Though Donald Trump’s bid for presidency was resoundingly rejected by a majority of young people in America, he will still take office for the next four years. Protests and riots have flared across the country in response, many of them led by university students and held on university campuses or school grounds. Overwhelmingly, however, the platforms for grief have been online.
This generation is often mocked for its reliance on Facebook and Twitter for activism. Posting a carefully-crafted status into the echo chamber of a newsfeed is likely to have little impact on the entrenched individuals who support Trump, Brexit or other causes that young people have predominantly voted against this year. But disparaging young people for posting statuses in the wake of these major and life-changing decisions – that they and all of their friends voted against – ignores the fact that there is little other recourse for them to express frustration or anger.
These are natural responses to decisions that will have far-reaching consequences for the generations that least wanted them. While 75 per cent of voters aged 24 and under voted against leaving the EU referendum, 61 per cent aged 65 and over chose to leave. In Ireland, voter turnout in the marriage equality referendum was at a 20-year high, with much of this due to the 27,633 students newly registered by the Union of Students in Ireland (USI). Were the referendum to have failed, the resulting devastation would have been much the same as that in the UK and the US, as the young generation faced the prospect of living with a decision that they had not wanted but that would affect them more.
Railing against the impact on their futures of a decision is necessarily cathartic, but should not take the place of action altogether. Campaigning and advocacy should follow. The success of movements such as Fossil Free TCD and USI’s voter registration drive suggest that passion for sustained action exists. But as the instant and helpless response to choices with such extreme consequences for their futures, there is little else young people can do.
