For a considerable amount of time it has seemed as if politics and young people do not mix. Reasons for this might include the fact that it has been said that young people in the UK are increasingly disinterested in ‘conventional politics’ (Sloam, 2007). This is based on fewer young people taking part in voting, than older age groups. This leads to the question of why young people tend not to politically engage? However, in the 2017 general election there seemed to be a dramatic increase in the number of young people’s political engagement. The reasons for this will be what will be the main focus of this blog post.

In answering the question of why young people typically do not politically engage, I will be using a newspaper article here. During the time that the election was approaching a 24-year old said a lot of the people she meets do not believe their opinion matters or are uninterested because policy is discussed in a confusing way (BBC News, 2017). This suggests that young people need to be shown how each vote can make a difference. Also, politics in general could be made to cater to young people more, being explained in simpler ways.

Moving forward, the main focus here will be on young people’s political engagement. However, I think it is relevant firstly to gain a better understanding of what ‘political engagement’ is. According to an article by Pontes et al. (2018:1) existing conceptualisations of political engagement and participation often centre on a limited set of political action items, failing to realise that a person can be politically engaged but not participate in political actions. Therefore, this would suggest that although young people may not typically be recognised as being political, they may take part in some form of political activity. To add, in a very recent article young people, including school children, went out on a strike against climate change. In this article the following was argued:

“with the dilution of citizenship education in recent years, this is an important opportunity for schools, colleges and universities to support active citizenship and political engagement” said Molly Scott Cato (BBC News, 2019).

This shows that young people’s lack of political engagement could be based on the lack of education in this field. Even though this may be the case, this climate change strike could show that young people are somewhat interested in politics. However, young people may only decide to politically engage when they have a strong interest in doing so.

Figure 1: Turnout by age in 2015 & 2017 general elections (Ipsos MORI).

Now the focus will shift to the results of the most recent general election. From figure 1 above we can see that the number of votes of young people in 2017 increased. In an article by Sloam & Ehsan (2017:3) it states that the participation of 18-24 year olds was up from 43% to 64% – to levels not seen since the 1990s. This could suggest that young people’s political engagement is perhaps improving. Therefore, the term ‘youthquake’ was used to describe the results of the 2017 general election. This term is used to mean a shock result founded on an unexpected surge in youth turnout (Sloam & Ehsan, 2017:3).

Figure 2: Vote by age in 2017 general election (YouGov).

In terms of how young people voted in the 2017 general election, it is clear from the graph in figure 2 that Labour was most highly favoured for the majority of them. Why this was the case could include the fact that the Labour Party was more effective at communicating its messages among voters (Sloam & Ehsan, 2017). Now the question of how this was done may come to mind. However, when we think about the dominance of social media, especially amongst the youth, it seems convenient for social media to have come into play here. In an article by Keating & Melis (2017) it reveals that amidst the concern about dealing with youth political engagement, it is often suggested that social media can provide a solution to this challenge. In this way, social media may be used as a tool to perhaps bridge the gap between young people and political engagement.

Although, I must admit, I have a lack of personal involvement in politics, or anything in that field. Having said that, I was involved in the 2017 general election. From my experience, I can say that one factor that influenced my choice of vote was how my family voted. In fact, those who voted in my household, voted the same way. To add, just from taking part in this module, Active Citizenship and Political Socialisation, I recognise that youth involvement in political activity can sometimes be seemingly very subtle. For example, some young people, by simply liking or sharing a “political” post, could be somewhat politically engaging.

From this fairly brief discussion on young people and political engagement, it can be seen that young people do take part in politics, but perhaps not in the most typical ways. Also, moving forward in getting young people more politically engaged, we might have to ask what exactly is “political engagement”? Is it only about typical forms of political engagement, such as voting? Can we politically engage without really being “political”?

 

More on political participation and how to get involved:

 

 

 

Bibliography:

BBC News (2017) Election 2017: How do you engage Wales’ youth to vote? Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-politics-39896861 (Date accessed: 15/02/19).

BBC News (2019) Climate strike: Why are students striking and will it have an impact? Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-47242477?intlink_from_url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/topics/cv1v5k4n4p5t/young-people&link_location=live-reporting-story (Date accessed: 15/02/19).

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. Doi: 10.1177/1369148117718461.

Pontes, A., Henn, M. and Griffiths, M.D. (2018) Towards a Conceptualization of Young People’s Political Engagement: A Qualitative Focus Group Study. Societies. 8(1). Pp. 1-17.

Sloam, J. (2007) Rebooting Democracy: Youth Participation in Politics in the UK. Parliamentary Affairs. 60(4). Pp. 548–567. https://doi.org/10.1093/pa/gsm035.

Sloam, J. and Ehsan, M.R. (2017) Youth Quake: young people and the 2017 general election. Available at: http://www.if.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Youth-Quake_Final.pdf (Date accessed: 04/02/19).

Youtube (2017) A Young Person’s Guide to Political Participation. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNc2S3u5XQA (Date accessed: 19/02/19).