It is said that the future of a society lies in its children. Besides the focus on personal development or the management of several crises is there an awareness or interest of the political future of our society? What are the influences or reasons that younger people are avoiding or focusing on political topics?
Two world wars, several economic crises, slave trade, archaic sexism, monarchy, autocracy, democracy – to name just a few points that have shaped the European continent. Sometimes it seems as if some of the traumas of history are forgotten after a short time and the mistakes are constantly repeated. But who is responsible for breaking this cycle of experiencing and forgetting? Is it fair for a society to always look to the youngest generation and leave the future to the children of the third millennium? If you look at the latest voter flow analyses of the last National Council elections in Austria (of the under-30s), you can see that society is slowly drifting apart. The parties of the centre are becoming less and less interesting for various reasons and the camps of the political fringes are slowly gaining ground. This development is certainly not bad per se – but when you look at the issues or the way politics is communicated, you sometimes feel like you’ve been transported back in time.
But what experience and history teach us is that peoples and governments have never learned anything from history and acted on the lessons that could have been learned from it.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831)
In my opinion this quote still fits pretty well. It is up to us as a society to pass on the knowledge and experience we have gained. But what about the willingness of Generation Z or Alpha to absorb and use existing knowledge, or are these generations in particular already severely underestimated? What factors play a role when children or young people engage with the topic of history or politics for the first time or turn away from it? I would like to deal with these and other questions in my future research, because I think that a peaceful future should be an interesting topic for all of us.
My motivation for the project is to raise the political awareness of children and young people. I think it is wrong that young voters today are seen as a potential electorate for political parties, but are not really interested in issues that affect young people. This state of affairs creates disenchantment and weakens confidence in our democratic apparatus.
It is this state of affairs that I will be analysing over the coming weeks. I will focus on young people’s interest, disenchantment and enthusiasm towards political content. When is information interesting, what are the social backgrounds behind various opinions and to what extent can one react to this topic as an interaction designer?
After collecting some information on the topic, I would like to focus on my possibilities as a designer. I am convinced that as designers we share a certain quality – creativity. Through creative ways of interaction it becomes possible to target specific groups in society. There are various ways to share information or stimulate discourse. I am curious to see where my research will lead me and what kind of discussion can be concluded from it.
