2020 began with international headlines informing us of the threat of a new virus, Covid-19. Political leaders were in the spotlight constantly. We were assessing their ability to manage the effects of a worldwide pandemic and to efficiently find a vaccine. For the pandemic to take a U-turn, national lockdowns were imposed which confined us to our homes. Spirits were at an all-time low.
The Isolation Generation refers to the generation of people confined to their homes during lockdown. Since 23rd March 2020, a significant amount of people have agreed with the hypothesis that the nature of lockdown and socialisation has caused people to become more political. Particularly amongst the younger generation.
Schools had been closed and everyone who could, was advised to work from home. So here the nation was, sat at home with nothing on the agenda. Three weeks of lockdown soon turned to there being no end in sight and this caused a dangerous plummet in morale, motivation and happiness amongst the nation. That was until the 25th May, the killing of George Floyd in police custody in the US. Social media blew up to an unimaginable degree. The video of George Floyd’s death was spreading like wildfire and we consequently saw a surge of support for Black Lives Matter in a whole new scope.
We had a huge amount of free time on our hands. So, people were taking to their social media accounts to be more informed, and encourage everyone to do what they can to spread morality for the practicality of change and to make a change. Some of which were people who weren’t particularly interested in politics beforehand. Social media was swarmed with the disclosed truth for once, but it was all down to us, not the politicians and not the news outlets. This created an entirely new platform of information for the people who weren’t interested in politics before. They weren’t interested because they either couldn’t understand it, or the constant bad news was of no interest to them. It was more motivating to stay informed when it was coming from someone who was like-minded and not a middle aged, privately educated journalist working for a bias news outlet.
Jake Williams, a second-year student of Automotive and transport design at Swansea College of Art, says “Instagram is much less sensationalised than news broadcasts and successfully highlights key facts in the news. To someone who is less politically inclined, Instagram or Facebook provide a platform to gain a better understanding of a news topic”. Although, it could be suggested that there’s danger of social media becoming an echo chamber of fake news. However, the volume of news being spread, clouded this danger to an extent.
The Isolation Generation took their own initiative and provided people with links to sign parliamentary petitions, urging the Government to include black history as a compulsory subject in the curriculum, or to put pressure on the Government to intervene with Trumps counterproductive response to the systemic racism and arbitrary exploitation his system was demonstrating. There was no filter, we could watch for our own eyes the police killing, harming or imprisoning unarmed, peaceful protestors. All of which wasn’t being helpfully provided by news outlets. The reaction that this movement gained was immense and it was all you could see on social media for weeks on end.
Testing the theory
Instagram played a huge role in the isolation generation becoming more political as it was a platform that spoke to the majority, the younger generation, predominantly 11-24. I recently carried out a poll on Instagram, asking ‘After being in Lockdown on our phones constantly, with news stories swarming our social media, do you feel more informed, interested or involved with Politics than previously?’. After twenty-four hours, the poll had received 190 responses; 73% voted yes and 27% voted no.
Emily Griffin, a second-year Law student at Exeter University told me that she’s “always been involved but I had more time to learn more in depth which I previously did not, and it made me so much more aware”. Emily speaks for the community of people who have always enjoyed politics but being in Lockdown allowed them to take more time to get involved and encourage others. She was one of many sharing informative and encouraging posts written by herself and she consequently received praise; she said, “more (people) came to me asking if I had any more information that I could let them in on or asking me more questions, mostly (…) ‘thank you so much for spreading this, you’re helping me educate myself a lot”. Similarly, a lot of posts that I had made received thankful praises. People regularly asked to share my posts as they were informative and needed to reach wider audience.
The 27% of responses who voted no, explained that during lockdown they had become more political and it was imperative to get involved when the Government wasn’t telling us the truth. The constant bad news was causing us to lose faith in our Government so since, they are avoiding the news. An unnamed source said, “Over the past 6/9 months I have found myself less interested as it is constantly negative and it’s draining. I have found that politics and the news have a negative effect on my mental health which has deterred me away from wanting to stay informed”. Many of the comments I had received from the 27% who voted no were similar to this and there was definitely a consensus that they either had poor mental health as a result of constant bad news or they didn’t trust it and continued to stay uninterested.
The sheer volume of political social media presence is hard to go unnoticed since Lockdown. Yes, we may have more time on our hands with the uncertainty of the pandemic. However, the nature of Lockdown and socialisation are crucial to understanding the cause of politicisation of the Isolation Generation in 2020.
Jasmine Landucci
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