* Young people suffer the hardest from the housing crisis
* Young people suffer the most in any kind of job market challenges
* Young people have the least say in elections
* Young people now give up the app they use that actually makes them happy and helps to forget about how shit the world has become for them. Also an app that makes some of them real money.
Basically, the youth have no real legislation in their favour while their quality of life continues to degrade. I imagine that gets old.
This is a rant from someone who supports the tiktok ban.. but I'd extend it to all social media.
While this is true from the perspective of voting laws (you can vote after 18 but you don’t need to be 18 to see how f’d ip things are…), it’s also true that the age bracket 18-29 has the lowest participation in elections. I didn’t do the math but I would not be surprised if the last elections turned differently if this bracket increased to percentage levels seen amongst older ages.
https://circle.tufts.edu/latest-research/half-youth-voted-20...
Of course you can say it's a question of priorities and it's "their fault" for not being politically active, but I would argue the system is stacked against young people's political participation.
Also, most places in the US have minimum age limits for elected positions.
People who don't vote have no right to complain about the government.
Arguments like yours are used by lazy people to justify non-participation. You aren't helping them by making excuses for them.
If voting registration was automatic, and election day was a holiday, I’d expect the participation across age brackets to be much closer.
I agree that Election Day should be a holiday. There’s a slight issue with Federal Holidays being applying only to federal employees and not necessarily to independent businesses, which can choose to observe it or not… but it’s a start.
Also in Texas, the polls are open for early elections for like two weeks ahead of Election Day. I always take advantage of that. No wait, no hassle, in and out. Most states offer either that or mail-in voting.
Citation needed - social media seems to be very bad for young people's health, if anything.
One would need citation for either claim honestly, there's plenty studies around the idea that social media actually doesn't have as much of an impact on mental health as people seem to believe, as well as the other way around. If we get more specific, people who have or are prone to certain psychological conditions do get aggravated by social media, but the same way that's true, it could be for anything else would there not be social media. In the end, what the comment says holds true regardless of how it may affect their long-term mental health
This isn't about teen mental health.
They’re just saying they’re not convinced TikTok causes the overall happiness the GP comment claims.
I think it’s hard to argue that any social media has a net positive effect on mental health of any age, let alone the younger generations.
Anywho, main point is more about giving this already vulnerable demographic more tools to succeed. Especially if, from their perspective, all we keep doing is making their lives worse.
From a young one's perspective, it's natural they're going to take it as one more incursion into their lives, else Red Note, an app made for a largely Chinese audience by an unrelated company would not have seen so much uptake over the past few days.
Do you see my point? We're just taking random shit from them without giving anything back. Also, objectively, Meta's platform is just as bad for them as tiktok, so it's obvious to them that it's not being taken away because we actually care about their mental health lol.
I’m not sure I would elevate TikTok to that degree though - we have some serious issues especially for young men. Not sure that scrolling through TikTok videos is actually fixing any of that- it’s like saying “don’t take away the heroin, it’s the only thing that makes me feel happy”
Maybe if we're going to cancel tiktok or whatever, offer them some tax credits to cover the cost of registration for a coed sport or other such things that might enable them to be happier. Do more to help them get their first house and get their life going.
Just taking things from this demographic, without giving back, is a surefire way keep them disenfranchised. Even if we're taking something away that is objectively harmful to them (but still keeping instagram around lol).
Deck is stacked against them from birth. The entire system discourages from a young age what you're proposing. So if these kids feel so disenfranchised (and often filled with misinformation) from a young age, it's entirely unreasonable for us to expect them to "step up" in a vacuum.
You need better systems in place from the beginning to help someone become a better person.
Reality is the American dream is dead for most young people not born with a spoon up their ass. And that seems more and more by design. When you experience this reality your whole life, you carry a level of apathy that "get out and vote" is meaningless to hear.
Lives need to get better from a young age. People need to believe in the American dream again. But the policies set in place over the last 30 years are heavy.
1. Participate in the system 2. Violently overthrow the system 3. Do nothing
Sitting on the internet and whinging about how the deck is stacked against you is choosing option 3.
Fact of the matter is that a lot of people picked option 3 because of whatever reasons they had and now a bunch of oligarchs and criminals are running the joint now.
Voting is the least you can do if actually running for an elected position is not an option.
What do you propose as an actual alternative?
In past years, voters under 30 have proved essential on the margins, especially for Democrats, where even minimal shifts in support can decide an election.
It was a group that Vice President Harris had hoped would be part of her winning coalition this year. Instead, she underperformed, and President-elect Trump made gains.
Since 2008, winning Democratic candidates have received at least 60% support from young voters, but Harris did not meet that threshold, getting 54%, according to early exit polls.
[1] I mean when people cared about Iraq, 2003 to circa 2008. We still have troops there, but I don't think most of America is even aware of that.
What you actually mean is that there was little personal legal accountability for past actions, which I don't disagree with. The legal and political frameworks they operate under has changed quite a bit though.
Note that it was a shift for Trump, still not a majority voting for him. Exit polls that I've seen still indicated an 11-point lead for Harris[1], but that's much more narrow than the 24-point lead that Biden had in 2020[2]. Anyway, I've been fascinated by this because it kind of broke my mental model imagining that the Republican party would eventually be marginalized as its voters died of old age. I definitely thought Trump was going to lose this age group in 2024 by the widest margin ever.
[1] https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-elections/exit-polls [2] https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-elections/exit-polls