Engaging youth through social media.

• Author: Reid, Linda

The last two decades have witnessed a decline in voter turnout, most noticeably among young voters. During this same period, the use of cell phones and digital and social media has increased dramatically. Effective use of social media tools has the exciting potential to connect young voters with political decision-makers and to help rebuild the relationship between citizens, elected officials and parliamentary democracy. This article offers some new ideas about how to engage with young people.

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Before turning to how a variety p of social media tools can be used to engage voters, I would like to quickly sketch out the challenges we face engaging young people and getting them out to vote.

The national trend of declining voter turnout is most pronounced among young Canadians. For example in the 2008 federal election, 36% of people aged 18-24 voted and the last election in my province in 2009 had lower numbers still: only 27% of eligible youth aged 18-24 voted. Youth participation is slightly higher in other countries: 51% of American youth aged 19 to 29 voted in 2008; and 44% of 18-24 year olds in the UK cast ballots in 2010.

A lot of research has been done on this topic. The overall conclusion is that young people are not voting because they feel distanced from the operations of the political system and because they lack a clear understanding of how the political system and parliamentary democracy function.

To encourage youth to participate in the electoral process BC's Chief Electoral Officer recommends that BC legislators consider allowing provisional registration of individuals when they are 16 years old. While youth would remain unable to vote until they turn 18, provisional registration could allow Elections BC to work with schools and the driver licensing programs to ensure the maximum number of students are registered voters before leaving high school. In addition to this proposed change in the rules for voter registration I look forwards to seeing how the use of online voter registration and online voting can also facilitate the engagement of youth and increase overall voting levels.

In the past the BC Legislative Assembly and Elections BC have partnered to use digital media to increase youth engagement. In 2009 a project called "Democracy on Location" was launched to recognize and celebrate the second annual United Nations International Day of Democracy. Students were invited to create a two-minute video about democracy in...