ABSTRACT
Our recent Public Connection Survey, which surveyed 1,017 people aged 18+ across the UK in June 2005, found that young people (18-34) are less likely to vote in national elections, compared with middle-aged (35-54) and older (55+) people (Couldry et al., 2006). Indeed, 89 per cent of over 55s, but only 67 per cent of under 35s, said they ‘generally vote in national elections’.1 Similarly, 75 per cent of over 55s claimed to be ‘generally interested in what’s going on in politics’, compared with only 61 per cent of under 35-year-olds. Yet, the survey also found, as have many others, that young people are much more likely to use the Internet. Almost no teenagers in the UK are non-users (just 2-3 per cent; Livingstone and Helsper, in press), 72 per cent of 18-35s go online daily, while 75 per cent of over 55s do not use it at all. Putting together the declining vote and political interest among young adults with the distinctively youthful profile of Internet users, one would hardly suppose that the Internet could be part of the solution to the decline in political participation among young people. Indeed, it seems more likely to be part of the problem – an update, perhaps, on Putnam’s (2000) Bowling Alone thesis, in which the Internet, rather than television, serves to fragment and distract a youthful public from a common sense of civic purpose.2
