How to Get Politically Engaged as a Young Professional

Contrary to popular belief, young people care about more than their phones and where they can host the next pre-game! As generations sprout up, it is becoming more evident that young people actually care and they care a lot about politics and how policy affects them. The massive, impending, limit to the potential that comes with this is how overstimulating politics, policy, and government can be. 

In a world that can sometimes feel as though it is engulfed in flames and full of people who only seem to fuel the fire, younger generations (and all of their wild hormones) find it hard to latch onto passion relating to policy. This is not because they don’t care, but because they don’t know where to direct this care. We all want to save the world roughly from the ages of fourteen to eighteen, but often are slammed with this barrier that causes us to give up on that once novel idea.

Policy hardly touches the ground when it flies through state and federal governments to turn into laws. Young people do not have the time to set aside to delve into why their town should vote yes or no on issue 1, but they want to. Here are some key pieces of advice on how to encourage young people, or as a young person, to be encouraged to care about your next state and/or federal election. 

The terrifying reality of 2024 is that we are not going anywhere fast enough to escape the digital world. That’s okay! We can make good of a scary situation and use it as a tool to progress liberty, freedom, and education amongst young people. 

When we can watch or listen to something that stimulates our brains, it feels like a break from classes, work, and the everyday life of a young person. There are several resources for young people to learn about policy (AF being one of them) that are actually pleasant to utilize! These resources help to break down complex language into digestible and accessible formats for young professionals to explore.

We are well aware of how unrealistic it is to think that the majority of youngsters are going to take time out of their busy day to do something they have already complained about.. But, there are a  plethora of social media options geared towards individual liberty that exist solely to engage young people.

I am in a lot of ways part of a generation that has fallen victim to thinking voting is too mundane and too time consuming of a task, all because the vitality of that act is not apparent.. Seeing this first hand, as heartbreaking as it is, I have also seen it flip by simply explaining the options we have to actually learn how to care about policy and what the implications of this can be for everyone within our democracy. 

This is all to say that I am well aware that life is chaotic and sometimes the added stress of understanding policy can seem like the straw that will break the camel’s back. I am here to tell you that it does not need to be this way! Learning about how to help yourself and your community is satisfying, rewarding, and a lot of the time, compensates for the dispositions we have within the political system in the first place. Being the change you want to see in the world is a timeless passion that us young people are blessed to have and the ability for us to be so concerned with how we can help others is a gift to be burdened with!