...one might think on the basis of our unrepresentative CivicWeb survey among 3,300 young people throughout Europe. This survey yielded the conclusions that in regard to online and offline participation beyond formal politics:
- less than 20% of our respondents visits civic websites for online participation.
- less than 10% of our respondents visits public meetings, boycotts products, gives out leaflets, participates in demonstrations, etcetera.

Also, based on many surveys in many countries, I think it is safe to say that young people, on average, are indeed more ‘apathetic’ than older people in regard to a couple of things that could be considered very import in democratic utopia: voting, knowing who representatives are and what they want, and caring about what happens in parliament and government.

Before panicking about all of this, however, be aware of the fact that (1) present youth is not necessarily more 'apathetic' than former youth generations, and that (2) the majority of adults are also quite 'apathetic' (unclear what this means, however, and what the boundaries are between 'pathetic' and 'apathetic'.

Yet the politically motivated question as to whether youth are or are not democratically nice is, perhaps, not the most interesting question.

Adding to Eva’s comment, I think that it is utterly problematic to think of youth as a homogenous group anyway. There is no such thing as theyouth; at best, people might we subdivided in groups (youths) on the basis of socio-demographic (e.g., age, gender) or attitudinal (e.g., interested in social issues) and behavioral characteristics (e.g., active in civic things).

Based on such characteristics, and how people make sense of and act upon the circumstances in their lifes, the more important question is why there are some people who do and don’t do civic things that are considered important.

We did not find proper answers to this question with our survey. Standard indicators of civic participation, such as political interest and social trust, could not explain civic participation.

Fadi

While I continue to have my doubts about the value of statistics like these for telling us what is actually happening on the ground, I want to echo your point about young people like any people not being a homogenous group. Even focus groups with young people in one country show a huge differentiation between those in rural and urban areas, social class, attitudes and values to things like religion and politics, etc. etc. Across Europe and Turkey the situation is even more diverse. I wonder why we continue to talk in terms of 'youth'... who is helped by this?

It seems that more important than investigating whether younger people are more or less engaged than older people, is trying to understand what makes some younge people get involved (or more involved) than others.

Some posts mention social class, whether living in urban or rural areas, religious beliefs, as some important factors.

Do we know enough about parental influence? Does having parents who question 'the system', who cultivate critical views of the world lead to more active young people?

And what about diffeent youth subcultures? - also called 'scenes' or 'tribes'. Do these have any correlation to engagement? In the 60s and 70s in the USA hippies seemed more involved than other 'subcultures'?

Could the more 'socially-conscious' hip hop be seen as 'civic engagement'?

Certainly !
The rise of hip-hop and rap has been part of a protest culture against the system: Nowadays the post-capitalist system at its peak.

An emblematic Turkish example would be Ceza(real name Bilgin Özçalkan) (pronounced je-ZAH, Turkish for 'punishment'. He is the most commercially famous and influential Turkish rapper. His most popular piece is Aramizda fark var: There is difference between you and me.

I think we need to accept the fact that class struggle is escalating and the difference in Ceza's lyrics hits us in the head BIG TIME!

Thus, we do see darker shades of civic engagement in the streets and/or online when social cleavages are in question. Different genres of art help this engagement grow and proliferate without borders.

I also agree with you.. Nowadays youth are more rebellious, maybe because of the music styles which we listen and the social networks.. Look at the facebook and twitter, the using of these websites increase day by day. In addition to that, they create their own videos, communication styles, websites and they are also rebellious and express some ideas..

The lyrics, contents are changing..

Incredible! This forum system is amazing. I've just wrote my reply and click on the send button, the system kicked me out, and when I returned, my post was gone! Wrote your posts elsewhere and paste it here.

Well I can not rewrite the same things, but the idea was: "the networked subcultures generates an alternative channel of engagement" and "a study of that phenomenon wit segmentation, local differences etc can be informative"..