This reluctance of UK young age individuals to take part in the political process is consistent with the statistics reported across Europe as seen in the European Parliament elections in 2009, where only 29% of 18-24 year-olds voted (European Citizens Abroad, 2014). The available data indicate that lower age groups prefer to engage in certain informal political activities like demonstrations, boycotts, and direct action such as volunteering, informal community networks, informal political action, awareness-raising, general campaigning, signing online petitions, and engaging in digital media production (Bennett, 2008). The political identity of new generation has changed and affected by the new media culture such as television, blogs and political websites (Esser, and de Vreese, …show more content…
It was found that the mutual distrust between political parties and young people and scepticism about “formal politics” were the major reasons behind low desire in voting participation. The UK National Statistics have also shown that less than a quarter (24%) of people aged 15 and over ‘tended to trust’ the government in the UK in autumn 2013. Based on this fact, the political parties neither exercise more effort to attract younger individuals nor describe specific policies on youth issues during their elections campaigns, instead they only target older generations who are more conservative and less disillusioned with the operation of politics. Therefore, the vast majority of youth consider the whole process of election and voting as a waste of their time and effort. To explore the views of younger population about their limited engagement in the democratic institutions, a study was conducted on 1,025 individuals aged 18 found that lack of knowledge about politicians, the perception that all parties are the same, and the concern that no single party matches an individual’s specific list of concerns were the forsaking reason leading youth abstinence from getting involved in the