including those aged 0-17 who were not even eligible to vote, took up only 30% of the population (Brown et. Al, 2017).

And yet, as a generation we are competing to educate and prepare ourselves to have a fighting chance at owning a house in the future, or (dare I say it?) take over the running of the country one day. Theresa May isn’t going to live forever, after all.

“The secret message communicated to most young people today by the society around them is that they are not needed, that the society will run itself quite nicely until they… will take over the reigns. Yet the fact is that the society is not running itself nicely… because the rest of us need all the energy, brains, imagination and talent that young people can bring to bear down on our difficulties. For society to attempt to solve its desperate problems without the full participation of even very young people is imbecile.” -Alvin Toffler (Goodreads, 2018)

With the wise words of the American writer/business man resonating in our thoughts, why is it that the youth voice isn’t taken more seriously? You’d think that the 71% of the 18-24 year olds (who took YouGov’s 2016 survey-Figure 1) voting ‘remain’ would make people sit back and think about why the youth vote was so keen to remain in the EU.

Figure 1– Over-65s were more than twice as likely as under-25s to have voted to Leave the European Union. (Moore, 2016)

Whilst it’s true that we live in a increasingly individualised society whereby the majority of us chose to spend our time creating our own identities; always looking to challenge who we are and what we believe in (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim, 2002), there tends to be an insistent belief that that youth voters are ‘alienated’ or ‘disillusioned’ by today’s politics causing us to lose interest in what’s going on around us (Norris, 2003). Whether it is because of this alienation or not, I seem to get the sense that the older generations seem to think we simply don’t care.

Of course, British Politics is the cause of many disputes and disagreements,and it’s easy to see why people might be tempted to switch of and disengage with it, but seeing the level of discussion and debates that arise on social media during the time of a general election, I would have to heavily disagree. Politics isn’t as simple as just casting a vote to elicit change anymore. Our generation has owned the notion of diversifying political engagement, it’s not that we’re apathetic and uncaring, it’s just that we engage on totally new platforms, through social media, protests and petitioning (Sloam, 2013).

Figure 2– Fig. 3 in: Diversity and voice: The political participation of young people in the European Union (Sloam, 2016)

From the above table we can see just how youth participation in other forms of engagement compares to the rest of the population, despite having lower rates of voting, we have higher rates of demonstrating and signing petitions. These increasingly diverse ways of being politically active are giving way to a whole new outlook on politics and how we find our political voice (Sloam, 2013). As I said before, it’s not just simply down to a voting system nowadays, we are on the road to creating a new way of influencing social policy. You just need to search the work ‘Brexit’ on Change.org to see the 724 results surrounding the debate, even now, 19 months after the vote.

Even now new, diverse ways of participating in politics are being created, over at The London School of Economics and Political Science a team have come together to create ‘Generation Brexit’, a website for people of all ages to come together and propose new ideas about Brexit negotiations, under the promise that the idea with the most votes will be made into policy proposals and passed on to negotiators in London and Brussels. A hugely exciting new way of engaging with politics, that I urge you to get involved with.

As exciting, and encouraging, as these different ways for youth voters to engage in politics are, just how much will the older generations listen?

Only time will tell.

 

 

Bibliography:

Beck, U., Beck-Gernsheim, E. (2002) Individualization: institutionalized individualism and its social and political consequences. 1st Ed. [eBook] London: SAGE

Brown, J., Apostolova, V., Barton, C., Bolton, P., Dempsey, N., Harari, D., Hawkins, O., McGuinness, F., Powell, A. (2017) Millenials. 1st Ed. [Online] London: House of Commons Library.

Goodreads (2018) Quotes about young people. [Online] Available at: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/young-people  [Accessed 09 February 2018]

Moore, P. (2016) Over-65s were more than twice as likely as under-25s to have voted to Leave the European Union. Europe, Politics and Current Affairs. [Online Available at: https://yougov.co.uk/news/2016/06/27/how-britain-voted/ ] [Accessed 13 Feb 2018]

Norris, P. (2003) Young People and Activism: From the Politics of Loyalties to the Politics of Choice. In: Council of Europe Symposium, Young People and Democratic Institutions: From Disillusionment to Participation. [Online] Available at: https://sites.hks.harvard.edu/fs/pnorris/Acrobat/COE.pdf

Sloam, J. (2016) Diversity and voice: The political participation of young people in the European Union. The British Journal of Politics and International Relations. [Online] 18(3) pp. 521-537. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/1369148116647176

Sloam, J. (2013) Young people are less likely to vote than older citizens, but they are also more diverse in how they choose to participate in politics. [Blog] European Politics and Policy. Available at: http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/europpblog/2013/07/19/young-people-are-less-likely-to-vote-than-older-citizens-but-they-are-also-more-diverse-in-how-they-choose-to-participate-in-politics/

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