Quote:
Originally Posted by Twosugars
I think you paint a somewhat exaggerated picture of that engagement.
I don't know about US, but here not many grownups study family law or real estate taxes before voting. We don't have endless referendums like US has with their state elections.
And re. social media, well, I think that ship has sailed already. Kids spend loads of time on that anyway, they may just as well do something productive with it from time to time.
Also, how young are we talking about? You said kids, I repeated kids. I had 16+ in mind. Here this is the age of consent to sex, they can drive at 17. At the moment they can vote at 18 (some argue it should be lowered to 16).
The days of idealized childhood from the 50s are over. Young people encounter things like environmental issues, immigration etc from an early age.
Besides if we waited for people to be fully mature (emotional maturity) then according to psychologists we'd have to wait until 25.
|
It's probably different in the US given we are so highly dependent on our cars. Public transportation is not widespread unless you're in the city and even then it is limited in comparison to other locales. Also our homes tend to be higher in size, things like consumer elections are cheaper, so it's very easy to give a child a device, tell them to entertain themselves and they can spend days in a room in the summer wrapped up in devices... our kids are quite addicted to consumer electronics and media here and is generally cheaper than outdoor entertainment.
I linked the Atlantic article for this because it cites various statistics, such as kids here passing up on usual rights such as getting a car, having sex, having an active social life, spikes in mental health and depression rates, etc... We're just starting to understand the role tech plays in mental health, but when talking about too young for politics, I am mainly talking about folk <16... near voting age is I think it is good to start paying attention since high school is when we start getting a deeper understanding of civics related materials.
It's interesting you mention voting age though... in the 2016 election, they were so sure the youth vote would come out. I've noticed that being politically engaged doesn't always translate to voting numbers. The youth vote (and the # of ppl voting in general) were much lower than people had hoped. So they did not show for Hillary as was claimed to happen. That's always been a problem. Primary voting numbers are an even bigger dumpster fire, forgetting just the youth vote.
That's why I don't think that engagement translates to votes. So I tend to think the "movement" as the kind of mover and shaker is a bit of a joke. It's largely down to a niche group of folk who spend an inordinate amount of time being stressed about things they can't control, rather than being politically "active"... and a large amount of that emotional energy is spent online tweeting into the ether. Now, that's not to say that's true across the board... I knew some people who were highly well-read, studied intensively in their younger years, would attend debates, seminars and were well-ranged in a diverse set of topics... and they were bound to go to great schools and grab great scholarships. But that is extraordinarily rare and is the outlier.