Reader’s Digest has a series of articles on the youth vote for the upcoming presidential election. Our Millenial, Awesome Intern Kate, takes a look.

As you might expect, the articles are written for an older crowd (the author defines “Facebook friends” at one point). Still, there is some valuable info.

The Facebook Election discusses the youth vote in general terms. I’m not sure how much I like this article - after saying that Millennials aren’t easy to typecast, it goes on to do just that. But we hear the raw numbers - there are 47 million young adults between 18 and 29 (generally “Millennial” is defined differently, but, of course, 18 is the voting age). We’ve never “determined” the outcome of a presidential election; youth participation has faded over the years. Now, though, we live in a different world, more different than anyone would have predicted. We have Facebook, twitter, and MySpace; we’re constantly connected and plugged in. We have new values, a new economy, and a new war. And now we care about these things - hopefully enough to do something.

The New Volunteers of America talks about the upward trend in volunteering. Not only are we voting in huge numbers, but we’re also volunteering - not just for our resume, but because we actually like to do it. I started volunteer work as a requirement for a middle school course, but kept going because I liked what I was doing (which was, at the time, working with people with disabilities and horseback riding). The article says that’s pretty common. Millennials might start volunteer work because it will “look good”, but we continue because we believe it’s helpful and important.

Millennials also talked to RD In Their Own Words.

There’s some more interesting articles here - what are your thoughts?

“AI” Kate

Standing around with a globe is my favorite way to change the world (not).
(photo credit Reader’s Digest)

Tags: Campaign 2008, Reader's Digest. Millenials

This entry was posted on Monday, May 19th, 2008 at 3:02 pm and is filed under Be the Change, Organizing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.