How do you think someone/people should be introduced to politics?
There are very serious articles about young adolescents being radicalized into fascist movements and personal testimonials of such in YouTube, along with many videos, most commonly by leftists about how this works and very rarely a guess at what to do about it.
There are also often memes about young people entering politics, like this video or this video assuming that and then satirizing how young, presumably privileged people when it comes to social matters (because otherwise bad personal experiences will inform your beliefs and this will be more than a poorly done intellectual exercise to you) flip flop between every political belief like it's nothing, alongside memes satirizing how young conservatives are introduced to their politics by edited clips of what are supposedly SJWs out of context and how farcically (distressingly) ridiculous it is to be introduced to your beliefs by these videos, especially when these sometimes real but extreme regardless examples of the left's presumed irrationality are much less harmful than the conservative extremes.
A lot of this talk and memes concerns or satirizes radicalization of people after they've been politicized and occasionally in the case of the serious articles, what to do with it. But I feel this focuses more on the consequences, which is fine, but not everything worth looking at.
So back to the title question, how do you think someone/people should be politicized?
Model UN (or its equivalent) and classes in school on government. I strongly believe that good political thinking comes with a good understanding of your and others governments.
This is probably the best answer in this thread so far. I’d also add civics and economics classes. There’s also the general idea of encouraging kids to read the material, and to go outside of class to read books about stuff that interests them. It’s why English classes are so important, since reading develops our skills to think critically, and there’s no real substitute for reading books (not even watching videos by Breadtubers).
There’s no way to guarantee someone is gonna choose the “right politics” which is what I think OP is suggesting that we find ways to encourage people to choose the “right politics."
Yes, because no one ever seems to bother thinking about how the transition someone should go through from not bothering with/understanding politics to having your political opinions should be done, so it seems what happens is people just take the views of their parents with minor fixes, take their beliefs from the Internet
(me lol)or if your life is comfy enough, don't bother at all.People that say this are the ones that are usually online all the time. Which is interesting because being Extremely Online, as you have indicated that you are, requires a certain level of comfort in your life.
I’ve worked with people who are holding three minimum wage jobs and are barely keeping their heads above water, they got kids and aging parents they have to take care of. And they do not care about politics at all. Not in the traditional sense of electoral politics, and they certainly do not know anything about the online culture wars.
Sure, they scroll through Instagram a lot, but that’s more of a passive experience, something for them to do while they space out for a little bit. They’re usually just really tired all the time.
And the people I’m talking about are people in their early twenties, women, Mexican, and undocumented.
Edit: OP I just saw that you’re 15 in your bio, and honestly that makes a lot of sense. I’m gonna say something that I wish someone told me when I was 15, before I became an extremely online mess when I was 16. Read books, reading Reddit threads and watching YouTube videos aren’t a substitute for actual reading. Don’t get caught up in online drama, nobody cares. You’re not gonna care about any of that a year from now. And whatever you do do not join Twitter.
But most of all, live life. You’re so young. Just try to have fun. Fall in love. Make friends. Just do something.