It’s true of course - young people are our future, in the sense that today’s young people are tomorrow’s adults, workers, voters and parents. But they are also our present - young people have the right to be seen as complete people now, not just in terms of their potential in years to come, and the adults they will be. There’s also of course, the point that young people are always with us - the one in front of you may grow up, but there are always young people. When I hear the phrase “young people are our future”, it makes me cringe. It’s the sort of cliche that starts well-intentioned worthy speeches, often as a prelude for excuses for not doing something or ignoring the views young people have expressed.

So, my heart sank when I looked at the panel for the presentation on Engaging Young People at the e-democracy conference:

Chairman: Peter Lauritzen, Head of Youth Department, Council of Europe
Kate Parish, Founder of UK Youth Parliament
Shane McCracken, Gallomanor, UK - I’m a Councillor get me out of here!
Laura McVeigh, UK Youth
Tom Gaskin, Youth Work for Norfolk Blurb Website Project

For a start, there were no young people on it. So often, the internet is hailed as a means to engage those young people for whom democracy is voting for reality TV personalities, but they weren’t there to tell us about it. There were about ten members of the UK youth parliament sat at the front throughout the session, but they were there to listen to the well-intentioned adults talking to us about the projects that had run which had engaged young people so effectively. As regular readers will know, I have some concerns about how representative the UKYP is, and despite a few powerpoint slides on ethnicity and gender, for me the crucial questions about the type of schools and which areas the young people come from were still unanswered. In short, to borrow a term from Shane McCracken’s presentation (easily the best of the session), are our MYPs all “shinys” - kids who are already enthusiastic and engaged? I didn’t see anything to convince me otherwise - which shouldn’t be taken as disparagement towards the young people who had made the trek. There is some great work going on out there to re-engage young people in democracy and civic engagement through the internet and multimedia - from I’m a Councillor, get me out of here! and Lifeswap to the UK Youth Film for Youth competition and the Norfolk blurb website. I was just sad that the young people weren’t able to tell us about it themselves…