Social Media Play Important Role In Young Adult’s Political Engagement
Young adults who are active social media users also show greater political engagement, a study in Information, Communication & Society shows. Young adults from Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States who spend a great amount of time with social media, are more likely to perform individual acts of civic or political engagement or to join, work or volunteer with different groups for political reasons. Political talk with family members during childhood and civic education during secondary and high-school play an important role as well.
Take aways
- Young adults in Australia, the UK, and the US who are active social media users are more politically engaged.
- This particularly holds for those young adults who:
- often talk about politics with their family members during childhood;
- receive political education during secondary and high school.
- For political parties it seems wise to implement social media in their strategies to attract young people.
- For teachers it’s important to know that civic or political education has potential to stimulate young adult’s political engagement, especially when students are stimulated to use the internet as a source of information.
Study information
The question?
Does social media use among young people strengthen their political engagement?
Who?
3,685 young adults aged 16-29 (1,216 from Australia, 1,228 from the UK, and 1,241 from the US (48% were men; mean age: 23 years old)
Where?
Australia, United Kingdom, & United States
How?
Young adults from three different countries were first asked about their time spent with nine different popular social media platforms (the exact media were not specified). Then they were asked about their political engagement which was divided into their individual political engagement (individual acts of civic or political engagement, such as raising money for charitable causes or buying goods/services based on political or ethical reasons), and their collective political engagement (whether they joined, worked or volunteered with different kinds of groups for political reasons). Additionally, they were asked for the way politics were discussed in secondary or high-school (in order to measure young adult’s ‘civic educational background’) and the frequency with which they used to talk with their family about news and political affairs.
Facts and findings
- Social media use was related to both individual and collective political engagement across all three countries: the more time young adults spent with social media, the more politically engaged they were.
- The positive relation between social media use and collective political engagement was even stronger for young adults who:
- participated in ‘traditional’ civic education (e.g., encouragements from teachers to discuss politics) or ‘digital’ civic education during secondary or high-school (e.g., encouragements from teachers to learn about politics online, instructions on how to assess the trustworthiness of online information),
- used to talk with their family about news and political affairs frequently.
- This implies that social media can serve as a catalyst for political engagement, in such a way that it strengthens young adult’s political engagement when politics were taught during secondary or high school or when discussed at home.
- Critical note: This study does not allow for any conclusions about cause (e.g., social media use) and effect (e.g., political engagement). The results only show that higher social media use is associated with more political engagement and cannot say anything about what causes what.