Young People and Political Engagement

Over the centuries, young people who now represent the largest part of the population in the world have been pictured as of group with low political engagement influence. As a youth, I disagree with this notion as political involvement as become part and parcel of the youth’s life in daily activities. With the constant engagement in social media amongst young people has proved that many young people have a great interest in political engagement (Shelley and Theocharis, 2018). Despite the improved interest in the political affairs by the young people, equal involvement compared to the old population is compromised. This paper is targeted to expound on the overwhelming inequalities that the young population is subjected to and contribute to the lack of active involvement in the political field. Lack of adequate and required knowledge and social classes have contributed to the low youth involvement in political affairs.

Knowledge Provision and Political Engagement

Despite the increase in political participation over the recent years brought by the high rates of social media involvement. The active political engagement is still a problem among young people. This has greatly been caused by the limited knowledge provided to venture into politics as the active old population, with the great knowledge and experience view the youths as the threats to growth and objectives of politics. The experienced personnel argue that the youths have no qualities and relevant interest in political engagement, compromising their interest in being able to usher them in the political arena. Using school as a learning environment, the instructors are viewed as the bearers of the knowledge and students are subjected to only a specific part of this knowledge (Cristine et al,2017). It is argued that research in political engagement inequalities in the school learning of citizenship, reveals that political engagement is promoted in the daily school activities as students who are the young people are involved in the voting and choosing their student representatives. The process of active involvement in school, however, is not enough to eradicate the inequalities in political involvement.

Social Classes and Political Engagement

Differences in social classes are also a motivator of inequalities in young people engaged in politics. The social class has greater access to education and resources and resulting in the greater determination of political engagement. Research says that people are in the lower social class have low access to adequate education hence low inquiry of political education resulting in low engagement. In school, since the teachers have the responsibility to what the learners gain in terms of political knowledge, the middle class with access to education is considered to be having higher political engagement compared to the low-class young population. Since those from the low background are subjected to limited political information, their engagement and involvement are greatly reduced leading to disparity in the political engagement. The young people with employment and source of income with limited political knowledge are viewed to be having no interest in politics as they perceive that, political engagement is greatly motivated by self-interest and satisfaction and since other means are available there is no reason to get involved with the political affairs (Jason and Kurzban, 2016).

As mentioned above, I strongly agree that political engagement is greatly affected by disparities in access to political knowledge and the levels or types of social classes. The resultant limited increases in the young people involved in political affairs are attributed to the growth of social media that provides access to limited political knowledge and the extensive required knowledge to encourage the young people is lacking. Due to the existence of different social classes, access to resources and required knowledge is unequally distributed resulting in the low young people engaged in politics. With the belief that political engagement is motivated by personal interest, self-satisfaction from other engagement bars one from having an interest in politics which is open to multiple discriminations. With the belief that political outcome will not go in favor of the minority population, the interest in the participation is affected and this results in a continuous improper representation of the young people who don’t take part in the exercise such as voting. This is illustrated by the general elections results of the United Kingdom 2017 that showed that the people from the higher social classes were greatly represented than the low social classes (James and Henn, 2017).

Figure:Social class voting turnouts in the 2017 General Election (Iposos Mori, 2017) 

As shown above, the AB is the higher social classes who are clearly the majority of voters hence having higher representations and the DE are the low social classes who have low representation. In conclusion, this imbalanced representation can be altered through the encouragement of everyone to take part in the voting, even distribution of political knowledge and social mobility to reduce the available gap between the social classes.

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Ekström, Mats. “Young people’s everyday political talk: A social achievement of democratic engagement.” Journal of Youth Studies 19.1 (2016): 1-19.

Isaksson, Cristine, and Anna Larsson. “Jurisdiction in school social workers’ and teachers’ work for pupils’ well-being.” Education Inquiry 8.3 (2017): 246-261.

Sloam, James, and Matt Henn. “Youthquake: Young People and the 2017 General Election.” Youthquake 2017. Palgrave Pivot, Cham, 2019. 91-115.

Weeden, Jason, and Robert Kurzban. The hidden agenda of the political mind: How self-interest shapes our opinions and why we won’t admit it. Princeton University Press, 2016.