The Media. The Feds. The Kids.

As media takes over our environment, we can see the younger generations, the generation that grew up with media, slowly but surely move away from organized forms of politics and become more dependent on independent sources, such as blogs and social media. The reason for that is that the youth has associated politics with negativity because that is al they grew up with seeing on the media. Younger generations grew up with political mudslinging and seeing politicians become celebrities, by seeing their private information aired in gossip magazines and entertainment shows.

But this negativity that the youth has associated with politics does not deter them from being active participants in changing the world around them. The youth are now more involved in issues such as climate change, and social justice, they’re just not doing it with government sponsored methods.

Across the board you can see a decrease in the youth’s engagement with the government and trust in it. There has also been significant declines in neighborhood involvement, trust in the press, and trust in others.

The youth is does not trust the government but are still interested in government related issues, they just don’t realize that they are. They have concerns with the environment, human rights, and activities that concern helping others. The youth does not realize that these issues have a direct correlation to the government.

But I think the biggest issue is that politicians and the government are truly disconnected from the youth and how the youth communicates. It’s almost like a parent child relationship. If a parent wants to get to know their child better and build a relationship they don’t force the child to develop a hobby the parent does, the parent must develop the hobby of the child, meet the child on their own terms and gain their trust. Once the trust is gained a new channel of communication and dialogue is open between the parent and the child. This same tactic can be applied to the relationship, or lack thereof, between the government and the youth. If the government wants to understand the political and civic engagement of the youth learn about the topics that they are interested in. Learn about equality, learn about their concerns about the environment. Attend their rallies. Read their blog posts. Check their hashtags. Engage them on these platforms and understand the utility of them. Produce the content that the youth wants to see in a manner that they wish to see it in, devoid of political mudslinging, name calling and general disrespect that occurs in politics. The youth cares about the government and the world in which they live. The issue is that they feel their government doesn’t care about the world, and there lies the disconnect.

Digital citizenship has surely impacted our society and has divided individuals into separate groups of people. The digital age has divided the youth into engaged and disengaged youth. The engaged youth are the ones that are actively participating in government while disengaged youth is finding new ways to express their beliefs online. Because of this, they are also separated into the actualizing citizen and the dutiful citizen. The actualizing citizen is one who doesn’t have a large sense of government obligation, and has a higher sense of individual. Personally, I feel that this is important because how can an individual commit themselves to anything unless they first are committed to themselves. Another quality of the actualizing citizen is that voting is less meaningful that other forms of activism such as volunteering or nationalism. This quality is one that can be understood because when volunteering an individual can directly see the impact of their impact. It is an immediate reward. The last quality of the actualizing citizen is that they favor loose networks of community action. They don’t want to be in a social club or group with weekly meetings. On the other hand, we have the dutiful citizen. The dutiful citizen feels obligated to participate in government centered activities and it is their duty to vote. They find out about government issues through mass media including television and they join social clubs and organizations through the help of their political parties. One could argue that the dutiful citizen is the more “old fashioned way” of participating in society.