Today's Millenial, 'Dot Net' Youth Generation: Apathetic and Alienated or Subversive and Innovative?
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An essay from the creator of VELOCITY blog regarding this blog’s reason for being and why it is so vital to respect and showcase today’s youth iniatives, activism and movements.
ARE WE TRULY ASLEEP AT THE WHEEL?
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As the former Secretary of Education in Reagan’s time, Terrell Bell, has famously stated, it is a common belief today that “young people have learned only half of America’s story. Although they clearly appreciate the democratic freedoms, they fail to perceive a need to reciprocate by exercising the duties and responsibilities of good citizenship.” Available data on North American youth participation rates does, in a sense, validate this theory. In Pew Research Center polls from 1987-2004, the “percentage of the youngest age cohort registering a complete lack of attention to politics rose from 12% (in 1987-1988) to 24% in 2002-2003. Similarly, while 47% of young adults ages 18-29 were daily newspaper readers in 1972, by 2004 the number among the same age group had plummeted to 23%.”
On a Canadian scale, according to Elections Canada, only 44 per cent of 18-24-year-olds voted in the 2006 general election. That number is considerably lower than the national turnout of 64.7 per cent. As CBC.ca writes, …”it’s a number some grassroots organizations like Apathy is Boring, a national, non-partisan youth group and the Dominion Institute, a Toronto-based national charity, warn will only increase as those youth age. It is their fear that as those youth get older they will create a society of apathetic, couldn’t-care-what-party-is-in-power voters.”
Even the Guerilla News Network has perpetuated an article entitled “MSN Newsspeak and the Apathy of Western Youth” which promotes the thesis that today’s youth just don’t care, aren’t engaged and are self-absorbed and selfish. The article states that “its not that that there are fewer issues to vote for, its that Canadian youth have lost the desire to participate in the decisions made in this country. Bombarded with MTV images and technological distractions, politics has taken the backseat in the mind of the average 18-25 year old.”
Ms. O’Neill, a University of Calgary political scientist who studies youth voting, says “the No.1 reason young people do not get involved is that they are apathetic, for various reasons. Millennials, the generation who makes up the youth voter demographic this election, grew up in a time where the role of the state was drastically reduced from the previous generation,” Ms. O’Neill says. Since governments weren’t doing the same things for people as they were under the welfare state-based system, she writes, “the reciprocity of that relationship diminished, so that people were left with less of a sense of duty — which usually manifested itself in a trip to the ballot box.”
Ms. O’Neill also believes she is an expert on counterculture, subculture and individual community-based movements regarding youth. She asserts with authority that she has found “no evidence a large group of young people like Ms. Schwandt (involved in an ‘eat your ballot’ campaign in the 2006 Canadian election) exists: young people who think there are better ways to change the system than voting. People who aren’t voting aren’t doing other things,” she says, adding she’s seen no evidence of young people organizing grassroots political campaigns instead of voting.
I created VELOCITY primarily because I was fascinated (and replused) by the authority of political scientists and ‘experts’ such as Ms. O’Neill on how we, as a whole, engage in our society. Is the reason these experts have not ‘seen evidence of young people organizing’ in a grassroots way because grassroots, youth run movements and initaives really DO NOT exist, or is the reason because these so-called experts have not bothered to look closely enough, in their own communities and online, to find the subsversive and innovative ideas that our generation is disseminating even as they speak?
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IS IT REALLY APATHY AND DISINVOLVEMENT, OR IS THE WRONG DEFINITION OF ‘CIVIC ENGAGEMENT’ BEING USED REGARDING OUR ‘DOT-NET’, ‘MILLENIAL’ YOUTH GENERATION?
As the founder of VELOCITY, I believe that this debate is defined by what one sees as valid, useful participation in civil society. Is voting the only way our generation can define ourselves as citizens? Or are other methods, especially those related to web 2.0, social media, and more innovative forms of technology and culture-clashing, acceptable as well? Are we really all sitting at home, disengaged and alone, isolated from our communities, or are we actually quite active in unconventional ways— ways that the scholars do not understand?
Tanzila Ahmed, for example, (who happens to be a youth herself and is also the founder of South Asian American Voting Youth) is tired of hearing us called apathetic. Tanzila says that “as a youth organizer in the youth voting movement, people are always telling me these rumors. The most common one that I’m sick of hearing, ‘Aren’t young people apathetic?’ I find myself constantly challenging these folks with all the accomplishments that the youth movement has achieved.”
Tanzila cites the remarkably large youth turnout in the 2004 American election as an example of how wrong the critics can be when it comes to actual participation. “The 2004 campaign brought out the largest percentage of young voters in 32 years. Studies suggest that once a young person is involved in the political process, they are more likely to continue to be involved in it. 35.5 percent of 18- to 25-year-old Asian American citizens turned out to vote in 2004, the largest percentage since data started being collected in 1972.”
So, as Tanzila puts it, “what is political involvement to a youth these days? Back in our grandparents’ generation, being “political” meant you had to go to a rally or a protest, or join a union. Today’s youth has a whole new definition, according to this survey; 22 percent have worn a wristband, 36 percent have signed an online petition, and 30 percent have written an email or letter advocating a position. Eighteen percent have contributed to a political blog. i.e., 918,000 young people are political bloggers, which is fascinating since the blogs are a product of only the past few years.”
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TODAY’S YOUTH: “DOGGEDLY DETERMINED TO SURVIVE THE DISINVESTMENT OF THE ELDER GENERATION.”
As Mike Males with Oblivion X writes, “Most pointedly, does denigrating youth serve to whitewash the failures of the grownup generation and its institutions? Monumental fiscal irresponsibility from Main Street to Wall Street had brought on the Great Depression. Among adults, skyrocketing crime, suicide, drunkenness, and a murder rate higher than today’s devastated families and communities of the 1930s. Similar trends are evident today.
Statistics clearly show soaring rates of violent and property crime, drug abuse, and family instability among adults over the past quarter century, along with unchecked concentration of wealth in the richest fraction of the population. Youths today seem doggedly determined to survive disinvestment by the elder generation. Even after 25 years of massive public school defundings and classroom crowding, students display higher school enrollments, test scores, college preparatory work, and volunteerism than their carping forebears.”
Matthew Mosley with The Common Enterprise agrees, adding that …”far from apathetic, today’s youth have chosen to contribute to society in unconventional ways. The burgeoning youth service movement represents a valuable resource of energy, creativity and commitment, if appropriately recognized and nurtured.” A similar sentiment from Scott Keeter with the Pew Research Centre: …”in short, the stereotype of a politically disengaged younger generation is not fully accurate. As has long been true, young people don’t match their elders in voter turnout or many other traditional forms of political engagement. But the gap between younger and older citizens narrowed in 2004, and there are clear signs that youth are increasingly finding other ways to be involved in public life - engagement that may eventually broaden to include more voting and other electoral activities.”
As Johan Boyden writes from Toronto about the startingly low youth voter turnout rate of Canada’s recent 2008 election, was this low turnout “really about youth apathy, or the disinterest of the big parties to engage youth in the issues? Does the omission of youth issues from the discourse of the big business parties have an ideological goal, to disengage youth from the process?”
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ON PERCEPTIONS AND ACTIVISM IN MANY FORMS
Given these points, why are we still hearing so many accounts of how apathetic and uninformed our generation is? Perhaps the real argument here is one of definition; ie, WHAT exactly entails being ‘politically active’? Statistics may show us that a great many of today’s young people are disillusioned with the political system in their respective countries, and therefore vote in less numbers than past generations.
Does this mean that we are uninformed, uninvolved and apathetic as a whole? I argue that it does not. There are many ways to engage oneself in one’s community and to contribute in a unique way to civil society; voting is one important way to engage, but it is not the only method available to us, and as the creator of VELOCITY, I am convinced that today’s ‘Apathetic Millenial Generation’ understands this idea better than most.
Youth activists, movers and shakers DO exist today— we just may exist in a more fluid, ever-shifting, and hard to define realm than our predecessors did at our age. We are loudly and proudly in existence at a variety of protests around the world, we engage in culture-clashing activities, we read zines and ride bikes instead of cars, we go to see politicians speak and have beers with them afterwards, we fight, debate, argue, and resist what we dislike on blogs, twitter, facebook and livejournal. We are thinking of new ways to engage, new conceptualizations, and new types of inspiration— and we are not silent.
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SHOULD WE REALLY BELIEVE THOSE WHO SAY WE ARE NOT ACTIVE AND AWARE?
Georgian opposition youth protest against the government in Tbilisi, 2007.
vibrant faces at youth-centered (and extremely popular) Zombie Walk, downtown Vancouver.
gay and lesbian millenials protest outside of the Capetown Provincial Legislature, 2009.
young people flood downtown Vancouver for massive anti-car Critical Mass bikeride, 2009.
A teenager protests illegal bull-fighting in Mexico.
young people dancing up a storm at a Caribbean pride festival in Montreal, 2006.
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READ MORE ABOUT BOTH SIDES OF THIS DEBATE
For further readings reinforcing/ perpetuating the ‘Millenial-era youth as apathetic— this is a problem!’ thesis’ please read the articles and sources used below.
- Article in the Ottowa Citizen: Today’s Youth “Too Apathetic to be Alienated”, by Laura Drake. “The Millennial generation, raised on shrinking government and cynicism, has moved from ‘disenfranchised’ to ‘disengaged.’”
- Article: “Canada Votes— youth matters.” CBC.ca, Lorianna De Giorgino. “Jaffer’s determination to vote puts him in a minority. While he makes sure to mark a ballot, the majority of young Canadians don’t head to the polls come election day.”
- Article: “Martin’s Movement Breeds Youth Apathy.” The McGill Tribune, Christopher Moore. “It appeared that the restrictive two-tiered representative system is failing to stop apathy from sinking its grip into the hearts of Canada’s youth. The polls opened at 6:00 pm; by 8:30 pm only 17 Young Liberals from 15 clubs had shown up to elect delegates. Some clubs saw no point in everyone going out of their way to facilitate the inevitable, a source said.”
- Article: “Apathy Killed the Electoral Process.” Gauntlett Press, Katy Anderson, 2006. “The results showed the decline of electoral participation in Canada over the past 15 years was largely due to an unprecedented drop in turnout among the youngest age groups. Even with an increased awareness of the need to get more youth involved, just over 35 percent of youth voted in 2004.”
- Article: “MSN NewsSpeak and the Apathy of Western Youth.” Civil Liberties, 2009. “Our democratic society faces an epidemic far more destructive than any war or disease in history: The apathy of the x and millennial generations. Statistics have proven definitively that the number of people who exercise thier right to vote has dropped dramatically in the past twenty years.”
For further readings which deride the ‘apathetic Millenial-era youth’ thesis, please read the articles and sources below.
- Article: “Apathetic Youth? Not Here, Not Now.” Rocky Mountain News, Nancy Mitchell, 2008. “Alyssa Owens, 16, rolled out of bed at 5 a.m. on Election Day and skipped school to work the polls while Maria Michler, also 16, spent much of Election Night in tears over John McCain’s loss.”
- Article: “Today’s Youth Are Always the Worst.” Oblivion X, Mike Males. …”just as 1990s young people are stereotyped as frighteningly dissolute, youth of the 1930s were bitterly trashed by the elders of their day. Back then, they were not called the ‘greatest generation,’ but a new and frightening ‘lost generation.’”
- Article in WireTap Magazine, “Dont Call Us Apathetic,” Tanzila Ahmed. “We are not a generation of the apathetic youth. We are a generation of politically charged, educated, skeptical, involved and civically engaged youth. Recognize.”
- Article: The Youth Service Movement,” Matthew Moseley, National Civic Review, 1995. “Remarkable change is occurring among American youth. An enormous resurgence of volunteerism and monumental efforts in rebuilding the civic structure of America are guiding the nation on a path toward revitalization and renewal.”
- Article: Politics and the Dot-Net Generation,” Scott Keeter, Pew Research Centre, 2006. “Based on the uptick in voter turnout among DotNets in 2004, their relatively high levels of civic engagement, and their willingness to express their opinions to political leaders, the media, and their peers, this cohort of Americans is not likely to be a silent generation.”
- Article: “What’s the Story about Youth Apathy?” Johan Boyden, Rebel Youth. “In an election with the lowest voter turn-out in Canadian history at less than sixty percent, fewer youth appear to have cast a ballot than ever before. Over a million youth in Canada didn’t vote. Is this really about youth apathy, or the disinterest of the big parties to engage youth in the issues? Does the omission of youth issues from the discourse of the big business parties have an ideological goal, to disengage youth from the process?
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this essay copywright 2009, kaitlyn braybrooke, VELOCITYblog.
