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The narrative about young people and politics has been stubbornly persistent: Generation Z is apathetic, distracted by social media, uninterested in civic life. New research suggests this narrative is not only wrong — it is precisely backwards.
The Data
A 2025 study by the Council of Europe's youth sector, drawing on data from 40 countries, found that 18–25 year olds report higher levels of political interest, civic engagement, and participation in collective action than any age cohort measured in the last sixty years. The form of that engagement is different. But the intensity is not.
What has changed is the arena. Young people are not less politically active because they are not joining political parties. They are more politically active through online movements, consumer boycotts, community organising, and direct civic action.
Why the Myth Persists
The apathy myth persists because it is measured by the wrong tools. Electoral turnout — the traditional metric — does capture a real phenomenon: young people vote at lower rates than older cohorts. But this is partly a structural issue (registration barriers, working hours, polling locations) and partly a reflection of declining trust in electoral politics as the primary mode of change.
Young people are not absent from politics. They have simply moved to places where traditional political science has not been looking.
What This Means for Youth Participation Programmes
If young people are already politically engaged — just in non-traditional ways — then youth participation programmes should not start from a deficit model. They should start from where young people are. Build on the civic identity that already exists. Connect it to formal structures. Create bridges — not from the bottom up, but laterally.
At YouthTICK, our civic participation programme starts with this premise. Young people in Yalova are not waiting to be activated. They are already engaged with the issues that affect their lives. Our job is to create the conditions for that engagement to become more visible, more connected, and more powerful.