Young People Followed SOPA News More Than Election News

from the more-likely-to-impact-them dept

For people who still don't recognize that there's a generational shift going on when it comes to how people view attempts to regulate the internet, communications and copyright law, they might want to start paying attention. According to the folks over at the Pew Research Center, the story of SOPA was the most followed story for people under 30 -- even more than news about the Presidential election. That's probably because SOPA/PIPA had much more of a likelihood of impacting their daily lives. Either way, it's amazing to see politicians and SOPA/PIPA supporters still think that this was just a "vocal minority" complaining about the bill. Their ridiculously bad miscalculation in introducing ridiculously bad bills has now awakened a very large percentage of young people to these issues, in a way that won't just go away. Amazingly, it wasn't just people aged 20 to 30 who took an interest. The research showed that there was interest all the way down to the K-12 set as well.

Filed Under: issues, news, pipa, protect ip, sopa, youth

Study Suggests That The Internet Makes Youth 'More Engaged Citizens'

from the that's-a-good-thing,-right? dept

Following on our recent post discussing Clay Shirky's views concerning social media's role in helping to politicize people who were formerly not all that interested in politics, Shocklee points us to news of a recent study that has found, indeed, that high school students who use the internet to research key interests "were more likely to become involved in 'civic and political issues.'" And it appears that this greater involvement goes beyond just posting about it online, but really becoming more involved in certain causes. This seems to counter the claims of some that online interest in civil and political issues is more just people screaming in front of their computers. It actually does seem to have a real impact.

Filed Under: activism, engagement, internet, politics, social media, studies, youth