Ever since the staggering statistic that 55 percent of registered American voters voted in the last presidential election came out, I have been curious to the societal trend of non-participation in politics, as it pertains to a younger generation.
When I use the phrase non-participation, I don’t mean simply doing nothing. The point being made is that the young men and women belonging to Generation Y seem to care and possess an opinion about politics and the state of the world, but don’t seem to actually take part in the democratic process. It is increasingly apparent that young people have an opinion on politics, and social media has a huge part to play in this formation of a political opinion.
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As of 2015, 47.1 percent of Millennials consider themselves independent of a political party, this in contrast to only 35 percent of Baby Boomers being registered independent. (Bloomberg View) As for those who pick a side, the Millennials seem to lean left with 55.1 percent registered as Democrats.
The problem of non-participation seems to take on the form of a two-headed monster. One head being that young voters are increasingly seeing the political system as untrustworthy, as the other problem seems to be that they are just horribly oblivious to the political process. As for the first problem, there seems to be a large, overarching notion that our generation is somehow doomed by the government. According to a Harvard IOP poll from October of 2015, 49 percent of Millennials believe the American dream is dead and long since gone. This statistic is awfully eye-opening.
The Millennial generation was born into a particularly interesting time. They grew up alongside the titanic rise of social media and the Internet as a whole. I believe this parallel coming of age has affected my generation more than most people think. There are societal trends and ideas started purely on social media, and it affects the political scene even more so, seen evident in the fact that almost every U.S. senator has a Twitter, Facebook and even Snapchat.
As for the problem of the uneducated generation, I honestly believe this notion is a bit dated. With the influence of social media on politics, and with everyone and their grandmother consuming most of their news from social media, it is seemingly impossible to be uneducated in our day and age. Even though there are some who simply don’t care to know anything about the political scene or out time, I believe the problem of our generation not trusting the democratic process is a larger problem than this.
So why on earth should America care if its youngest voters are not voting, and why should Millennials care to vote? Well, as of 2015, Millennials officially surpassed Baby Boomers as the largest voting demographic in the United States. During the midterm elections of 2014, only 20 percent of those 46 million eligible Millennial voters participated.
If we think to the future, say 30 years, this trends continuance could have horrible ramifications. If the Millennial generation does not get themselves into the democratic process, then it will be left to the now withering Baby Boomers to decide who their president, senators and representatives will be. This will essentially be a form of monarchy, where a small number and demographic of people chose what is best for the whole population of a nation of people.
I have personally heard this phrase from the mouths of my peers, when asked about voting: “what difference am I going to make?” This phrase seems to have become the norm.
As the previous statistics show, Millennials are the largest, thus most powerful, voting demographic in the country as of now. There are countless articles about how each presidential candidate is polling with Millennials, and it is obvious the vote of Generation Y is a sought after one for almost all of the candidates.
Now, as I simply cannot offer a comprehensive solution to this problem, I can tell you we as an American people should be concerned about it and work to change it. The Millennial generation is full of free-thinking and world-changing ideas. It is one of the most powerful generations of our time. So if you, as a millennial reader, want to change the world, the first place you can look to start is the confines of a voting booth.
