People often ask: How can we get the younger generation involved? How do we break through the nihilism that they are experiencing? What can we do?
My answer is simple, but it’s not one that comes easily. Older generations need to listen and change. Change is difficult for many people. Regardless, that is what is needed in order to engage and rally the youth. Actually, listening and just working towards change would likely be enough. Give the younger generation hope that there is a better tomorrow and a better future. Show us that things can change, that the system isn’t rigged against us.
We need to be heard. Our ideas are ours. Just because previous generations have attempted similar ideas doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t try again in this generation. Maybe it won’t work. Allow the youth to experience that failure. Some of the best ways to learn are through failure. You want the youth engaged. Make them feel welcome. Make them feel heard. Make them feel important. Make them feel as though they belong and that their ideas are welcome.
My generation has shared in its struggles just like every generation before. There will be struggles. I may not understand the struggles of the generation after me, but I will make an active effort to understand the younger generation’s struggles, because the generation before me failed to understand mine.
My generation can’t afford houses. We’re the first generation in the U.S. to have a net worth lower than our parents.’ My generation sees conflict after conflict. Wars that aren’t called wars. We’re watching our country entertain fascism in a way that we haven’t for decades. My generation has lost the illusion that the U.S. is the moral authority. My generation longs for what was promised to us. If we go to college, we’ll get a good job and be able to buy a house and build a family. My generation saw the first black president and the counter-revolution to that President. And now we realize that politicians are not coming to save us. But if we don’t get involved in the electoral process, no one will represent us.
I want the youth to be as engaged as I am. However, not everybody has the stomach for what I have to stomach. This isn’t an indictment of older generations as a whole. It’s a conversation of understanding. Understand where our generation is coming from. Listen to what we have to say. Understand that things are difficult for us and that sometimes human nature is to flee from the problem. Especially when the room you’re walking into isn’t a welcome one. One where you know you will not be listened to, where you’ll be told that your ideas or your experience are invalid—and that the other party is the whole problem. There are ways both parties and the system can improve, and young people want to see it.
How do we involve the youth? Listen and try to change things.
Chance Marshall is a project management expert and the president of the Bonneville County Young Democrats.