Blog 1 – Young People and Political Engagement

Young people are often seen as not wanting to be politically engaged, they tend to feel ignored that it’s essentially ‘not their problem’. But why is this? And is it perhaps the fault of politicians for deliberately alienating the youth?

Writing this blog made me question myself, and why is it that I feel so individualistic within politics, why do I feel that my opinion wouldn’t really matter in this space?

Attached here is a TedTalk I viewed when looking more into this alienated feeling I and many others share in terms of politics. Of course this wouldn’t be a blog post without a TedTalk attached.

What resonated most with me in this video, is the sentiment that young people are angry towards politicians, however they don’t know where or how to express that emotion, causing thoughts of ‘well who cares anyways’ and ‘its not like our feelings can actually change stuff’. This then will lead to young people having little to no interest in the large scale ideas in politics anymore. The data sadly supports this too.

As the graph shows, whilst there has been some ups and downs, the people in the youngest age range of vote eligibility have consistently had a higher lack of interest in politics. Referred to typically as the ‘grey vote’ (which is perhaps intentionally the same colour as the line representing the age group in the above graph), those part of the older generation are known to be consistent voters, almost always voting for the same party or political viewpoint that they have for decades. Data from The British Election Study Team suggests that around 50% of people aged 18-24 voted in the years 2015-2019, whilst a shocking 80%of 65-74 and 75+ voted (2021). To simplify, it’s almost as though for every one young person who votes, just under two people aged 65+ vote.

When looking towards current political topics, it’s easy to see why grey voters have a huge turnout compared to younger people. Brexit was something in politician’s mind’s for years with seemingly nothing to show for it, alongside pension concerns. These are issues that I myself as a person aged 21 have a lot less of an interest in compared to what the youth of today wants change towards. Famous young people such as Greta Thunberg who’s aged even younger than I am at only 19, is a fantastic representation towards the global warming concerns that it feels politicians simply aren’t bothered about. More recently, multiple Black Lives Matter protests were organised by teenagers, an article by The Guardian spoke with a woman named Shekinah Swamba also aged 19, who organised multiple protests in her local area alongside meeting with her local MP (Mohdin, A. & Campbell, L. 2020).

These inspiring young people clearly show that there are young people out there who wish to be politically engaged. Whilst I do feel like my voice may not matter in the larger sense, I do have a strong connection to issues such as climate change and racial issues. Could it perhaps be then, that young people feel less politically engaged because their true concerns are simply ignored by politicians?

At the end of the day, since politicians require to obtain the most amount of votes as possible for their party, tactically MP’s would turn towards campaigning topics that grey votes will resonate with. But being tactical about votes shouldn’t be what politics is about, it should be to represent the masses as we mentioned earlier, and I feel this is what is causing that almost 30% difference between 16-24 and 65+ voters (The British Election Study Team. 2021).

So what can we do about this? It’s all well and good to work out the problem, but thats only half the job done. The equally important second step is to figure out how can move forward. I feel it is unfair to say that young people don’t care for politics, they just don’t care for the current issues that politicians choose to discuss so heavily. Therefore, potential fixes could range from making concerns that younger people have known to local MP’s through direct letters or public demonstrations to even coming together to form a young person based party (which may be a bit of a difficult stretch, but can you ever reach too high?). But of course, we’re a collective here, so I’d love to hear your thoughts on all this!

 

References

Brown, T., 2020. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/aug/11/school-strikes-were-empowering-teen-black-lives-matter-activists-on-their-environmental-awakening-extinction-rebellion (Accessed 22 February 2022)

Campbell, L. and Mohdin, A., 2020. ‘So many people care!’ The young Britons whose lives were changed by Black Lives Matter. the Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/13/how-black-lives-matter-has-inspired-a-generation-of-new-uk-activists (Accessed 21 February 2022)

Fox, S., 2018. Causes of falling youth turnout: declining political interest. WISERD. Available at: https://wiserd.ac.uk/news/causes-falling-youth-turnout-declining-political-interest (Accessed 22 February 2022)

Nickerson, C., 2021. Simplypsychology.org. Available at: https://www.simplypsychology.org/what-are-individualistic-cultures.html (Accessed 21 February 2022)

Santos, H., Varnum, M. and Grossmann, I., 2017. Global Increases in Individualism. Psychological Science, 28(9), pp.1228-1239.

Tedx Talks, 2019. Why are young people disengaged with politics? | Laurence Hayward | TEDxSherborne. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g82tiTQ_01E (Accessed 22 February 2022)

The British Election Study Team, 2021. Age and voting behaviour at the 2019 General Election – The British Election Study. Britishelectionstudy.com. Available at: https://www.britishelectionstudy.com/bes-findings/age-and-voting-behaviour-at-the-2019-general-election/#.Yha7VC2l01K (Accessed 21 February 2022)