Political Algorithms, Content, and Constant Campaigning: Youth Edition

Some of you have never known politics without the push notification. You wake up, grab your phone, and before your first sip of coffee, five strangers have explained “the end of democracy” in a 30‑second vertical video shot in their car. Around 70% of young people got info about the 2020 election through social media, and a lot of you weren’t just scrolling—you were posting, organizing, stitching, duetting, and dropping hot takes with yesterday’s eyeliner still on. TikTok, Instagram, and X are not neutral town squares; they’re slot machines tuned to your nervous system, feeding you whatever keeps your thumb moving—usually outrage, villains, and plot twists big enough to keep you doom‑scrolling at 2 a.m.

Here’s the wild part: this machine is both the problem and the megaphone. On one hand, it has made it ridiculously easy to drag a local candidate, blow up a school board meeting, or turn a tiny campus protest into national news overnight. On the other, the same feeds flood you with misinformation, cropped‑to‑kill clips, and “my cousin’s friend is a lawyer so trust me” threads that shove you deeper into an echo chamber where the other side stops being human and starts being a cartoon villain you’re supposed to “own.”

Meanwhile, older generations love to talk about how “politics wasn’t always this toxic,” and annoyingly, they’re not completely wrong. Decades ago, the parties were closer together, there was an actual political middle, and the news moved at something closer to walking speed than warp speed. You could dip into politics every few years—election season, big speech, major scandal—and then go back to your life without getting dragged into a daily cage match in the comments.

You, on the other hand, walked into the game on hard mode. Polarization is at its highest point in half a century, and party identity is now welded to personal identity—who you are, who your people are, what memes you’re allowed to post without starting World War III in the group chat. Every scroll is a mini civics lesson mixed with a street fight, and every election feels like an emotional hostage situation where you’re told the country will either be “saved” or “destroyed” depending on what bubble you’re in.

And still—this is the part no one in power really wants you to internalize—you’ve been handed a mic no previous generation had. Young people are already using social platforms to organize protests, pressure candidates, expose local corruption, and force stories into the national spotlight that gatekeepers used to quietly ignore. When you show up—online and at the polls—politicians panic, recalibrate, and suddenly remember how to spell “youth outreach,” because turnout and public heat change how they vote, what they fund, and who they fear losing next cycle.

So yes, you inherited a mess. The parties are more polarized, the feeds are weaponized, and the whole system was not exactly built with your rent, your loans, or your climate reality in mind. But opting out is exactly what the people cashing in on the chaos are counting on; every young voter who stays home is basically a bonus vote for whoever is already in charge. Voting isn’t the whole fight—but it’s the entry wristband. Use the algorithm to organize, drag, and demand better all you want, but then do the one thing the timeline can’t do for you: show up, in person or by mail, and put it on the record that you were here and you voted.

Don’t let the algorithm use you—treat it like a tool, not a babysitter for your brain. Let it show you what’s happening, then hit pause and start asking questions: Who posted this? What do they want me to feel? What’s missing? Use your curiosity like a filter, not just your thumb. When something sparks you—anger, hope, fear—step off the app and go look it up from multiple sources, check basic facts, and see if the receipts match the rhetoric. That’s how you flip the script: you’re not a passive target being “fed” content, you’re an active, informed voter using the feed to spot issues, find organizers, and then do your own homework so your opinions belong to you, not to the algorithm’s guess about who you’re supposed to be.

@Janie

@alvarezjanie

Copyright © 2025 Janie Alvarez for FRONTeras.

All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed without permission. Sharing the original posts or links from FRONTeras on social media is allowed and appreciated.