Not Quite Adults: Why 20-Somethings Are Choosing a Slower Path to Adulthood, and Why It’s Good for Everyone

by Settersten, Richard; Ray, Barbara E.

  Equally important is what civic life can do for young people. Civic engagement offers important opportunities to build the skills and resources of young adults—and the extended passage to adulthood gives them the perfect moment to profit from those opportunities. It’s a time in life when young people are naturally taking stock of themselves and society. They’re firming up their identities, laying a foundation for the future, and figuring out where they fit in the world.

  Why then are so many young people disconnected from civic life? The MacArthur Network analyzed data from a large annual survey of high school seniors that tracks changing attitudes toward such issues as materialism, trust in one’s fellow man, trust in government, and many other attitudes and beliefs that shape the ultimate decision to become an active, involved citizen. The Network also collaborated with the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE), a nonpartisan think tank focused on youth civic engagement and education, to pair up the trends in attitudes and beliefs with the trends in voting and volunteering as a way to get inside young people’s heads and understand why they do or do not participate.

  What we find is two stories in one. Young people in their late twenties and early thirties approach politics very differently from those in their early twenties. The older group is still feeling the hangover from the Reagan and Bush years, with its rapid rise in materialism and individualism and the consequent rapid fall in social trust. This older group tends to believe that government is the problem, not the solution. As a result, they have disengaged from politics and civic life. Their younger siblings have a substantially different outlook. The Millennials rallied strongly for Obama, who masterfully tapped into their collective hope for the future. Relative to their slightly older peers, they are more likely to see government as a solution to social problems, and they are generally more tolerant and trusting of their fellow man. They are also more liberal, and there are clear signs that this is a generational shift, not simply unbridled, youthful idealism. This younger group is embracing a new model of activism, one that is often less visible to older generations and traditional pundits and civic organizers. They are bypassing the old media and creating their own forms of media. “Be the media,” they say, and through Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, blogs, and text messages, this generation has taken to the proverbial “streets” with a finesse and speed rarely seen before. They are using online social networking to support causes, get involved, and rally around issues. They are organizing with the click of a mouse.

  While the youngest generation’s seemingly newfound enthusiasm is heartening, any optimism we might have that they are making serious civic commitments must be tempered. The recession may have long-lasting effects on this new generation’s embrace of political action. A recent study finds that those who enter adulthood during a recession are less likely to have confidence in government and its role in society. They also tend to distrust institutions and see them as ineffective. This distrust of government is highest between ages eighteen and twenty-five.3

  The Youth Vote

  Signs that Time might be right about its “year of the youth vote” were first evident in January 2008. The primaries were just getting under way but college campuses were already abuzz about the new guy with the BlackBerry and the hip young staff. Young people came out in force, doubling their presence relative to the 2000 and 2004 primaries. In many states, youth turnout tripled or even quadrupled. The “youth-quake” was overwhelmingly in Obama’s favor. He managed to pull off a feat that had not been accomplished in recent history: He not only talked to young adults, but he listened to them and let them get involved in his campaign. Making them a priority clearly paid off. Students rallying behind him, according to Time, kept Obama in the race in those early days.

  After the heated primaries in 2008, with the country poised to cross a historic threshold, the youth vote remained critical in the face-off between forty-seven-year-old Democrat Barack Obama and seventy-two-year-old Republican John McCain, who, as a white, privileged male, quickly came to represent the Establishment. That Obama was the first black candidate to be so close to the presidency did not hurt. This generation of young people is the most diverse in the country’s history—a simple fact that holds tremendous significance for the future of our nation. More important, though, were the media through which Obama spoke to young voters—YouTube, Twitter, text messages, and the social networking site My Barack Obama (which was quickly shortened to the text-message-size “MyBO”).

  Traditional methods of recruiting young voters aren’t nearly as effective for today’s youth. They rarely have landline phones, and cell phone numbers are hard to assemble for automated campaign calls. Young people move frequently, either from dorms to student housing to apartments, or across cities for jobs and relationships. Because they vote less frequently, they do not appear on the traditional databases, and they do not subscribe to daily newspapers or even watch the evening news on television.

  Obama found them where they hang out most, on social networks online and on their cell phones, whose numbers he gathered via MyBO. His was the first campaign to fully tap into the digital tools to communicate with this generation. And, in the spirit of the blogosphere and social networking, he listened as well as spoke—he joined the conversation.

  Jonathan, a graduate of Northwestern University working for a philanthropic organization in Chicago, sums it up for many in his generation: “There’s a resurgence of commitment: There’s something about his basic age and he’s black. It signals a break from the traditional power model. When you see [Chicago] Mayor Daley in his seventh term in office, you think, ‘Okay, business as usual,’ or you look at the panel who were implicated in the financial bailout and you think, ‘Okay, six well-dressed white men over fifty.’ We’re always bombarded with images of what power is, but Obama is more inclusive of the younger population. It’s a bone to us.”

  In the final 2008 election, 3.4 million more young people voted than in 2004, and they voted overwhelmingly for the candidate they had helped propel into the limelight.4 Two-thirds of the youth vote went for Obama. A new era in American politics was born.

  The Bandwagon Is Half Empty

  Although this news is heartening, a closer look at the statistics takes some of the wind out of its sails. In this so-called new golden age of youth politics, voter turnout in 2008 for those under age thirty was still only about 50 percent, just 4 to 5 percentage points over 2004 estimates.5 Turnout for those over thirty, meanwhile, was far greater at approximately 70 percent.6 Underscoring this continuing disconnect, a nationally representative survey of eighteen-to-twenty-four-year-olds the month before the election found that the vast majority (upward of 80 percent) had not participated in government-, political-, or issue-related organizations. They had never emailed Congress about an issue, contributed to an online discussion or blog related to politics, or attended a political rally or demonstration. They had never donated money or volunteered for a political campaign. Despite the significant amount of time that this generation spends in the digital world, they had not forwarded a political video online or used Facebook or MySpace to promote a political candidate, event, or idea.7

  In the end, only a small group of young people are hyperinvolved (about 10 percent) and in the limelight.8 It is telling that the personal pictures and stories accompanying the Time article, and so many others like it, were of students on four-year college and university campuses. The hyperinvolved set shares one characteristic: they are more often college students or graduates. Seventy percent of voters under age thirty in the 2008 election had attended at least some college. Only 30 percent had a high school degree or less. The dramatically different participation of those with and without college experience or degrees reflects a wide social-class divide in political participation. And the gap between college graduates and others in voting and other aspects of civic life has been widening over time, the Network finds.

  Where then does this stra
in of disillusionment and apathy come from? At its most basic, it starts with a lack of trust. The bedrock of trust is the privilege of a hopeful outlook, of feeling that one’s voice is heard above the din of everyday demands. When this is lacking, as it so often is for young adults with pinched futures, the urge to vote and to volunteer withers. What develops in its place is the not unfounded cynicism that politics only benefits someone else. The faint voices of young people in trailer parks, rural hamlets, or working-class neighborhoods of urban centers are not loud enough or important enough to matter. Young people, like Sherri, frequently do not see any tangible results of their efforts, and therefore they do not bother to vote.

  “We’re Not a Politic Family”

  Sherri’s view on politics and voting represents that of many in Generation X, the older half of young adults today. She also represents the large group lacking a college degree. Just out of her twenties, Sherri has a new Ford Explorer parked outside the mobile home she lives in with her husband, Greg. She feels quite content with life. She and Greg can afford to take a vacation to Las Vegas a couple of times a year, and she likes her job. Working as a waitress suits her “bubbly” personality to a T. Greg works nearby as a bartender and jack-of-all trades at a small family-owned restaurant. The two have been happily married for six years. “He puts up with me and that’s what matters,” she says, laughing. In her spare time, she devours crime novels, and likes her “soaps” and crime shows on television. She never reads a newspaper, and does not vote. “I should do it, but I don’t,” she says with a shrug. “I’ve never voted in my life.” She cannot identify any particular issue that gets her worked up. “We don’t talk politics. We’re not a politic family,” she says of herself, her husband, and her parents.

  Sherri has never contacted a public official, she has never joined a cause, and she is not a member of any political party. This lack of interest is not unusual. Nationally, eight in ten high school seniors in 2004 had never contacted a public official or given money to or worked on a campaign. (This latter factor has likely changed somewhat with the Obama campaign, however.) These seniors were part of the Monitoring the Future survey, which Network member Constance Flanagan and her colleagues plumbed for information on young people’s changing political and civic outlooks across thirty years. They found that taking action via these conventional forms of politics was at its lowest point in three decades in 2002.

  Sherri has no firm feelings either way about the economy or the state of the world. “I don’t really stay in touch with what’s going on. I couldn’t tell you what’s going on right now over in Iraq. To me, I’m going to live today to the fullest, and I can’t change anything else that’s going on. So, I’m not going to let all that other stuff bring me down because I have no control over it.” When asked why she does not vote, she says, “No time. To me, it was like, ‘You know what, my vote’s not going to matter.’ ”

  Sherri’s disconnect from civic life did not happen in a vacuum. She came of age during a time of fundamental shifts in all those elements of society that engage or alienate voters and active citizens. Social trust is a key ingredient in politics. In examining the thoughts and attitudes of high school seniors over the course of thirty years, the Network finds that social trust started to slide in the mid-1980s and bottomed out a decade later. It has been swinging slightly upward since then. However, the recovery has never reached the levels of trust that existed in the mid-1980s.

  There’s a link between this declining trust and the other developments that were under way as Generation X was coming of age, specifically the Reagan and Bush I eras, with their rising individualism, shrinking government, and disappearing corporate safety nets, which leave workers on their own to fund their pensions, their health care, and their own job training. Globalization and job restructuring have further increased personal feelings of insecurity and uncertainty.

  Insecurity breeds mistrust. When things are shaky, people feel pressure to look out for themselves. “If you start to feel anxious about life, if you feel your job is in jeopardy,” says Flanagan, “you will worry that your co-worker might take your job or compete for the same promotion.” It is but a short step to a watch-out-for-number-one mentality. People who feel that their jobs are at risk look inward and protect their advantages. Without the backbone of social trust among friends, neighbors, and strangers, how can we expect anyone to believe in a politician? The older half of today’s young adults still carry this skeptical sentiment with them and so, too, do those who lack college degrees and are facing an insecure future. People of all ages go to the polls when they feel a shared sense that the world offers them opportunities and promise. When their optimism for the future sags because they feel that their fellow citizens and the institutions that steer their country’s progress cannot be trusted, they see no reason to vote. The interlocking relationships among optimism, trust, and voting are visible in the changing opinions of high school seniors. Their optimism toward the future has risen and fallen over the past thirty years in near lockstep with their trust in politicians and government.

  Social trust is especially low for those who have the least at stake—the unemployed, the poor, minorities, and members of other marginalized groups. It makes sense that people at the periphery have less social trust. Their lives are less predictable, and the issues that concern them are more often overlooked. As Lara, a twenty-four-year-old Puerto Rican medical supervisor in New York City, puts it, “The electors want to make it seem like they care about your issues, so they want to listen to what you have to say around election time. Once they’re elected, they really don’t come back to your community.”

  Social trust is also less abundant among those with less education, like Sherri, who only has a high school diploma. “Just going to college increases social trust,” Constance Flanagan says. She has followed this clear trend among groups of young people out of high school and beyond. Individuals who scored low on social trust in high school, but then spent a year on a college campus, suddenly scored much higher. This jump in social trust was brought on by the sense of community that college imparts. “You feel like you know other people are contributing to the common good,” says Flanagan. Students repeatedly receive the message, “We care about you; we’re looking out for you.” That makes people feel connected and less anxious. “It boosts social trust tremendously when kids feel others at school are watching out for them,” says Flanagan. “It’s something we can really improve on in high schools as a way of encouraging more active involvement in civic life.”

  Sherri also mentions another factor that the Network has found contributes to the apathy of the younger generation: “We are more interested in money, in having nice things—nice homes, nice vehicles, nice clothes, making a statement.” The Network and others have tracked trends in trust alongside trends in materialism. Interestingly, during the 1980s, the desires of young people to have a high standard of living went up as the belief that most people are fair and can be trusted went down. Both have remained fairly stable since 1991.9 However, Sherri’s peers—Generation X—entered adulthood with much lower levels of social trust than their parents and grandparents, and those levels have not climbed for them as they’ve gotten older.

  The thing that connects the rise in materialism and the fall in social trust is individualism. The pursuit of material goods is a largely individualistic endeavor. As the importance of material objects, and the chase to obtain them, rises, people not only begin to care less about their fellow man, but they also begin to worry that others will somehow impede their own earnings and consumption. This creates anxiety, particularly when the means to acquire those items shrink or shift as jobs become less secure.

  “Even I don’t have a lot of faith in my generation because when I was growing up, it was all about ‘Me, Me, Me,’ ” Sherri says, adding that her generation is not accustomed to thinking about other people or having a critical concern for healthy neighborhoods, communities, and nations. Watching out f
or “number one” might be necessary during a corporate climb, but it undercuts the nature of a civil society.

  No Levers to Grab

  Another reason that young adults participate less is that they often feel inadequately informed about civic issues and especially how the political system works. Surveys have repeatedly shown that young adults lack even the most basic civic knowledge and are misinformed about politics and current events. There are unequal opportunities to learn about politics and the political process before adulthood sets in. Schools serving minorities and other disadvantaged youth are less likely to offer enriching civic courses and activities for their students. This lack of opportunity makes it difficult for these youths to participate or take action. Indeed, nearly two-thirds of young people admit that they need practical information about politics before they’ll get involved, and approximately one-half say their high schools have not prepared them to vote and evaluate candidates.10

  The presence and quality of civic education in high schools are at historic lows. While in the 1960s, students took as many as three courses in civics, today they are lucky if they take one semester.11 Where civic education does exist, it often relies on outdated textbooks that reflect few of the contemporary issues that excite young people. The curriculum is often so deathly boring that it’s worthy of satire—a la Jon Stewart’s book The Daily Show with Jon Stewart Presents America (The Book) Teacher’s Edition: A Citizen’s Guide to Democracy Inaction.