Recent data from the presidential primaries in the US suggests that youth participation has risen sharply. In some states the proportion of young people who turned out to vote has tripled and even quadrupled in comparison the primaries in 2000. All told, more than 3 million youth participated in the Super Tuesday primaries and 61% of young people polled said “they will definitely be voting” in the Presidential elections this year.

The data contradicts the recent claims by some pundits that today’s youth are disaffected and apathetic. I’ve always been somewhat skeptical of these claims largely because they are based on the observation that 1) young people don’t subscribe to newspapers and 2) that they don’t vote.

Well, we can quickly dismiss the first one because we all know that young people read their news on the Internet. The second issue is more complicated, but at the root of it is the fact that youth dislike spin and polarized deba\te. Research shows they seek authentic opportunities for discussing public issues and while they may be ambivalent about formal politics they are active in their local communities. The broadcast-era model of big money politics fails to engage young people or speak to their issues so it’s not surprising that they have not bothered to vote–at least until now. It’s also the reason why Obama is so popular among youth — he’s promised (perhaps naively) to throw the lobbyists out of Washington and bring integrity back into politics.

The upswing in participation is promising, but is still not as high as it ought to be. However, the dearth of political engagement among today’s youth is a greater indictment is of the political establishment than it is of young people, a) because we have failed to make civic responsibility an important part of our educational systems and b) because political leaders have failed to earn young people’s trust and respect. The net result is that politics can seem irrelevant to many people’s lives.

This is a dangerous state of affairs. Disengagement erodes the government’s legitimacy and authority to govern and it opens the door to corruption and abuse in public office. Declining trust and confidence in government is the last thing we need in an age of global turbulence.