The importance of young people's interest in politics

Nowadays, teens and young adults seem to have less interest in politics every year. This is a problem that we encounter in many countries around the world, and the causes of that diminution are various. But why is this a problem? And, why is it important for young people to be interested in politics?

Most of the teens don’t really talk about political issues in their family. They can hear about it in the news, in history class or by other adults, but many families don’t take the initiative to educate their children about that. Because of this lack of political education, teens can’t develop an interest and opinion on the political life surround them. Also, ignoring the system operation because it is too complicated, these people don’t feel concerned about elections. Fortunately, some people had a civic education by their parents, that helped them develop an interest and a knowledge in politics.

This lack of interest and the low youth participation rate in Quebec elections (35%), represent a big problem in today’s society. The goal of the democratic system is to consider the opinion of the entire population and to give a power to everyone of us in our country. But the fact that some of us don’t use that power, that we are so lucky to have, is terrible and should not be happening. And more importantly, the young population is allowed and should absolutely vote and be heard during political issues. This percentage of the population is the future generation, the next wave of our society, the one that will take the decisions and the political power into their own hands. So, they must develop an interest in politics now, just so we can assure that the coming decades will be structured and our country safe. Furthermore, if teens start to learn about politics at a young age, they will have a lot more time to create their own opinion and to be ready to vote.

Regardless of all these good reasons to vote being young, a lot of young adults don’t care about being politically present in our society. But if they just started to learn a bit on some of the things that form our government and developed an interest on the power that they have, they could change their country and even the world. Just me being curious, you as a citizen, are you interested in politics? Do you think you’re going to participate during elections and let your opinion change a bit of the contemporary world?