Internet and Politics: Apathy amongst teens and young adults

It is often said that young adults and teens are generally apathetic towards politics. Truly, most of us cannot be bothered about the ongoings of our local politics (speaking from personal experience, being a young adult now). In order to understand why this is so, allow me to briefly talk about politics, and political power. Some people have more political power than others, and it is important to see how this affects the mindset of many young adults and teens.

To summarize, politics are the activities and social relations involving authority or power of government and organizations. Political powers come from three sources: legitimate power (the power given to an individual by a recognised authority to enforce standards of behaviour), referent power (the power bestowed upon individuals by virtue of accomplishment or attitude), and expert power (the power that comes from education or experience).

This is a model of an individual's political power, and his concerns. As one can see, the individual's circle of concern is much bigger than his or her circle of influence, meaning that the individual is unable to involve himself in every aspect of his concern. For example, a poor man living in a small countryside could be concerned about the plight of a Burmese's poor living condition, but could not do anything about it because he could not influence many people to do something about it.

Naturally, this model applies to young adults and teens as well:

1. Their circle of influence is too small as compared to their circle of concern, leaving many teens and young adults feeling cynical and inadequate. A young adult could feel strongly for an political issue, either local or overseas, but his or her lack of power (or perceived lack of power) to act on it, to help improve the situation, can make him or her feel drained. Instead, he or she might choose to remain apathetic, since there is "no point to worrying and thinking about it".
2. Their circle of concern is too small. Young adults and teens could be simply unaware of political issues happening around, due to lack of emphasis placed in political awareness in the country, or that they are just brought up to "mind their own business". Sometimes, the local media frames political news as trivial, and that everything in the country is "perfectly fine". Inaccessibility of alternate news sources contributes to this idea that nothing else needs to be done to help improve the situation.
3. Culture: Some young adults and teens can be brought up to respect authority. This is especially prevalent in Asian countries, where they are told not to question authority, perhaps due to a culture of fear (i.e.: if you tell on the government, you and your family will be in trouble), or just plain respect for people in power, such as teachers, policemen and politicians.
4. Some young adults and teens are simply bored by the going ons of the political world, seeing politics as something that is "boring", or not essential to their general wellbeing.

Apathy might not seem like such a good thing, for more often than not, politics have always affected all our lives in one way or another. In some places, lack of political awareness is often promoted indirectly, by the ruling government, so that citizens would not be able to think critically about their environment they live in. This is a dangerous situation to be in. Harnessing the power of the Internet, almost everyone would have a certain measure of power, and increase their circle of concern from greater awareness, and increase their circle of influence as well.