27
Youth’s Participation Patterns to The Society
JOURNAL OF YOUTH RESEARCHES
the process of globalization (Bayhan, 2010, Bayhan, 2012, Bayhan, 2013:154). Another
reason why the youngs are insensitive to politics is that the tendency of the families to
keep their children away from politics due to the political polarization and anomaly which
occured before 1980.
In Turkey the youngs have negative feelings and lack of confidence in political mech-
anisms. They believe that politics is not “fair and just” and “people are not in the posi-
tions which they actually have the right to be” This negativity is the same for politicians
too.“They only watch for themselves and their affiliations”, “they don’t do too much things
for the sake of socity” and “they don’t tell the truth” are some of the statements that the
youngs often use while describing politicians. According to the Youth’s Status Research,
%4,7 of the youngs actively take part in a political party. Three out of four of the rest of
%95,3 say they do not think of taking part in any political parties in the future (UNDP,
2008). Alienation to politics and politicians decreases the participation rate of the youngs
to the political activities.
2.3. Social and Cultural Participation:
With process of globalization,similarities are observed among different cultures in dif-
ferent regions by means of internet. Within the perspective of these similar social and
cultural patterns, according to Bayhan’s research,the most favourite types of boks among
the sample group are “novels” and “stories”. Their most favourite music is “pop music”.
The most favourite TV programmes are “sitcoms”. The most popular sport among those
youngs is “football”. Usage rate of internet which is the symbol of globalization is pretty
high. among youngs.%91 of the sample uses internet.They use internet mostly for the
social sharing sites especially facebook (Bayhan, 2012). Media is becoming more and
more intense in our lives. Life experiences,passion and desire have left their places to the
typical problems in social media:Where are you now? What are you doing? Friendship
habits and practices have been degraded to “online friendship” processes (Hardt ve Ne-
gri, 2012: 22-25). Sharing all their privacy with the social media and thus becoming both
“exhibitionist” and “voyeuristic”, “virtual web people” consume their privacy by becoming
the subjects and objects of a show (Bayhan, 2012a:165).
Being the icon of globalization and information society, Internet leads up to a postmodern
identity pattern. Internet enables different identities to express and reflect themselves. In
this context, different identities start to realize other identities. However it also leads up to
virtual communities in terms of “us” and “other”. Moreover internet addiction is defined
as a psychological problem in psychiatry. Internet produces asocial individuals too. Indi-
viduals who often communicates via internet and spend most of their time using it avoid
from real social relations (Bayhan, 2013: 142). Participation of the youngs to the social
and cultural life takes place virtually by means of internet. Taking the place of the real
social and cultural communication, social media creates virtual social relation patterns.
Social media may be a platform for the asocial individuals to express themselves. How-
ever, problems arise when the virtual social relations take the place of real social relations.
