In today’s blog, I wanted to talk about something that I view as very important and that is youth political engagement. I will argue that, although they are not voting, they are engaging with politics in other ways. Firstly, it is important to understand what we mean when we talk about ‘youth political engagement’. It’s simple really! Political engagement refers to any activities by members of the public with the aim of influencing government and policy (Conge, 1988). For example, people may vote as a way of politically engaging. Youth political engagement is becoming a very important topic, as they are the age group (18-24-year-olds) whose overall participation is declining at the fastest rate (Sloam, 2013). This was very apparent after the 2015 General Election turnout statistics were released. As we can see from the graph below (Fig.1), only 43% of 18-24-year-olds turned out to vote in the 2015 General Election, the lowest turnout for any age group (Ipsos MORI, 2015). This is not a new trend, as turnout by age was very similar for the General Election in 2010 (Ipsos MORI, 2010) and 2001 (Ipsos MORI, 2001).
So what does this data tell us? Just from looking at the graph and other statistical data, it tells us that young people do not turn out to vote in the same numbers that the other age groups do. What those graphs and other quantitative data sets do not tell us is why 18-24-year-olds are not turning out to vote in as much force. One idea is that young people no longer feel that they only have to vote in order to participate in politics (Snelling, 2016). There are more ways than just voting that allow the public to get involved in politics. We can campaign on behalf of a party, a person or an idea. We can spread the message through social media. We can even protest alongside people all around the world. Take for example, the Women’s Marches. They began as a result of new legislation bought in by the Republicans in the USA. Women and men all over the world marched on the 21st January 2017 to protest the government (Nusca, 2017). Action was taken not only in the streets of London, New York, Paris and Berlin, but online around the world. Young people have a much better grasp on technology than the older generation, and as a result, have been able to utilise it as a political tool.
It is clear that young people are not voting in the same numbers that we see across other age groups in the United Kingdom. They are, however, more engaged in protests and demonstrations than the national average (European Values Survey, 2008). In Fig.2, we can see that young people are engaging in political activities, just not in the way that we traditionally expect. Direct action is increasingly popular amongst the younger generation but it is currently unclear why there is such a discrepancy between their avid political activities on the streets and their apathy at the ballot box. In my opinion, one reason for this surge in direct action amongst young voters is the rise of social media. It is now easier to organise a demonstration as you can send out a tweet or Facebook status in seconds and people all around the globe, not just your own country, can choose to join in. For example, 37.5% of Facebook users are aged 13-24 (Fanalyzer, 2013), which means that these messages are being broadcast to a young audience, who are intern statistically more likely to take up or join in the action.
I suppose the question now is, how do we make young people more inclined to vote in combination with their direct action? The current young generation notoriously have very short attention spans and are renowned for their need of instant gratification (Hanley, 2015). In order to capitalise on these characteristics for their own benefit, politics needs to bring itself further into the twentieth Century. A survey found that 67% of 18-24-year-olds believed that the introduction of smartphone/tablet voting would increase turnouts for voting (tecmark, 2015). I believe that we also need to acknowledge the contribution that young people’s political activities outside of voting have. They are often ignored and criticised by the mainstream media, as it is run by people with little or no knowledge of their world and how it operates. Young people may feel like their input and voice is being ignored in favour of traditional forms of participation. However, we need to educate young people on the importance of voting, as it is the only way to truly have any control over who is governing us and what they do whilst in office.
To conclude this blog, I think it’s important to say that young people are participating in politics, on a scale that goes unnoticed by our politicians and many of our media outlets. Young people need to see that their activities are important, but also need to be encouraged to vote, as that is the most influential way of enacting change. To fully appreciate the political efforts that young people are making, we need to change what we view as valued political participation for the modern day.
References –
Conge, P. (1988). Review Article: The Concept of Political Participation. Comparative Politics. 20 (2), 241-249. Available: http://www.jstor.org/stable/421669?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents. Last accessed 18th February 2017.
European Values Study/World Values Study (2008), Comparative Study of Electoral Systems, national election studies.
Fanalyzer. (2013). Demographics Data- Facebook UK. Available: http://www.fanalyzer.co.uk/demographics.html. Last accessed 19th February 2017.
Hanley, B. (2015). How to Get More Young People Involved in Politics. Available: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/brian-hanley/how-to-get-more-young-peo_b_8562196.html. Last accessed 19th February 2017.
Ipsos MORI. (2001). How Britain Voted in 2001. Available: https://www.ipsos-mori.com/researchpublications/researcharchive/1231/How-Britain-Voted-In-2001.aspx. Last accessed 18th February 2017.
Ipsos MORI. (2010). How Britain Voted in 2010. Available: https://www.ipsos-mori.com/researchpublications/researcharchive/2613/How-Britain-Voted-in-2010.aspx. Last accessed 18th February 2017.
Ipsos MORI. (2015). How Britain Voted in 2015. Available: https://www.ipsos-mori.com/researchpublications/researcharchive/3575/How-Britain-voted-in-2015.aspx?view=print. Last accessed 18th February 2017.
Nusca, A. (2017). 37 Photos from Women’s Marches Around the World. Available: http://fortune.com/2017/01/21/womens-march-photos/. Last accessed 18th February 2017.
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.. Available: 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/. Last accessed 18th February 2017.
Snelling, C. (2016). Young People and Electoral Registration in the UK: Examining Local Activities to Maximise Youth Registration . Parliamentary Affairs . 69 (3), 663-685. Available: https://academic.oup.com/pa/article-lookup/doi/10.1093/pa/gsv054#36627066. Last accessed 18th February 2017.
tecmark. (2015). Smartphone voting in general elections – would turnout increase?. Available: http://www.tecmark.co.uk/smartphone-voting-would-turnout-increase/. Last accessed 19th February 2017.