Which is good to know, since a lot of what I’ve been seeing media-wise is that the internet and video games are destroying an entire generation.

The Social Times reports that recent research indicates that the opposite may be true:

According to a new body of research described by Los Angeles Times, teens who are most active on social networking sites such as Facebook are actually more well-adjusted than their less-connected peers.

Every generation has something that older people believe is irreversibly corrupting it, from Elvis’s hips to Facebook. Maybe everyone should figure out that it never really turns out that way.

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CIRCLE’s new working paper, Spiral of Rebellion: Conflict Seeking of Democratic Adolescents in Republican Counties, “shows a
striking pattern of Democratic youth thriving in political expression and debate when exposed to Republican ideological climates.”

The study compares Democratic adolescents to Republican adolescents, and further breaks down the comparison into those living in Democratic, balanced, and Red counties. They found that Democratic youth were more politically expressive than Republican youth, and that Democratic youth in Republican areas were more expressive than those living in blue or balanced areas.

A couple findings of note:

When asked what they perceived to be the greatest influence on their political beliefs, “the largest difference occurs with religion, particularly at post-election, when 24.8% of Republicans identified religion as the greatest influence compared with 1.5% for Democrats.”

There are large differences between factors in partisan identity strength (PID) among Republican and Democratic youth:

At T2 (Post-Election), knowledge becomes the sole correlate of Republican ID strength. PID strength among Democrats correlates with more indicators of political involvement: talking with friends, initiating talk, and comprehension at T1 (Pre-Election), and testing out opinions, listening to opponents, classroom discussion, confronting parents, knowledge, and news attention at T2. Thus, we might say that a firm allegiance to the Republican Party is manifest in knowledge during adolescence, while Democratic ID is expressed more holistically, in political cognition but also interpersonal communication.

By knowledge, they are referring to perceived knowledge of the political parties.

An intriguing implication is that dynamics of formative partisan identity resonate with the philosophical tension between progressive and conservative visions of “the good citizen.” Progressive ideology celebrates the inter-subjectivity of civic and political engagement, in conceptions such as the public sphere, social capital, deliberative democracy, and communitarianism (Murphy, 2004). In conservative visions of the ideal citizen, civic virtue springs from the pursuit of self-interest and the guarding of individual autonomy (Murphy, 2003; Westheimer, 2004).

From the results of the study, the authors recommend the following:

In more pragmatic terms, results from this study suggest a need for peer-centered discussion about topical issues in U.S. social studies curricula. We have documented a significant gap in interpersonal political engagement between liberal and conservative youth. A strikingly consistent pattern of deliberative deficits appeared among Republican youth. However, recent research shows that schools can promote equality of civic and political development by allowing students to wrestle with contentious issues (Hess, 2004; Hess & Ganzler, 2007). Unfortunately, conflict-avoidant instincts of school boards, teachers, and parents preclude this kind of instruction in many communities (McDevitt & Caton-Rosser, 2009). Still, an argument put forth by Hibbing and Theiss-Morse in 1996 still resonates. Civics is not enough. If we can tolerate and even promote agonistic expression in classrooms, more youth would benefit from deliberative development.

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The October 2009 CIRCLE report has been released about college students and voting. Here are some of the findings:

• Students can be diligent voters with high turnout, both by absentee ballot and in local voting.
• Students who can vote in their home state or their college state are strongly influenced in that choice by the closeness of the presidential election.
• Even in the internet era, in-person voter drives reach many students who would not otherwise vote.

The report was based on a peer-to-peer voter drive done at Northwestern University during the 2008 election. During this voting drive, campaigners encouraged students from Presidential swing states to register back home as opposed to in Illinois. Students contacted by the campaign chose to register back home and vote absentee instead of locally by an 8:1 ratio. Of the students that registered through the drive, 80% voted.

I have mixed feelings about encouraging students to vote absentee over locally. For most students, the political decisions that are going to have the greatest effect on their lives will be made at the state and local level in their college district. State legislatures decide university funding, and that in turn determines tuition increases. City ordinances can have a big effect on students. Back when I represented students at Arizona State a number of student-opposed measures were passed through the Tempe City Council.

Encouraging students to vote back home in a swing state makes sense to the Presidential campaign, but it has it’s cost in other political areas. I’m also concerned that this sends a message that the only really important election is the Presidential one every four years and discourages students from building the habit of voting locally and being an active and engaged part of the civic community.

The drive at Northwestern University, analyzed here, offered each student a choice of registering for local voting in Illinois (the college state) or for absentee voting in their home state. Absentee voting was encouraged for students from swing states. Students from non-swing states were mildly encouraged to vote in Illinois. Students from swing states showed a dramatic preference for absentee voting in their home state, over local voting in Illinois, by an 8:1 ratio. Even students from other non-swing states preferred absentee voting in their home state over local voting in Illinois by a 2:1 ratio.

What is troubling is that the students that were contacted that were not from swing states were only mildly encouraged to register locally. Once again this appears to be a situation where the campaign only cares about the Presidential election and ignores the importance of local races. While at the Presidential level it makes sense for people to vote in swing states, it doesn’t make sense to not strongly encourage students to register locally when neither state is highly contested.

On the bright side, the campaign showed that students are reliable voters when engaged by campaigns, most effectively through peer-to-peer contact. It also showed that absentee voting drives are possible and can be effective.

A troubling finding of the report is that absentee voting is error-prone:

16% of applicants for absentee voting were not enabled to vote. In 1/3 of these cases, an error was made by the applicant, and in 2/3 of the cases the error was made by county boards of elections. Most errors by applicants could be prevented by adding minor annotations to the application forms.

However, even with the errors the success rate of the campaign was extremely high.

There is a lot of good information in the report, as well as an evaluation of the methods used by the absentee voter drive campaign. It’s definitely a must read for people involved in organizing college students.

I’ll end with a question for the comments: what are your thoughts on where students should be encouraged to register and vote?

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There were two interesting research pieces from yesterday’s First Monday:

Everyday life, online: U.S. college students’ use of the Internet

The goal of this study was to learn about how college students are using the Internet and to compare their use of it to that of college students as reported in 2002 by replicating and extending previous research. A survey of college students at 40 U.S. higher education institutions was conducted, along with observations and interviews at several Midwestern universities. For comparison to the general population a nationwide telephone survey was undertaken. The study found that Internet use had predictably increased but that college students continued to prefer using multiple methods of communication to stay in touch with friends and family. College students continue to be early adopters of new Internet tools and applications in comparison to the general U.S. Internet–using population. For U.S. college students, Internet technologies have become so ubiquitous as to seem invisible.

Political video mashups as allegories of civic empowerment

When the viral video “Vote Different” broke into the mainstream media in March 2007, the political video mashup became a notable media phenomenon. User–generated mashups threatened to cut through the U.S. news clutter that typically shapes election discourse. In this paper, political video mashups are examined as allegories of citizen empowerment during the 2008 U.S. presidential election. Political video mashups can act as tools of political advocacy, forms of political protest, and modes of political commentary. Finally, though they are already being co–opted by mainstream political campaigns, the paper addresses the potential of mashups to re–interpret political messages in ways that may encourage the active re–framing of political issues among twenty–first century citizens.

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The Commonwealth Fund, a non-partisan health care think tank, has put out some great material on health insurance reform as it relates to young Americans.

Their new pdf supplement for journalists includes a section on young adults:

WHAT PROBLEMS DO YOUNG ADULTS FACE IN OBTAINING COVERAGE, AND HOW WOULD COMPREHENSIVE HEALTH REFORM HELP THEM?

More than 13 million adults ages 19 to 29 lacked insurance coverage in 2007. Commonwealth Fund analysis shows that even though young adults are only 17 percent of the under-65 population, they comprise nearly 30 percent of the nonelderly uninsured.

Many young people become uninsured when they turn 19 and are no longer covered under their parents’ insurance. By far, the young adults most at risk of lacking coverage are those from low-income households. About 22 percent of adults ages 19 to 29 live in households with incomes below 100 percent of the federal poverty level, but almost two-fifths (39%) of the 13.2 million young adults who are uninsured live in households with incomes below the poverty level.

For the many young adults who hold low-wage or temporary jobs that don’t include benefits, affordable coverage is not easily available. During their early working years, young people frequently go without coverage until they get jobs with better benefits. Yet Commonwealth Fund research shows that gaps in coverage can have important health and economic consequences for young adults and their families.

Comprehensive health reform could extend affordable coverage not only to the 13 million young adults who currently are uninsured but also to the millions more who undergo coverage transitions during their early working years. Young adults could remain covered under their parents’ policies until age 26. Those with incomes up to 150 percent of poverty level could receive coverage under Medicaid or CHIP. A portable public health insurance plan within a national health insurance exchange would provide a continuous source of coverage for young people who make frequent job changes.

The Commonwealth Fund’s currently featured podcast is about keeping young Americans insured. You can download the mp3 here.

You should also check out their report Rite of Passage? Why Young Adults Become Uninsured and How New Policies Can Help, 2009 Update.

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Below is the report on the YDA Communications Survey I sent out last month. Thank you to everyone who completed it.

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A new report by the Pew Internet & American Life Project shows that mobile internet is closing the digital divide between whites and minority Americans.

African Americans are the most active users of the mobile internet – and their use of it is also growing the fastest. This means the digital divide between African Americans and white Americans diminishes when mobile use is taken into account.

• By a 59% to 45% margin, white Americans are more likely to go online using a computer on a typical day than African Americans.
• When mobile devices are included in the mix, the gap is cut in half; 61% of whites go online on the average day when mobile access is included while 54% of African Americans do.
• Looking across a range of digital activities – some done online typically using a computer and others being non-voice data activities on a mobile device – African American and white Americans, on average, do the same number of activities.

The rising number of relatively affordable internet-capable cell phones, cheap netbook computers, and falling laptop prices seem to have boosted the adoption rate of wireless internet. The trending indicates that the saturation of internet-capable mobile devices will continue to rise dramatically in the next few years.

The report also provides data on wireless usage by the 18-29 demographic:

The 18-29 demographic is still unsurprisingly ahead of the curve when it comes to mobile internet adoption.

The 48-page report has a ton of information in it and is definitely worth checking out.

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Rapleaf Business: Press – Rapleaf Study of Social Network Users vs. Age.

Rapleaf has a very useful report on the demographics of social network users broken down by age and gender. It is important to note, however, that the results are based on worldwide users and not just those in the United States. Regardless, the research is useful to get an idea about the general user base of these networks.

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Marc Ambinder of The Atlantic wrote of The GOP Generational Time Bomb and created this very telling chart:

Well, despite the fact that Marc Ambinder gets it, there are still many that are blind to the youth vote and seem to find it a personal mission to ignore or discount all of the research and evidence that has been done over the last few years.

Cassy Fiano of Wizbang flat-out mocks the youth vote in a response to the Washington Post article that makes the statement that the youth vote will matter in 2008. Here is Cassy’s thoughts about the civic reawakening of the Millennial generation:

A civic reawakening? Were 20-year-olds “awake” to politics before and somehow “fell asleep”? Um… ok. And, you know, there’s the teensy problem of this poll being conducted with MTV’s help, which automatically dampens the prospect of it becoming a reality.

Look, if “young people” vote, then that’s fantastic. If they don’t, then oh well. They aren’t going to make or break elections, no matter how much the media fawns over them. Every election season its the same old song and dance, and it ain’t a different tune this time around.

It’s not just Cassy Fiano that gets it wrong. Don Surber takes on Marc Ambinder’s piece referenced above. In his commentary, with the cliche title Young People Don’t Vote, he gets it so wrong that the Darwin Awards should make an exception and “honor” a living person.

But young people are a waste of time and energy when it comes to voting. They are not where the voters are.

Voters over time tend to grow more conservative. The percentage of young voters who were Republican was at its nadir in 1952. But Republican Ike Eisenhower was elected president. See Pew Research.

In 2000, Dems held an 8-point advantage in this group and still lost the presidency (Al Gore’s plurality was measured in tenths of a point).

In 2004, Democrats increased that lead to 11 points. Bush won by 3 points.

If there are long-term effects, how did Republican Richard Nixon get elected 16 years after that 1952 nadir — and President Reagan re-elected 16 years after that — and President Bush 16 years after that? Those young Democrats became Middle Aged Independents and then Old Republicans.

Ambinder said it is a ticking bomb. Oh there’s a bomb in that post all right, but I don’t think it is on the Republicans.

The PEW Research source he uses, could that be something I missed that shows young people becoming more conservative as they get older? Oh no, it’s the research that Ambinder covered that shows young voters increasingly identifying as Democrats. Not the best supporting document I would think.

Here are the fallacies that these critics of the youth vote seem overly fond of:

1. Young people don’t vote, so it doesn’t matter if they identify as Democrats. Even if we accepted the untrue statement that young people don’t vote, they do eventually grow up, this isn’t Peter Pan. Since research in fact has shown that party identification for the most part stays consistent throughout life, it still should be troubling to conservatives.
2. The silly kids are Democrats now that they are young and don’t know any better, but they’ll grow out of it. Research says otherwise my conservative friends.
3. Not enough young people will vote to affect the 2008 election, since Gore and Kerry didn’t win with the youth vote. Have you not heard of a trend line? Surber actually shows the youth vote increasing from 2000 to 2004, he should know better. With elections as close as they are, as well as the examples of Democratic candidates in 2006 that did win because of the youth vote, I don’t know how they can ignore it.

Though as frustrated as I get sometimes reading this nonsense, there is a silver lining. As long as conservatives completely write off the youth vote as unimportant and believe that the ghost of Ronald Reagan will personally visit each young person as they get older and magically turn them into Republicans, Democrats have an unobstructed field. So conservatives, by all means, keep it up. The youth vote doesn’t matter, don’t worry about it.

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I am not going to get into any comprehensive analysis of the Harvard IOP and MTV/CBS surveys, but there are a few themes that I want to cover. For more analysis check out Future Majority.

Facebook and MySpace

Once again Facebook is the social network of choice for college students, while MySpace is more popular among non-college students. Facebook beats MySpace when it comes to political use, with 23% of respondents using the site politically to MySpace’s 11%.

Facebook increased in popularity and political use from 2006. I think this is likely a result of the changes Facebook made: opening the site to anyone, and opening the Facebook platform to third-party developers. These applications have increased the opportunities for Facebook users to engage politically. In the last week MySpace opened up its developer platform, so applications will be on the way and could increase the level of political use.

Campaign Volunteering

56% of 18-24 year olds stated that they would volunteer for the campaign they supported if they were provided the opportunity (12% Very, 44% Somewhat).

What is interesting is the difference between the Democratic candidates and John McCain. There is a 10% difference between Clinton/Obama and McCain. This indicates that young people voting Democrat are more willing to volunteer on a campaign than young people voting Republican.

Youth are Issue-Oriented and Want Issues Addressed

In the wake of the disastrous ABC/National Enquirer debate, youth are hungry for the discussion of the actual issues that “professional” journalists are not giving them.

• 65% say there is too much focus on race and gender.
• 65% say too little time is spent on jobs and opportunities for young workers.
• 47% say too little time is spent on global warming.
• 65% say too little time is spent on reducing oil and gas use.
• 59% say too little time is spent on education.
• 57% say too little time is spent on increased college costs and student loans/financial aid.
• The top issues are the economy (33%), Iraq (25%), education (9%), health care (9%), terrorism (8%), and the environment (7%).

In other words, if young people were asking the questions we would probably have a substantial debate.

Democrats More Concerned About Youth

Young people believe that the Democratic candidates are more concerned about the problems facing them than John McCain.

Young Voters Are More Convinced of Their Influence

67% of respondents felt that their generation would have as much or more influence than other generations this election, up from 53% last June.

Nader Pulls More Young People From McCain than Dems

Between Obama and McCain, there is no difference between the margin with Nader in the race, Obama winning by 21% in both situations.

Between Clinton and McCain, Clinton improves from 5% to 7% over McCain with Nader in the race.

Are there any interesting themes that you noticed in these surveys? Leave a comment.

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