To resolve apathy, focus on results
It is exceedingly difficult to get most people in my generation, the millennials, to care about politics. What isn’t difficult is getting us to care about results. Bridging the gap between the process of politics, which doesn’t interest us, and the outcome, which does, holds the key to voter apathy, particularly among the young folks that older generations frequently complain about.
To see why, look at how we spend most of our time. We are a group that constantly plugs into our devices (an average of 43 times a day, according to Entrepreneuer), but rarely to connect with one another. In fact, the term “social media” might be the most misleading concept label of the decade, mostly because when people are on Facebook or Twitter, they are anything but social. In reality, most of us do it to escape. We scroll through Facebook newsfeeds during class, meetings and meals, and we sink into the lands of Pandora or Spotify as soon as we get up from the table.
The implication of all of this is that we aren’t using our powerful potential as a generational force to reshape politics. Consider this week’s column a call to change that. I’m certainly not asking everyone to become political gurus, but I think more people need to be invested in the process.
Our lack of connection to the world could not come at a worse time. One of the most significant threats to global stability, ISIS, is fighting a war of ideas in the Middle East that is founded upon principles of hate and intolerance and strengthened by world leaders who fight back with brute force and more intolerance. Congressional leaders such as John Boehner are also dutifully ignoring climate change, another monstrous threat to world safety, because they “aren’t scientists.”
And yet, overwhelming polling data shows that millennials are both more tolerant and more environmentally conscious than generations before. These are just two snapshot examples, but the point I’m making is that our elected officials need to hear our important voice. For some reason, however, we aren’t willing to speak.
Bob Shrum, a veteran political strategist and former speechwriter for Ted Kennedy and Bill Clinton, summarized it for me this way: “They can invent a 21st century politics and a 21st century America, but they have to be engaged.” And then, the big question: “If they don’t, who will?”
Inventing a 21st century politics starts with two acknowledgements. First, most of us don’t have the window of opportunity for 24/7 politics. Most of the time, I write about wonky policy issues, and I know it will only reach a very small slice of folks. Second, no one expects us to know everything about every issue, and we don’t need to. Those people might win episodes of Jeopardy!, but the rest of us just need to use the knowledge we do have in more creative and active ways.
For those who do bleed politics, rebranding participation is the lynchpin to the solution — we have to get past the notion that volunteering for a nonprofit or becoming outraged on Facebook satisfies our political obligation, because it doesn’t. It will continue to make the majority of important decisions that will shape our lives as long as we live in this country, and we have to be a part of them, be it through attending town hall meetings on issues we care about or taking a specific action that we know will have tangible results. Consider the Internet: While great innovators like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates helped commercialize the Internet, it was invented by the United States military, and only later did it become available to the public.
But the Internet has been responsible for as much disconnection as it has connection. To use it well, technology has to connect us to results and let us know we are making change. In June, when Last Week Tonight host John Oliver urged viewers to comment on the Federal Communications Commission website ahead of a major Internet regulation decision, he bridged that gap. Around 45,000 individuals (I’d wager mostly millennials) finally knew that they could act on something they cared about and see results — the FCC website received so many comments that it crashed for a day, and last week it approved the regulations Oliver called for.
The fulcrum this all turns on is what a friend described to me recently as “actionable intelligence.” For us millennials, it’s hard to engage in public policy just for the sake of doing it. We’d rather do it for the sake of seeing real results, which requires being provided the knowledge that what we do is being heard and acted upon. The challenge for older generations is this: If you want our involvement, you have to do more than give us articles to share, and you have to stop wondering how to “make us care.” It’s the difference between voices on the echo chamber of Facebook and public comments that shut down the FCC’s website.
Nathaniel Haas is a junior majoring in political science and economics. His column, “State of the Union,” runs Fridays.