President Obama's Interviews

As someone who grew up in the United States, I can definitely say that very little is done to involve young adults in learning about politics. It’s not a question of access to information- it’s very easy to find what you want to learn about, if you know where to look; however the information that is readily available is, to put it simply, daunting. When turning on the news means watching well-dressed adults sit around and scream at each other like children, there is little incentive to be a part of that world. There is also little pressure from some parents and authority figures to be involved. School is about passing tests- whether you actually retain the information past a semester is of no concern, and forget about in-depth conversations of current events. Of course, you’re listening to someone who went to school in a state that currently ranks 48^th nationally in education. I have hope that other states were more proactive in involving their students in political conversations.

            I’m telling you how uninviting American politics and news outlets usually are for young people because the White House has recently broken this trend. It started when the State of the Union address was, for the first time, released early online for anyone to see. There was then collaboration with Google to bring three top YouTube vloggers to the white house for interviews with the President. This brought millions of conversations regarding both the speech and the government’s political agenda to Twitter and Facebook among other social media avenues. The 2014 State of the Union address on the White House’s YouTube channel has 521,493 views; the 2015 State of the Union has almost tripled that score with 1,552,361 views on just that one channel. President Obama isn’t avoiding major media; he is involving himself in the chosen media venue of a very large percent of the population that is often left out of political discussion. It is a demographic that needs to know what is going on, needs to be brought into the conversation in order to be aware of the world that will be passed on to them. It may be easy now for younger Millennials to stay silent on the issue of politics, but we cannot have an entire generation that regards the news and the information it reports to be a joke. This is why it is so wonderful and important that the White House has increased its online presence and made a name for itself in social media. This is a move that should have been done a while ago and, hopefully, will show younger generations that a political discussion is not a vehement screaming match.