THE ALIENATED YOUTH: ARE YOUNG PEOPLE AND POLITICS ON TWO SEPARATE PLANETS
For many years there has been a tendency by politicians and other members of society to treat young people as some sort of alien group, who totally divorce themselves from the rest of the population and politics.
But, is this the case? Are young people politically disengaged and can’t be bothered to vote or do they favour other forms of political engagement? Nonetheless, with disengagement as the main concern, what should we do to encourage young people to engage with politics in 2019?
So, are young people truly disengaged?
Young people have more often than not made up the minority of voters and continue to be categorised as disconnected from the political process, with statistics to support this.
According to an age demographic published by the ONS (2015) on the 2015 British general election, the 18-24 age bracket made up the smallest proportion of voters at 11%. In comparison, the 55-65+ age group, made up 38% of voters. This was replicated in the 2017 general election where the differences were still as prominent.
As you can see the below, the graph shows that 84% of those 70 years plus voted in the 2017 general election, in comparison to only 57% of 18-19-year olds and 59% of 20-24-year olds (YouGov, 2017). Which was up from recent years, yet still so low. This considerable difference in formal political participation (voting) has raised concerns for many politicians and political parties.
But what is causing this voting behaviour?
1) Disengaged politicians
2) Apathy towards Westminster and politicians
3) Insufficient Citizenship Education being delivered
Therefore, what can be done to increase formal political participation amongst young people?
a) Use social media as a tool for good
b) Informal Political Education
c) Institutions need to inspire
1) Disengaged Politicians
Young people show a lack of interest to those in Westminster as the politicians don’t present the promises they propose.
Dermody et al., (2010) suggests that this is due to the relationship between trust, cynicism and efficacy.
Dermody et al., (2010) articulates that positive appraisal, in relation to confidence in the government and parities to do ‘good’, is crucial to political trust. The reason youths are disengaged in the political process may be down to their negative attitudes towards the intentions of political parties and the government.
Cynicism bases itself around a belief that the government is failing to deliver the needs of the public which leads to citizens disbelieving in the government’s good intentions (Barber, 1983). False manifestos and politicians promising things that they don’t deliver on are contributing factors towards these levels of trust and cynicism. Young people have started to develop low levels of trust which lead to cynical thoughts around the functioning of the government.
Disengagement in young people may also be because of the impact they feel they’re having on the whole political process. This is also known as ‘political efficacy’ (Campbell et al., 1954, p. 187). Levels of high political efficacy develop through successful experiences; however, it’s no surprise young people’s engagement is low, as in recent years protests around the rise in university fees and currently the student climate strike have led students to push the government to take action.
Categorising young people as the aliens in regard to negative voting behaviour stems from Miller (1974), who suggests that low trust, high distrust, high cynicism and low efficacy feeds this separation from the democratic process. Alienated youths have no faith, confidence in the system and are ever sceptical and cynical of politicians’ intensions and the functioning of the government (Dermody and Hanmer-Lloyd, 2005a).
2) Apathy towards Westminster
The lack of formal political participation may be part of a strategy to get the government to listen and devote their resources to get youths to participate. But what young people don’t realise is that they are just exacerbating the situation as politicians are self-serving and unresponsive, giving them reason not to engage with young people because they seem like they don’t want to.
However, this causes a vicious cycle. Taking a quote from Pickleton et al., (1998):
‘Citizens are likely to participate in the political process to the extent that they feel their participation can make a difference’ (p.35).
Young people are concerned that the government is overly centralized and politicians themselves have little prospects to connect with the voices of young people and the concerns they have (Henn and Foard, 2014).
The statistics suggest that youth people do not significantly engage in politics. However Phelps (2012) observed that there has been an emerging ‘anti-apathy’ idea (p.281) where young people’s interests do in fact concern politics but rather the functioning of the democratic system leaves young people feeling alienated (Dermody et al., 2010; Holmes and Manning, 2013).
Also, the way in which politicians identify themselves (middle/upper-class elites) seemingly makes it hard to relate to young people and regardless of the protests, strikes and riots that young people are engaged in, the government still doesn’t listen as they are ‘sucked into the Westminster elite bubble’. It seems like the government already has everything planned out regardless of any concerns voiced (Henn and Foard, 2014). We may as well consider ourselves as aliens living in a society where the ruling class have the power and control over what happens.
3) Insufficient Citizenship Education
Students claim they are ill-informed about how the electoral process works and what political manifestos try and aim for (Dermody et al., 2010). At the micro-level it has been argued that schools offer the best chances of building an informed and balanced understanding of political knowledge and democratic values and skills (Print, 2010, Crick, 1998).
However, firstly, schools are too anxious about facilitating discussion about politics as the main parties politicize the question that education leads to indoctrination (Tonge et al., 2012). By teachers being reluctant, this further alienates young people from the political process.
Pontes et al., (2019) convey there’s a lack of training for teachers who teach citizenship education, so teachers result in methods which are rote learning in style and methods that lack participation. The key to understanding the functioning of political engagement is to be active. If young people experience democratic processes through other means, they are more likely to vote.
Additionally, as politics is not offered as a distinct qualification until after school, it’s difficult to see how political literacy is to be developed without any support from the curriculum. Therefore, this lack of knowledge and understanding of language and issues results in suspicions around how the political system functions and how politicians represent that system (Mycock and Tonge, 2009).
Solutions…
a) Use of Social Media
It is often suggested that social media can provide a simple solution to youth disengagement. Firstly, social media can be used as a tool for communication with political institutions and reaching out to young voters (Loader et al., 2014). Alternatively, social media is already being used by youth to redefine political participation through finding new ways to articulate their political preferences (Keating and Melis, 2017). It almost makes it easier to have grown up in this technologically advanced world when considering social media as a resolution.
The online sphere creates a premise for unintended political engagement (Loader et al., 2014). Social media increases the chance of exposure to political events and offers a platform where friends and family express their opinions on political matters by sharing those political agendas (Keating and Melis, 2017).
What this does is trigger a sense of political interest in the individuals and creates an element of social pressure where the individual becomes engaged in the discussions going on (Theocharis and Quintelier, 2014). Social media platforms also provide a space where new voices from marginalised groups can be heard and views expressed – which is not only useful for young people.
In fact, there has been instances where the use of social media has been successful. What the Labour party campaign for the 2017 election (lead by Jeremy Corbyn) did ‘well’ was that they focused heavily on young people through emphasising the importance of their participation. Social media was a powerful tool used by the party as they gave young people more practical ways to get involved in the vote. The party posted instruction on Facebook and Twitter displaying how to register to vote and where the nearest polling stations were allocated – a marketing ploy that no other political party had thought of before.
And we cannot forget that Labour made steps to ‘making politics cool’ (Farthing, 2010) aligning themselves with the #grimeforcorbyn movement on social media. This saw artists such as JME and Stormzy encourage young people to sign up to the electoral register and get behind the Labour party – another success.
Furthermore, their strategy to also use social media to display the Labour manifesto, which proposed to abolishment student tuition fees, introduce housing benefits for those under 21 and end the zero-hour contract, caught the attention of many of these young people.
Taking Henn and Foard’s (2014) findings into account, showing that 75% of young people feel politicians fail to represent and understand what they needed, Labour’s movement could be interpreted to have addressed this statistic. Subsequently resulting in the party getting a majority of young people’s votes, as shown below:
So, we can say Labour were well and truly on the social media train.
Nonetheless, we must address that there can be negative spins on politics through social media. Parties can easily reach out to young people by simply altering the medium of their messaging and developing policies to try and tempt people in.
Moreover, the way that social media is used can be quite insulting and disingenuous to young people. For political parties to promise things that try and grab the votes of young people, that in reality the party can’t ever deliver is wrong and totally patronizing.
Regardless of how the Labour party approached their campaign, it does show the power social media had on getting young people to engage.
b) Informal Political Education
Farthing (2010) has summarized that education could help engage young people in democracy if delivered properly. As many young people claim they are ill-informed, education could be another powerful solution for political engagement and civic regeneration to happen (Davies, 2014).
The Crick Report (1998) recommended that citizenship education should be taught in all schools to strike a transformation in the political culture and:
‘for people to think of themselves as active citizens, willing, able and equipped to have an influence in public life …’ (p.7)
Kisby and Sloam (2014) go on to state further that citizenship education is a means of connecting young people to the functioning of the system, helping them to begin to make sense of the complexity of politics and in turn, strengthening democracy. John, Morris and Halpern (2003) found that citizenship education programmes positively influenced political knowledge, student trust and political efficacy, which in turn results in a willingness to vote.
By getting young people to engage in political process in school, this should help them develop their understanding of what the rights and responsibilities of the British Citizen are (Pontes et al., 2019). Additionally, civic and political activities in school helps not only develop their knowledge and understanding of key political ideas but also helps develop their decision-making and debating skills. In turn this should encourage them to engage with the democratic vote (Kisby and Sloam, 2014), assist with the development of social capital but also gain valuable skills for future employment
So, what can the education system do?
One informal way to encourage engagement is by bringing political speakers from multiple backgrounds (i.e. young, black, ethnic minority, female, disabled) into schools, which coincides with stripping away stereotypes. The important thing that this does is allow for a development of discussion in the classroom between the MP, local councillor or party representative and the young person. This essentially acts as a forum for young peoples voices to be heard – which creates a successful experience which as Dermody et al., (2005) suggests, boosts political efficiency.
Another informal way is setting up democracies within schools. Learning-by-doing is one of the most successful ways in getting young people to understand first-hand how democracy works (Keating and Janmaat, 2015; Print, 2010). Many schools may already do things like this when electing school council members, house captains and prefects (Kirlin, 2002). It has been suggested that the meaningful activities are more likely to encourage later civic engagement and are the best predictor for adult political participation (Kirlin, 2002). So basically, get young people involved as much as possible.
c) Institutions need to inspire young people
The average age of MPs, councillors and party members is over 50, yes 50! (Mycock and Tonge, 2012)
As shown above, young MPs have increased since the 1997 general election yet still only count for around 2.5% of all MPs. How are we meant to inspire young people to get into politics and make a difference if they cannot see young people like themselves representing political parties in parliament?
Politicians are not relatable enough for young people, they are just elitist Oxbridge graduates from middle/upper-class backgrounds. One of the most important things to do is to remove the stereotypes of ‘typical politicians’.
Young people need to observe others around their age, already in the political sphere to show that there’s no limit to getting into politics. By having someone who can represent young people’s views in the House of Commons or have some kind of influence on key issues that they are facing is crucial in young voices getting heard.
Also, the level of inspiration could be a critical factor in youth political participation. As mentioned previously bringing political speakers from multiple backgrounds into schools is the first part of engagement, but schools and institutions need to be open about inspiring the next generation of politicians and keep them involved in political activities that are going to continue their engagement.
https://speakerpolitics.co.uk/inspiring-stories <– Click on the link for some inspiring stories of young people who got themselves into the political sphere
As it has been suggested previously, political participation for young people is changing (Hoskins et al., 2012). Young people are probably more politically engaged than ever, regardless of the statistics saying they’re not. Through volunteering within the community, fund-raising or even diving in to government lead schemes that help personal development, they are all participatory learning activities that are thought to express more participatory attitudes (Hoskins et al., 2012).
So, in fact, young people are doing just fine as they are, but things do still need to be put in place so that the democratic system we are all part of functions effectively.
If you’re interested in getting into politics, or are even considering running for prime minister one day, here are a few handy links:
Youth Politics UK are a non-profit organization who aim to engage young people into current affairs, democratic right and how the parliament works.
http://youthpolitics.org.uk/home-2/
UK Youth Parliament provide an opportunity for under 18s to get elected and voice their concerns around social change through campaigning and representing.
http://www.ukyouthparliament.org.uk/
The British Youth Council empower young people to influence decisions that affect their everyday lives and get involved within the community to try and make a difference.
Or maybe… Take part: Become a councillor
https://www.gov.uk/government/get-involved/take-part/become-a-councillor
References
Barber, B. (1983), The Logic and Limits of Trust. Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick.
Campbell, D.E. (2009) ‘Civic engagement and education: An empirical test of the sorting model’, American Journal of Political Science, 53(4), pp. 771–786.
Crick, B. (1998) Education for Citizenship and the Teaching of Democracy in Schools: Final Report of the Advisory Group on Citizenship. London: Qualifications and Curriculum Authority.
Davies, I. (2014) ‘Defining citizenship education’ in: Gearon, L. (eds) Learning to Teach Citizenship in the Secondary School: A Companion to School Experience. London: Routledge, 18–30.
Dempsey, N. and Johnston, N. (2018) Political disengagement in the UK: who is disengaged?. London: House of Commons Library. Available at: https://researchbriefings.parliament.uk/ResearchBriefing/Summary/CBP-7501 (Accessed: 10/04/2019)
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Engaging young people in politics 