Don’t write off young people. They care deeply about a better society
Earlier this week, three Polish teens were captured on CCTV giving a duvet to a homeless man. As he lay shivering from the first frost of autumn, they offered him a duvet. The footage subsequently made waves. It partly went viral because stories like these give us a warm, fuzzy feeling, and go some way to restoring our faith in community. But the surprise with which it has been greeted in some quarters shows the extent to which negative stereotypes of younger generations still prevail.
Analysis of the European Social Survey shows that Britain has one of the biggest generational gaps in Europe in terms of how people in their 20s are viewed compared to people in their 70s. Young Brits are viewed with less respect, less friendly, less competent and with lower moral standards by other age groups than their peers on the continent.
And there are those who rush to pronounce why millennials are supposedly so good-for-nothing. Last year, a YouTube video went viral of leadership “expert” Simon Sinek explaining “millennial” behaviours such as entitlement and impatience are easily caused by parenting styles that give them medals for coming last. The short clip was viewed more than 50m times on Facebook alone. These lazy and harmful generalisations neglect the transformative role that young citizens are playing in civic society.
Young people in Britain have been long been tarnished as being politically apathetic due to their reluctance to turn out at the ballot box. Average turnout for 18 to 24year-olds in the 2005, 2010 and 2015 general elections was just 40%. But in the recent general election, turnout was much higher, because young people felt they had something to vote for. Momentum’s grassroots tactics have put young people in the driving seat of UK politics and on the campaign trail, young supporters of Jeremy Corbyn were even mobilising and campaigning independent of the Labour machine. This sort of activity played a key role in winning marginal seats.
And disengagement from mainstream politics does not imply young people are disinterested in societal issues. Research by the thinktank Demos has found that while young people may be disillusioned with politicians and political parties, they are more switched on than ever to the issues of the day. And they are more likely to contribute to their communities today than a few years ago: in 2014-2015, a million more 16 to 24-year-olds volunteered through a group or organisation at least once a month than they did in 2010-11. Today’s young citizens are blazing their own trail. Take TAP, a Hackney-based, youth-led charity on a mission to tackle London’s homelessness problem. Through innovative fundraising and grassroots campaigning, the charity has already raised over £6,000. Behind the rising numbers of youth-led enterprises and grassroots campaigns sits a generation with a DIY attitude. I was part of a collective of more than 30 young people who, in the wake of the EU referendum, crowdsourced the opinions of over 9,000 young people to inform the Brexit process.
But it is the role of government to foster an environment in which young people have a voice that is actively listened to. Many youth organisations are calling for the government to lower the legal voting age to 16, and with good reason. In the 2014 Scottish independence referendum, 75% of 16- and 17year-olds used their vote creating a generation of more engaged citizens. This idea is finally being taken seriously UK-wide.
The CCTV footage of the Polish teens earlier this week shows that contrary to prevailing stereotypes, many young people care deeply about the world around them. Society has a duty to give young people a voice, and to pay notice to the many forms of youth-led activism that add to our civil fabric.
• Elspeth Hoskins is the convenor of the all-party parliamentary group A Better Brexit for Young People and campaign manager of youth-led creative campaign group Undivided.