Dear Julia, I’m not interested in politics at all, and the state I live in pretty much always votes for the same party, so I didn’t register to vote last year. But, I felt guilty. I want to get involved but I feel like I don’t know enough and that it won’t matter. What should I do for this election? Politically2confused70
Hi Politically2confused70,
As the next presidential election approaches in the fall, I’ve noticed a steady increase in political conversations on campus. Just last night I walked into my friends’ room and found them looking up how many votes different states got in the electoral college, and another friend I had lunch with today asked who I was voting for in the primaries, and when I gave no response, decided to slip the name of the candidate he’s voting for periodically during the rest of the meal.
I’m not very politically active, but I am registered to vote in Tennessee. As a native Connecticutian, I was proud that I had registered somewhere where I thought my vote would matter more. I even researched the candidates for the Tennessee Senate to make sure that they aligned with the minimal political standings that I had. I walked twenty minutes to the polls, a self-sufficient, politically informed woman ready to use her voice. When I got there, I used the little screens and buttons to vote for the senators that I had decided on, but then instead of a pop-up of an American flag saying “Yay You’ve Voted! Go You, and Go Democracy!”, as I expected, I was presented with another twenty or so candidates for positions I’d never heard of and another list of laws being proposed that I didn’t understand.
I tried to pick the ones I thought I agreed with, but I felt guilty about making a choice that would impact a county I had just started living in when I wasn’t really informed. The sticker I received when I left with the words “I Voted” felt more like a “You Tried” than a medal for being a politically active Gen Z’er.
And this guilt about voting seems to be true for a bunch of other young people. Since Gen Z voters are just approaching or passing the voting age, there is not much available information on our voting tendencies, but there is data on our closely related, will-hopefully-hire-us-in-the-future friends, millennials. According to Tobi Walker of the National Civic Review, voter participation from young people had gradually declined since we gained the right to vote, with millenials having only 10 million voters out of a potential 46 million in 2013. A 2002 Civic Index survey looked deeper into the differences in political involvement between younger and older generations, and found that younger citizens were just as likely as older citizens to fundraise for charity and make conscious social and political retail decisions, but were less likely to give money to a political group, volunteer for a political organization, contact a public official, or read a newspaper.
Although this information is a bit dated, I found it so interesting because I think we Gen Zs exhibit millennial tendencies in those ways as well, but are also more politically active in other senses. CIRCLE in 2018 showed a 47% increase in youth voter turnout from 2014, a sign that we may be the generation to reverse the constant decline in voting, but 59% of Gen Z’ers also list social media as their top news source.
We seem to want to be involved and politically informed, but if we’re getting most of our information from social media, a platform for anyone to post any opinion or propaganda with little fact behind it, are we really able to form an educated opinion? (I love getting my news from Buzzfeed articles as much as the next Gen Z, but it concerns me that I’m getting political information from the same place where I can take a quiz to find out which Taylor Swift song matches my personality).
I understand the appeal of quick news and fast facts that social media allows, especially if politics isn’t something you’re fascinated by, because we just don’t have the time or motivation to watch a two-hour debate or constantly keep up with current events. But there are alternatives. If you really want to be up to date on the world the Skimm is a great way to get fast, fun, and more objective and accurate news than reading your friend’s uncle’s political rant on Facebook. But if you’re like me and barely skim the Skimm, try to start being more in tune and curious about what’s going on outside of the college bubble. If you see something about a candidate on social media that you find interesting, or hear about a crazy thing happening in the world while on campus, look it up and ask people about it. Talk to your friends or your parents or your professors and find out more about news that is interesting to you from sources that you appreciate and can learn from.
But learning about what’s going on in the world doesn’t mean much unless we find a way to use it. Like millennials, a lot of us are very passionate about a variety of things and issues, and will speak out about them to each other or the world from behind screens, but when it gets to taking it to the polls, I’ve heard a lot of people saying that they haven’t registered to vote because their vote won’t matter.
First of all, hardly any states have stayed true to one political party since the creation of the electoral college, so even if your state has consistently voted for one party, anything can happen. Most importantly, it’s the principle of the thing. If we have the attitude that the say we’ve been given doesn’t mean anything, and we don’t use it, then how can we confidently speak out for issues we believe in when we don’t actually take any action in fixing them?
Example: climate change. If you’re super passionate about the environment and #savingtheturtles, you can volunteer and clean up beaches all you want but realistically, that’s not going to cause large-scale change. And who knows if voting for candidates that promote the issues we care about (like the turtles) will either, but it’s the most we can do to try and do something bigger than ourselves.
And as the next election isn’t until November, my first step on the road to political awareness and activism is to rescue the Skimm articles out of my spam folder.
Always yours,
Julia
Advice from a Gen Z Who's Just Trying Her Best 