Young ECHO Election 2019 Special Report: Who are the young Filipino voters?

By: Darwin Pesco

Voting ways of Filipinos are changing and years from now, the young generation will affect the outcome of every election.

Now, let us understand the Generation Z or young Filipino voters based on their engagement in political discussions and how their mind works.

Generation Z is a different age cohort from the Millennials or Generation Y.

READ MORE: World of Zs: Who are Generation Z?

In a study by JC Punongbayan of FEU Public Policy Center, the Filipino Gen Z is the most technologically driven age cohort and yet has trouble participating in political discussions.

The we-don’t-care generation?

Politically apathetic? That’s the result of the study. Filipino Gen Zs are not politically engaged in spite of the vast information available everywhere through smartphones and other gadgets.

The survey is called the College Experience Survey or CES. It is a survey that has a goal to fathom the effects of college experience on the following aspects: motivations, attitudes, activities, values, abilities, and opinions.

It is a “longitudinal” survey, which means that the students were surveyed in their freshman year to their senior years.

The survey was conducted in two cohorts. For the 2014 cohort, there is a total of 4,323 sampled students) in 9 schools while 25 schools in the Philippines for the 2015 cohort (6,676 sampled students).

In the data, the students are apathetic when it comes to explaining their opinions about social and political issues. They even have surprising stands on the country’s most pressing issues.

For 2014 cohort, 56% agreed that the “death penalty should be reinstated,” and shockingly, 41% of the Gen Zs acceded that “summary execution is a legitimate method of crime control.”  

Also, in 2014 cohort, a large percentage of Gen Zs never demonstrated for a cause and haven’t worked on a local or national political campaign with 86% and 71% respectively. While 24% never communicated their political comments and 17% never discussed politics.

Fake news as news habit?

Also, the study concludes that the Gen Zs are susceptible to disinformation.

44% of the Filipino Gen Zs said that they used technology as the main source of knowledge and information, and 88% acceded that somehow social media is the best source of news.

It shows that Filipino Gen Zs are dependent on social media, and their news habit can be affected by disinformation because nowadays, fake news is proliferated by social media such as Facebook and Twitter.

Gen Z voters can be the target of propaganda and fake news in every campaign or election. Who knows? In the next elections, politicians may purely use social media to persuade the voters, as the voting population is getting younger.

What now?

Overall, the Filipino Generation Z has easy access to information and yet uncritical in evaluating every news or piece of knowledge.

Three words can describe the future of Filipino voting population: apathetic, uncritical, and isolated.

But the study, Punongbayan clarified, totally not represents the whole Generation Z. He even suggested ways to engage the young Filipino voters into a kind of active citizens.

“In addition, we must update and expand our traditional notions of civic engagement and political activism. Instead of being just confined to holding up placards or attending demonstrations, we must now count in online furor against fraternity-related violence on Twitter, or the widespread use of Winnie the Pooh profile pictures on Facebook,” Punongbayan said in his opinion piece.

It’s not too late and we can still do something. And in 2019 elections, we may witness the first surge of the young voters.