The opportunities for youth internet participation are greater than ever. Adolescents and young people have a huge opportunity to have a voice well beyond the challenging days ahead.
Fremont, CA: Following a demand from student activist Greta Thunberg for climate strikers to take to the internet rather than the streets during the COVID-19 epidemic, #climatestrike has become #climatestrikeonline. Students in China have used social media to gather medical personnel funds on the pandemic response's front lines. As a result of misinformation concerning COVID-19, an increase in young involvement with chatbots to find verified medical information has occurred. Algerian youth forums have been repurposed to encourage individuals to stay home during the outbreak as demonstrators have migrated indoors. Teenagers from all around the world have participated in TikTok's 'Ghen Cô Vy' dance competition to encourage proper hand washing (and, in some cases, good dancing!). Young folks have embraced modern media to make their voices known and stimulate collective action when the world needs it most, as Covid-19 forces the world indoors.
This offline-online continuum, on the other hand, is now an everyday element of modern civic engagement for many young people, allowing them to participate in individual or collective acts to improve the well-being of their communities or civilizations. According to a recent UNICEF study, many adolescents and young people utilize digital forums to establish civic identities creatively and express political viewpoints, claiming agency that they may not have in traditional civic settings. There's a lot to expect from youth digital civic involvement in the months ahead now that a civic sphere is a digital place, albeit only briefly.
A stage to speak and be heard
Though it may seem contradictory, digitalization of civic activity during the epidemic may provide more equitable access to teenagers, and young people than traditional forms of activism do in normal times. Digital technology provides a low-barrier-to-entry platform for young people to generate material — content that may reach audiences and scales that young people do not have access to in their everyday lives. Youngsters and young people's political involvement may not look like 'conventional' civic engagement, as seen by countless songs, dance challenges, or entertaining and instructive public service announcements filmed by children in recent weeks. Adolescents and young people are already much more likely to remix popular culture for advocacy and involvement using humor, memes, and satire. However, these actions are sometimes derided as "clicktivism" and not considered "genuine" civic actions.
