Pre-election buzz is always present, but this year brought even more chatter from voters, both before and after the presidential election. This constant discussion contributes to the political climate in youths’ environments and pressures the few eligible high schooler voters.
Every four years, a round of new voters takes to the polls. In 2024, young voters made up 14% of all votes with a turnout of 42% for voters under age 29.
Although not record numbers, young voters, including students, are paying more and more attention to political issues. The young demographic’s increased interest in the voting process, including candidate debates and speeches, has strengthened their voices.
But this presence in politics has allowed the intense political divide of the country to make its way into schools and across social media.
People from both parties have shared their political opinions in various ways, both before and after the election, and some voices are causing tension in schools. Discussing differing beliefs with those who disagree is crucial to maintaining civility, but when these debates happen in an academic setting, it can strain the integrity of a school’s educational climate.
Junior Jayla Bischoff sensed this strain after the election results were announced. “You could definitely feel a vibe around school. You could clearly see that some people were very happy and others were very upset,” Bischoff noted.
Social media was an unfortunate amplifier of these emotions.
Social media allows anyone to share all types of comments, and young voters have taken advantage of this in recent months. Primarily used by young people, Instagram is a medium by which users can express solidarity with one another, reactions to polls or support for a candidate during the election process.
Changes to the political atmosphere take time, and St. Ambrose University Dean of Students and Vice President for Student Engagement Christopher Waugh has noted this progression. “These shift-increments are almost never in ‘the past few years.’ Climate shifts take time to build momentum and typically require a longer runway,” Waugh shared.
Yet, the divide is clearer than ever when looking at Instagram.
About one-quarter of Instagram users report seeing mostly liberal content on the app, which also applies to the youngest users and voters: high school seniors and college students.
This imbalance isn’t necessarily due to Instagram’s political bias or supposed censorship–it may simply reflect the proportional beliefs of users–but the effects are present nonetheless. Encountering a majority of one-sided posts on social media can create an echo chamber effect that isolates people with differing beliefs and varying levels of content interaction.
This echo chamber on social media has seeped out of the interweb into schools. Some high schoolers were overwhelmed by online posts about the election results, and it made typical social media engagement challenging. “It felt like every time I opened an Instagram story,” Bischoff explained, “it was someone reposting something either supporting or not supporting the results.”
There is no problem with expressing feelings toward a candidate or their policies, but students don’t always do this in the most respectful way and can fall victim to faulty arguments like logical fallacies.
Often, the most immature minds using these fallacies are the youngest ones simply because of unfinished brain development. Young voters, primarily ages 18-24, may lack emotional maturity and impulse control, characteristics that are crucial in an election season. Yet, this doesn’t excuse older ages from immature behavior.
For newly involved voters, election results can insight intense emotions, but this is the time to learn how to most appropriately convey individual beliefs to ensure productive dialogue in all environments is possible.
“A charged political atmosphere is often no more than a struggle for power, and it usually helps clarify who has it,” Waugh said. “Who are you not allowed to criticize? That’s who has the power.”
Though students’ opinions inevitably differ, there shouldn’t be distressing levels of tension within academic environments. The relatively rare event of a presidential election has extracted young voters’ emotions and injected them into schools’ political atmospheres, creating a charged environment that can hopefully be neutralized soon.
