<a fr-original-style="" href="https://twitter.com/seydataluk" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="color: rgb(9, 9, 9); text-decoration: none; background-color: transparent; outline: none; cursor: pointer; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; touch-action: manipulation; user-select: auto; box-sizing: border-box;" target="_blank">Şeyda Taluk</a>The fact that young voters are behind almost all of the political upswings in different countries around the world in recent years has turned the spotlight on young voters in Turkey. There has been an expectation that the roust that will change the existing political structure will be a "youth earthquake.""Fierce debates on young generations continue within the framework of the "new generation politics" discourse, and the "Generation Z" conservations (hollow applause!) are based on generational analysis and ignore historical developments. So all of this is useless in understanding the coming world and preparing the young generations for this future.Moreover: Younger generations, who are the subjects of these discussions, are not interested in these discussions that only identify the situation and problems. In a sense, they have given up hope on the older generations, and the more they see that the promises made to them have not been fulfilled, the further they move away from politics and the wider the gap between generations becomes.<h2 fr-original-style="" style="margin: 0px; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.85); font-weight: 500; padding: 0px; box-sizing: border-box;">"We have carried our habit of wasting resources into the new world"</h2>One of the biggest mistakes made by Turkey's political structures in their search for a political discourse that will include the new generations born into the speed of the digital world is that they believe they can win the votes of these layers through the symbols of everyday life instead of developing a way of thinking about the "future". "Our immigrant generation, with its old habits, has plunged headlong into the exponentially growing movement," Faruk Eczacıbaşı writes in his book Daha Yeni Başlıyor, adding:<blockquote fr-original-style="color: rgb(9, 9, 9); border-color: rgb(37, 44, 60); border-width: 4px; font-style: italic; padding-left: 10px;" style="color: rgb(9, 9, 9); border-color: rgb(37, 44, 60); border-width: 4px; font-style: italic; padding-left: 10px; margin: 0px 0px 1em; border-left-style: solid; box-sizing: border-box;">In our way, in line with our interests, we are trying to pull the opportunities we get to one side or the other. We have carried our habits of wasting resources, which we inherited from past generations but which we also owe to future generations, into this new world.</blockquote>Eczacıbaşı also emphasizes the need to understand that developments and the disruptions they bring are perpetual, and to be prepared for those disruptions to change at an ever-increasing pace in ways we are not used to.<h2 fr-original-style="" style="margin: 0px; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.85); font-weight: 500; padding: 0px; box-sizing: border-box;">Understanding the network society</h2>Of course, first of all, it is necessary to understand this movement well. Noting that the world we live in today is a "new" reality, sociologist Manuel Castells says that we should not ignore the relationship between the internet and social movements.Castells defines the network society as a form of social organization that is decentralized, non-hierarchical, and dominated by horizontal relations around the logic of networking. The sociologist describes protests in different countries as "networked social movements," where people share their mutual pain and problems and fearlessly voice their objections, even if they do not have a specific ideological and political infrastructure.Undoubtedly, this rapid transformation of technology, that is, it's becoming a way of life, will create an enormous change in political structures. To be prepared for this change, it is as significant to understand the "spirit of the times" as it is to understand the generations.&nbsp;As the internet creates a new culture of digital citizenship, these "apolitical" (actually political in another sense, but against existing political structures) young people from different political views and layers, can organize themselves through Reddit, Discord, TikTok videos, or private virtual rooms and applications, believing that they can change the world from their rooms, smartphones, or tablets, contrary to their families who grew up watching television.<h2 fr-original-style="" style="margin: 0px; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.85); font-weight: 500; padding: 0px; box-sizing: border-box;">The impact of the digital world on politics</h2>As to media communication theorist Herbert Marshall McLuhan, communication and its tools shape societies. For this very reason, it is against the spirit of this century to look at the politics of the coming period and the youth vote without looking at the impact of the digital world, which is gradually turning into a "living space," on politics and social governance, and without understanding how this will affect all areas of life.We can understand the younger generations not through personas confined to various frameworks, but rather by trying to understand the future. It would be more useful for young people from different strata, whom we call "the future of the country and the world", to scrutinize the digital transformation that is progressing at a dizzying pace, to try to understand the generations affected by this process within this framework, and to think about how ready Turkish politics and the young generations are for it. We do not need a crystal ball to do this; we need to try to capture the spirit of the times in the light of scientific data, to look at history as if from the top of a high mountain looking down on the settlements below, to determine the cause and effect relationship well, and to make healthy analyzes.It is possible to predict that in the modern agoras of cyberspace, which gives the "ordinary" man a voice and makes him even more powerful, the search for justice, global warming, environmental and freedom struggles, and digital activism&nbsp;will rise.In light of all this, will the young generations shaped by the communication revolution succeed in building a digital democracy that focuses on the individual and transforms centralized structures, or can we support them in building a world where they can?

Spektrum

Instead of analyzing generations without understanding the network society and the communication revolution, we should support the younger generations in building digital democracy.

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