What do young people know about politics?
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Scott LaMar
Airdate: March 30th, 2023
How informed are Americans about politics and what’s going on in the world around them? More specifically, how informed are young Americans?
Anecdotally, we’ve all heard that young people are too busy with college classes, their social lives or starting their adult lives to pay attention to what they believe may or may not have an impact on them.
Alison Dagnes is a professor of political science at Shippensburg University who recently concluded a column she wrote that most of the kids are alright.
On The Spark Thursday, Dagnes was asked what “being alright” means,”I think that there’s a widespread misunderstanding. Or maybe it’s stereotyping that college students are angry and they’re protesting. And I know folks on the right who think that college students are kind of almost all liberal and folks on the left think that college students are insufficiently liberal or maybe all conservative. And so I just get to talk to so many kids and they are in the main, not our political science majors, but our gen ed students and students from other disciplines. They’re happy. They’re not very political and they’re very busy with things going on and they just don’t want to get screamed at and they don’t want to scream at anybody else. And and that makes it all right.”
Are they knowledgeable about politics and issues? “Some are are well-informed, some are informedish, however informed you can be from Tik Tok, I think is how informed they are.
Also with us was Shippensburg dual major in public service and criminal justice student Daeshawn Ford, who said he doesn’t think many of his classmates are well informed,”I don’t feel like it’s very important to them. I feel like it’s just on a personal level, if you want to be politically informed or if you don’t, and if you care about the issues in your community and want to actually make a change in your community, then you should.”
Ford was asked about the issues he finds most important,”I would say gun violence, that’s a huge one. Quality of life issues like issues going on within like the local community.”
Dagnes said that her classes are divided probably in half between those who identify as Democrats and Republicans, which may surprise some people because young people are often thought of a liberal — at least on social issues.
