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YOUp@ Blog
Youth, Participatory Democracy and New Media ¦ with the support of La Oreja de Europa
In Britain young people is not interested in politics. It´s true that they don´t have a wide ideological variety to vote. In my opinion the strategy is based on the new social media, something interesting and attractive could help to the first-time voters. The participation should reach to the streets, you can´t involve only clicking in your computer.
Perhaps it is not just that all young people are uninterested in politics, but also that they have been alienated from the democratic process in the UK. A reasonably recent independent report in the UK, ‘The Power Inquiry’, looks into this and considers what they call the ‘myth of apathy’. It contends that the deeper cause for disengagement can be attributed to the fact that the structure of the British political system remains much as it did in the Industrial era; a time of deference, rigid hierarchy and static social relations in which the main political parties’ interests and ideological leanings focussed on two dominant classes. Not surprisingly the British public, especially the younger generations, therefore currently feel alienated from formal democratic processes which are unable to respond to their diverse and complex values and interests in Britain’s contemporary post-industrial society.. What does everyone think to this?
@ruthmuir
That some young people may feel excluded from the political system in the UK, I can easily understand. However, is it not too simple to blame their general apathy entirely on the “system”? The UK may have institutions that reach back a long time and that may not appear “modern” in the 21st century – because the media say so. There are other systems that are much more recent, e.g. the regimes that have succeeded the so-called “popular democracies” in Central and Eastern Europe less than 20 years ago. Is there any evidence that young people are fully involved in these “young” democracies? To my mind, the real cause of disengagement is lack of time or… shear laziness. It costs time and effort to inform oneself, to think, to confront one’s ideas to others, to go to political meetings (in the widest sense), etc. Few can/want to make available the time it takes to “participate”.