The Internet's Impact on the Quality of Youth Political Participation
*Originally submitted November, 2025 for the Communication: Cultures and Approaches course in fulfillment of the MSc Media and Communications program at the London School of Economics. Received a Distinction.
Question: How worried should we be by young people’s lack of participation in politics?
Introduction
Youth political participation in the United States has long been a topic of discussion, with major declines happening throughout the late 20th century (Statista, 2021). However, in the last two presidential elections as well as the 2022 midterm election, the U.S. saw record-breaking youth voter turnout (Rock the Vote, 2024; Statista, 2021). While youth political participation may not necessarily be on the decline in the current decade, the rise of a highly mediated and platformed society has transformed what youth political participation looks like, as well as the quality of such participation. In examining trends of youth political participation and media use, I will suggest that we should be concerned with the lack of high-quality, informed youth participation in politics as a result of increasingly mediated participation.
Political Participation and Elite Democratic Theory
The concept of political participation goes beyond just voting, and extends to a range of activities designed to influence policy-making and government decisions (Anstead, 2024; Bucy et al., 2001). This includes protesting, signing petitions, writing letters to elected officials, canvassing, etc. While political participation is generally regarded as necessary for a functioning democracy, I believe elite democratic theory can help us understand why widespread participation may be more detrimental than effective. Elite democratic theory, including both the “elite rule is best” and “elite rule is inevitable” schools of thought, challenges the idea that participation should be considered good and advocates for limited citizen participation (Anstead, 2024; Etzioni, 1990). The theory posits that the general public tend to be ill-informed about politics and easily swept along by charismatic political figures, and too much political participation from the public can lead to government corruption or incompetence (Anstead, 2024). In a comparative study on democratic success in England and Germany, Etzioni (1990) found that “elite autonomy” and the establishment of an elite class, completely independent from the pressures of government, was actually pivotal to the successful implementation of Western democracy. Specific to the establishment of an independent media elite, Etzioni (1990) concluded,
“Freedom of speech and of information are evidently considered as basic democratic rights of all citizens. From a demo-elite perspective, however, the additional importance of these principles lies in their protecting the autonomy of the media elite which, in turn, is crucial for democracy,” (p. 334).
Acknowledging the importance of an independent media elite in protecting democratic principles, we must then consider the implications of widespread, mediated political participation.
Media and Youth Democratic Participation in the 21st Century
In recent decades, conventional civic participation has been on the decline while media use has increased significantly (Bucy et al., 2001). Scholars have identified that people are less likely to identify with rigid parties, there is less trust in government and traditional media, people feel as though their voice doesn’t matter, and civic participation in general has shifted from community-oriented to much more individualized (Bennett et al., 2011; Bucy et al., 2001; Dahlgren, 2009). Additionally, social norms may prohibit political discussion, deeming it “inappropriate” and therefore limiting opportunities to discuss politics outside of the home (Dahlgren, 2009, p. 17). These trends, then, bode well for the rise of digital gathering spaces inherent to social media.
Digital media can reduce barriers to entry in political participation and facilitate mobilization among traditionally smaller groups, therefore reducing the power of traditional media and political elites (Anstead, 2024). However, digital media also brings with it a host of new issues, such as mysterious algorithms, echo chambers, fake news, non-neutral spaces, and both low-quality participation as well as participation from undesirable groups (Mounk, 2018). The shift to “many-to-many” communication both democratizes access and gives anybody with internet access and a smartphone the opportunity to be an “opinion-shaper,” (Mounk, 2018). As online participation has grown, the media elite “have lost much of their ability to control the spread of ideas or messages that resonate with ordinary people,” (Dahlgren, 2013, p. 140). But is the level of political participation online of the same quality as more “traditional” participation?
Youth Online Political Participation
When we consider that 95% of teens in the U.S. “have or have access to a smartphone” and roughly half of teens report using the internet “almost constantly,” (Pew Research Center, 2023) it is unsurprising that scholars have found a strong positive relationship between social media usage and political engagement (Edgerly et al., 2018; Kanervo et al., 2018; Östman, 2012; Santoso et al., 2024; Xenos et al., 2014). Digital media has provided younger generations with new avenues for political participation across direct leader/legislator contact, public opinion formation and civic discussions, mediated interactions with political actors, donating and mobilizing (Bucy et al., 2001). While this may seem like a positive, studies have also found that media participation “contribute[s] to the psychological feeling of being engaged with the political system,” (Bucy et al., 2001, p. 358) in what is often referred to as the illusion of widespread participation. Bucy et al. (2001) also noted that, through new media use, “the citizen benefits from the awareness that media participation provides proximity to political elites, makes politics continuously available and entertaining (i.e. accessible),” (p. 375). This illusion of widespread participation online, coupled with increased accessibility to political figures, may suggest a lack of meaningful, informed participation among younger generations and a breaking down of the media elite.
Before the widespread adoption of digital media, the media elite had much greater control over what messages were being disseminated to the American public and how. Additionally, there has been a long-standing link between traditional news consumption and political engagement. But with the proliferation of social media platforms and new media formats allowing everyday citizens to spread news and ideas to one another, viewership and readership for traditional news institutions has declined. Once-trusted traditional media organizations have had to paywall journalistic content as print media has declined, and Pew Research Center (2023) found that “the average monthly number of unique visitors to the websites of the country’s top 50 newspapers declined 20%” in 2022 alone. The adoption of online streaming services like Netflix and Hulu, as well as the rising popularity of podcasts, has also caused major declines in cable or network news consumption among younger generations, with the exception of the right-leaning Fox News (Pew Research Center, 2023). Today, youth in the U.S. predominantly interact with politics online, where political satire and user-generated content (UGC) are favored over traditional news media (Edgerly et al., 2018; Östman, 2012). This raises concerns when we consider that disinformation, fake news, algorithms, echo chambers and bad actors can all impact the quality of information we receive online, coupled with the illusion of political participation.
UGC and internet culture have become central to youth culture, as younger generations have grown up with these new forms of communication rather than having to adapt to them (Östman, 2012). This orients youth towards democratic literacy and participation via digital media. However, where many scholars have noted a strong positive relationship between online participation and political participation, identifying a positive relationship between these factors and political knowledge has been a bigger challenge (Bennet et al., 2011; Edgerly et al., 2018; Kanervo et al., 2018; Östman, 2012; Xenos et al., 2014). Östman (2012), in his study on UGC engagement and youth political participation, found that UGC engagement was positively related to political participation both on and offline, yet unrelated to news consumption, and negatively related to political knowledge. Santoso et al. (2024) found four main challenges to democratic literacy in the digital media era: hoax oasis, politician stigmatization, idiot discussion engagement and political apathy engagement. These challenges highlight a concerning trend among young people wherein they are constantly interacting with news online that they are not sure if they can trust, an increasingly hostile environment in which they are afraid to engage in political conversations with those who hold differing political views at the risk of receiving hate comments, and ever-growing echo chambers in which they might not even be exposed to different political ideas.
Perhaps of most concern is Edgerly et al.’s (2018) study of U.S. youth aged 12-17, in which they identified that roughly half of youth tended to avoid the news altogether. For the other half of youth, three distinct groups were identified: traditional-news only, curated-news only, and news omnivores. Those in the traditional-news only group tended to be younger, more interested in politics and taking cues from their parents in regard to what news they consumed. Those who were classified as curated-news only skewed older, and could be split into seekers and stumblers–those who curated their news sources and feeds vs. those who didn’t. Seekers were not necessarily more politically interested, they could just be constructing an echo chamber. News omnivores, those who consumed traditional and digital news, tended towards higher political participation and higher political interest, though they often perceived the news media to be more biased than mobile news sources. The study found that while your news preferences (traditional vs. digital) could shift as you age, your orientation towards news consumption would remain relatively fixed (i.e. if you were identified as a news avoider, it was unlikely that you would become a news omnivore).
Lastly, a 2011 examination of political websites found that predominantly or exclusively online organizations (versus, for example, candidate websites) were much more oriented towards peer and networked interaction, media production and contribution, and online discussion and participation rather than educational opportunities and guidance for taking action, which were more consistent with candidate websites and organizations that existed offline (Bennett et al., 2011).
Conclusion
While youth voter participation in U.S. presidential and midterm elections has been record-breaking in recent years, the shift towards online news consumption and political participation may be creating a gap between political participation and political knowledge. Considering this, I believe we should be concerned about how the youth are engaging in civic participation, and what that means for the media elite and key democratic functions. Following Donald Trump’s first election in 2016, Mounk (2018) wrote, “In empowering outsiders, digital technology destabilizes governing elites all over the world and speeds up the pace of change,” (p. 149). As the digital general public gets louder and their perceived political participation increases without an increase in actual political knowledge, we should be concerned with what this means for key functions of democracy. Without a media elite to control messaging and maintain journalistic integrity, and without a concrete solution for regulating such content online, I worry that the rise of ill-informed political participation amongst younger generations is pushing politics more and more towards the realm of entertainment with little understanding of what the real-world consequences may be.
References
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