Kids These Days

A poll for the Civitas Institute showed that North Carolina voters lack knowledge about state and local politics. In fact, only 49 percent of the voters in North Carolina know which political party is in control of the state legislature.

And according to the poll, who knows the least about local and state politics? Young voters.

Young citizens are often met with criticism regarding their lack of political knowledge. So who’s to blame? The media? The education system? The young voters themselves?

No one factor is the source of young voters’ ignorance. Both the media and youth can be held accountable for the lack of knowledge about local and state politics.

Young voters are not entirely apathetic about politics. During last year’s presidential campaign, I spent numerous lunch periods discussing the presidential candidates and their platforms. I witnessed many conversations go from nonchalant comments to heated debates about issues of the economy, healthcare, the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, and more. My fellow classmates loved the controversy.

But, discussions about local and state candidates were few and far between. Even with Charlotte’s mayor, Pat McCrory, running for governor, the conversation focused on the national scale.

For all ages, there is a lack of attention on local and state politics. National politics take precedence over issues on the local level. While the media provides less coverage of local politics, it is often a response to citizens’ interest. Controversy between more high-profile politicians on the national level is more exciting than seemingly more trivial issues at the community level.

What citizens fail to see is that the smaller issues have a greater direct impact on their daily lives. All voters, not just young voters, do not realize how decisions made by local governing bodies like the town council will affect them personally. Why the disconnect? Frequently, citizens don’t know what decisions are being made. Other times they do not pay attention to the decision because it seems to impact others more than them. Or they may believe national decisions will have a larger impact on their lives than they really will.

When citizens learn about the decisions of local governments and make the connections between local governments and themselves, their interest in these governing bodies will rise. The responsibility falls on both the citizens to realize this, and the media to communicate exactly how the deliberations of government representatives are affecting these citizens.

For young voters, in particular, local political issues are often an even lower priority in our lives. Honestly, I’m more worried about my next exam than the amount of taxes I will be paying in five years. But this focus on the short-term and a lack of interest in the long-term is problematic. It is a product of necessity (sometimes, it’s easier to take each day one step at a time than to look years down the line), self-interest (we are less likely to care about issues that don’t affect us), and a lack of knowledge (we can’t care about issues we don’t know about).

The first part is hard to remedy. Political decisions that are made now often don’t affect younger voters until years later. Educators and informants should emphasize the impact today’s decision makers have on the future of the youth.

However, many political decisions affect us immediately, such as town council decisions about parking or safety measures in downtown areas.

The media can help communicate this impact, thus appealing to our self-interest. News sources have a responsibility to inform citizens about details of local and state politics relevant to their lives. With more specialized media sources like blogs and social networking sites, certain news providers can focus on how politics affect youth in particular. By making the information more audience specific, it will attract more young voters.

With the amount of time my peers and I spend on Facebook and other social networking sites, we certainly have time to catch up on the latest local news periodically. So why don’t we? Apart from a lack of emphasis on the impact local politics has on our lives as younger citizens, another reason young voters don’t frequent news Web sites is because news about local government lacks entertainment value. If the media makes the news more interesting to read, which some blogs have accomplished with a more casual, opinionated tone, it will attract a wider audience, including younger readers. Sites such as The Huffington Post have begun to incorporate a combo of news and entertainment.

In addition, media should meet younger audiences halfway. And it is starting to do so. As people make it a daily habit (or hourly, minute-ly, second-ly habit) to check Facebook and Twitter to catch up on their friends’ whereabouts, the media has taken advantage of this compulsion. Options to follow news sources on Twitter and become a fan or join a group of a news source on Facebook have allowed people, including numerous younger users of social networking sites, to intertwine updates from friends with political news.

News sources could take this idea to another level and capatilize on other habitual behavior, like online gaming and procrastination. For example, media could increase their presence on stumbleupon.com, a popular Web site that allows a user to randomly search his or her interests on the web. Then younger users would simply “stumble upon” news.

As the media develops more outlets that appeal to young voters, access to local political knowledge will increase. Still, it is up to young voters to have some interest in local and state politics. Even if it simply consists of local newspaper headlines on Twitter or status updates from a local official, a little information about local and state politics goes a long way.