Brexit was a harsh political awakening for young people

It's interesting to note that the usual excuses that are given for low turnout among young people--feeling like their vote won't make a difference--were not present here. This was a direct referendum: what should we do? No politician who will court the youth vote then do something else. Yet, turnout was still low. Which begs the question: why should anyone care what young people think when they can't be bothered to vote, even when there is literally nothing standing between their vote and the result they want?

This divide beaten the haves and have nots, between the young and the old, and a sense that the old will determine the fates of the young through polls, conjures up images of Japan's concerted voting demographics where the elderly dominate and dictate elections and the young feel increasingly disenfranchised.

So the young are grousing that the vote didn&#x27;t turn out the way some of them preferred. As noted, youth turnout was low, meaning many in that age bracket didn&#x27;t care or were willing to let the &quot;older&quot; citizens to decide for them.<p>In any case, the effects of the vote will be determined over time, presumably the lengthy negotiation will be an opportunity for voters to have their say, so the youthful non-participants could yet participate.<p>The linear ramp of age-vs.-participation implies the inevitability that as the young cohort is seasoned by real-world experience, they&#x27;ll replicate the patterns evident among older voters in this election. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Beware the statistics in this post. They don&#x27;t show that turnout was low among young people, they show that turnout was <i>relatively low in areas that had a lot of young people, except for Oxford and Cambridge</i>. Ditto all the other graphs showing correlations between age, income, education, etc. There are a lot of potential confounding factors that can account for that, although it&#x27;s the best you can do statistically since voting is anonymous.

&gt; the freedom of movement that the EU offered them<p>If this is desirable, why can&#x27;t it be had through agreements between pairs of countries without there having to be a European union that you hand over many other powers to?<p>The same goes for other things related to barriers between countries.

&gt; the freedom of movement that the EU offered them<p>There are many countries which are not in the EU, but one can still freely move between them (they signed the Schengen treaty).