Findings from a new national survey from Internet Matters and Full Fact highlight a significant challenge to the government’s intention to lower the voting age. Extending the vote to 16 and 17-year-olds risks becoming a missed opportunity to strengthen democratic participation and trust in politics, unless young people get more support to navigate political information online.
The survey quizzed more than 550 young people aged 13-17, and over 800 parents and carers across the UK. It found that young people do not feel well-equipped to assess the political information they are encountering online from a young age.
Key findings – young people want to know more
Children are navigating political content well before voting age. 74% of those aged 13-14 have seen content about news, politics or current affairs online.
Children lack foundational skills for evaluating political information. Only 53% of young people aged 13-17 who have seen political information online are confident in telling whether it’s true or false. And just 59% feel confident distinguishing fact from opinion online.
Misinformation and AI are undermining trust in elections. 63% of young people say they’re concerned about voters being misled by false or misleading claims during elections. 60% are concerned that AI-generated content may affect the results of a general election. And the same number ignore what politicians and political parties say because they don’t know if they can trust them.
Parents think children aren’t ready to make informed electoral decisions. 52% of parents think young people are unprepared to vote. Only 49% express confidence in their child’s ability to recognise satire.
Young people believe there’s a shared responsibility for helping them to identify false or misleading information online. This spans across schools, parents and carers, government, and social media companies.
Recommendations – institutions need to do better
Internet Matters and Full Fact are calling on parliament and government to take four immediate steps to ensure support for newly enfranchised voters to participate confidently in democratic life.
1. Schools need support to strengthen media and digital literacy across the curriculum through access to high-quality resources and comprehensive teacher training. A recent independent review of the curriculum in England highlighted the need to equip young people with the ability to make informed decisions and to help them to understand how opinions, AI-generated content and satire can all influence democratic participation.
2. The government needs to establish a clear, coordinated national approach to media literacy. This should involve supporting young people and adults, including parents and carers. The government should urgently publish its ‘vision statement’ on media literacy, setting out objectives, priorities and measures of success.
3. The government must commit to sustained funding to deliver media literacy education outside schools. This should include the Electoral Commission delivering evidence-based public information campaigns on issues such as misinformation.
4. Parliament must require social media companies to support users’ media literacy on platforms, including labelling AI-generated content, design features that support critical evaluation (e.g. read-before-you-share prompts and source information labels), and user controls for recommender systems.
Rachel Huggins, CEO of Internet Matters, said:
Young people are growing up in a digital world where much of their political information comes from online platforms, where it can be difficult to judge what is a fact and, with the rise of AI-generated content, even what is real.#
Lowering the voting age will only succeed if young people – and the parents and carers supporting them – are given the tools to navigate and engage successfully within that world, rather than attempting to shut them out of it.
Mark Frankel, Head of Public Affairs at Full Fact, said:
By the age of 13, many young people are engaging with political information. Rather than banning them from social media, we need to teach children the skills to navigate and assess these sources of political information.
MPs debating the Elections Bill need to send a clear message that future elections will be protected from disinformation and AI, to keep young people engaged with politics.
Emily Darlington MP, Member of the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee said:
We have seen from the Committee’s inquiry into the 2024 summer riots just how damaging misinformation can be for our democracy. This research shows that a majority of kids agree, and that they’re worried about how safe our democracy is in this new age of AI and mis/disinformation.
If the next generation of voters doesn’t have confidence in our democracy, we have a responsibility to act before it’s too late. Online platforms must be participants in the fight to protect trust in our democratic processes, rather than undermine it.
Kirsty Blackman MP, Co-Chair of the APPG on Political and Media Literacy, said:
These findings underline what members of the APPG have long argued: extending the franchise to 16 and 17-year-olds must come with a whole-of-society commitment to equipping young people to navigate the digital information environment they already inhabit.
When 6 in 10 young people are concerned about the potential for misinformation and AI-generated content affecting elections, protecting our democracy means embedding political and media literacy education in the National Curriculum, supporting teachers to deliver it, and holding tech platforms to account through media literacy by design.
Stella, a student aged 14, told Internet Matters:
I think it’s important for children and young people to be taught how to navigate the information they see online from a young age, so they can feel confident forming their own views about politics and voting. The earlier this support starts, the better prepared young people will be to take part.
Featured image via the Canary
By The Canary
This post was originally published on Canary.