What Do We Owe Young People? The Truth

Why vibes based politics and media are detrimental to the children

Probably my most intelligent friend, Blaise, told me many years ago that young people's politics are generally one of two things; a rejection of their parents' politics, or an embrace of it. 

It was true of everyone around us, in 2008, but over the past few years we've seen the rise of a third powerful influence - one emboldened by both social and mainstream media - the rebirth of marketing politics to young people as something fun, done for social point scoring rather than a boring but necessary one. 

A cool thing to do. Like smoking for the smug.  

We owe young people better than that. We owe young people the time to evolve their politics, aspire for better, challenge authority, and not to use them as props in our politics. 

I was also reminded of how children gain their political allegiances when seeing two big stories of last week - the climate/Gaza/Uniforms/day off school protest, and seeing the response to an otherwise banal piece on Newshub. 

Last Friday's Climate Strike, involving School Strike 4 Climate was promoted as “climate” focused, hence the name, and the involvement of SS4C, quickly became a catch-all protest for various traditional left wing causes. 

The event was led by, as Radio NZ reported, “a coalition including Toitū Te Tiriti, Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa, and School Strike 4 Climate.”

“They have six demands. To keep the ban on oil and gas exploration, end the Fast Track Approvals Bill, toitū te Tiriti o Waitangi, climate education for all, lower the voting age to 16 and to "free Palestine".”

That's a list of ideologically congruent demands. They're in step with the party policies of both Te Pati Māori and the Greens. You can see how someone can agree with all of them, but should school students feel pressure to do the same?  

The issue is around how groups like SS4C use climate concerns, and leadership roles for young people, to promote other left wing causes to young people and to convey a false sense that these school students are equally sold on all six demands. 

It's a step above astroturfing - a very tentative step, like nervous dancers in a school play. Which is particularly apt as the students have very little control over what play they perform, that's a teacher's remit, but front it anyway. 

538’s Nate Silver once wrote, “The problem is that being into politics is strongly inversely correlated with understanding strategy and expected value. It selects for people who care more about vibes than results.” 

This is the problem as I see it. The more you shy away from portraying our national politics accurately - as a slow, detail focused, highly structured process - the greater a disservice you do to both politics and your audience. 

In reality, running a Government can't be vibes based. It has to have some level of grey and technicality. 

Chloe Swarbrick, Aotearoa Liberation League, and TikTok politics show a subjective perspective on the world, and do so while using the language of righteousness. 

Kids are bright, kids can learn really quickly, but kids aren't across all the details. These kinds of appeal to emotion are lazy manipulations of this fact. 

Speaking of, Lloyd Burr interviewed mental health activist Jazz Thornton about public sector job cuts. It was not an informative experience.  

Speaking to AM on Friday, Jazz Thornton said the cuts showed the Government was putting money ahead of people. 

“Christopher Luxon, if you shut down the Suicide Prevention Office, you will be telling people that are struggling with suicidal thoughts all around this country that their lives are worth less than your tax cuts - point blank obvious, that's what you're saying.”

How many ‘kids’ saw Jazz Thornton and assumed Luxon had personally decided to axe the Suicide Prevention Office? How many assumed something called the Suicide Prevention Office must be an important office and the government, making Luxon's supposed call incredibly cruel? 

All these assumptions would be fair and incorrect. The decision was the DG of Health's - a person who is paid more than the Prime Minister and was not willing to take a pay cut to salvage it. 

This is also not an important or achieving department. Since its inception, as a half measure which lacked the scope and funding to achieve anything meaningful, it has struggled existentially. 

The SPO exists as a testament to the accuracy of the Utopia (a brilliant Australian satire based on an equally error prone but more effective public service than we have in NZ) series writers. As would happen on Utopia, the department designed to fail will outlive others that were designed to achieve something tangible. Seemingly, it will survive because it has an important sounding name. 

It turns out, while many things weren’t, keeping the name Suicide Prevention Office in rotation WAS worth more than tax cuts. 

It's a bit funny, laughter is good for mental health. But it's a dark kind of funny, one that leaves remnants of bitterness in one's proverbial mouth. 

No one here is covered in glory from this. Thornton showed, by weighing in on a structural debate without specific knowledge or background, why “former Young New Zealander Of The Year” is becoming a red flag. Burr, by not being across the details himself enough to question Thornton’s more wild claims, why people are losing trust in the media. 

This, an unpleasant taste, an unforced error stemming from a Hanlon’s Razor scenario, is exactly what politics is. Not always, but more often than you will ever appreciate until you're professionally immersed in it. 

Selling young people a dream that politics is a day-off school, an opportunity to go viral and meet a minor celebrity, is unfair to them. It's presenting the best tiny slices of an otherwise inedible cake. 

If you're a caregiver or someone in a position of influence you should impart some values, but also acknowledge your biases and that diversity of thought that exists. 

We owe kids the truth. We owe them a far sight better than what they're getting currently.