Over the summer, I nodded my head halfheartedly while a friend of mine lamented the fact that, due to bureaucratic institutions like the Electoral College, her vote would never count. She pointed out that as a liberal in Massachusetts, the general consensus in her state would usually swing in the general direction of her favor, and, therefore, she saw no need to vote.
Of course, in the last gubernatorial race, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts picked Republican Charlie Baker over Democrat Martha Coakley. I can count off the top of my head ten Massachusetts friends of mine who, misjudging the political climate in the region, elected not to vote in the race despite being of age.
As I interpret it, our generation’s political apathy stems mainly from two sources: disillusionment—which I can understand—and misinformation. I find the latter of these harder to excuse, especially when it provides older generations with grounds for dismissing the former.
Most of us can likely agree that when we log on to any social media service—primarily Facebook—we see an onslaught of political posts, whether from activist friends or conservative uncles. A report for the Pew Research Center in June 2015 by Amy Mitchell, Jeffrey Gottfried and Katerina Eva Matsa notes that 61% of surveyed Millennials admitted to getting their political news from Facebook, while 37% reported getting news from local TV stations. Among Baby Boomers, these numbers were almost entirely reversed; 39% sourced some political news from Facebook, and 60% learned the news from local TV.
When surveyed more extensively about their political news sources, Millennials were also less familiar with outlets for political criticism according to Mitchell, Gottfried and Matsa. Of 36 outlets featured in the survey, Millennials reported being less aware than Gen Xers and Baby Boomers about 18, including The Glenn Beck Program, The New Yorker and NPR, and more aware than older generations about two: BuzzFeed and Google News. Awareness between generations proved fairly equal when concerning the other 16 sources.
By presenting this data, I do not mean to discount all of the news sources trusted by our generation—I have often been one to turn to The Daily Show for an update on current events, and I would definitely listen to Jon Stewart over Bill O’Reilly, though the former is a comedian and the latter, technically, is not. The danger, however, of relying more on social media for news is that consumers of social media news might end up voting in accordance with a social trend rather than their actual beliefs.
This issue has an easy fix: actually clicking on the articles your friends share. While all news outlets are subject to biases, reading—or even scanning—full articles provides a better insight than simply reading headlines and Facebook comments. Additionally, we can then read about the same topic from different angles in other sources, allowing us to get closer to the truth.
We all draw political conclusions without doing thorough research first. I first heard of Bernie Sanders, for example, on The Daily Show right after Sanders announced his candidacy. Jon Stewart played a clip of Sanders shuffling papers at the podium and mumbling into the microphone, then exiting the stage after only a few minutes, claiming that he had other business that demanded his attention. Stewart ridiculed him with a comment that an inattentive old man like Sanders could never take on Hillary, and I mimicked this stance.
Had I done my own political research, I probably would have been excited about Sanders’ socialist economics and the inclusion of racial justice in his platform from the start. Instead, I commented that he was too old, completely ignoring the most demographics of electability for presidents.
I did not scrutinize my source, and I decided, instead, to believe what I wanted.
When done right, however, popular culture and social media can surely help keep Millennials engaged. Also in June, Anna Swanson reported for The Washington Post about the release of a new app called Brigade, dubbed “like Tinder for politics” by its founders.
I downloaded Brigade to see what it was really about, and I found myself impressed. The app presents users with simplified blurbs about issues—for example: “college athletes should be paid”—and then offers them the options to agree, disagree or mark “unsure.” After the user’s response, Brigade presents a pie chart showing the popularity of responses and offers users an optional comment bar to explain their positions.
Brigade distances itself from bipartisan biases by avoiding presenting a liberal or conservative affiliation to each issue. It also commendably prompts new users to select a preferred pronoun: she, he or they.
While developments like this one are great and should aid our generation in forming their own political opinions, we cannot simply inform ourselves and think this is sufficient. When it comes time, we all need to go out and vote. •
