Following a new General Election campaign by Facebook, social networking sites are increasingly being hailed as the new way to engage unregistered young people in politics.

According to the Electoral Commission, around 3.5 million people in the UK are not yet registered to vote, and they only have until April 20th to do so. Many of these are believed to be young people within the 18 to 24 year old age bracket, a group which the government typically finds hard to reach.

Facebook is attempting to recapture those young people often excluded from politics with Democracy UK, a campaign launched to encourage the site’s users to engage in political debates and most importantly, vote in the General Election. In fact, a key feature of Facebook’s Democracy UK is to get users to publicly commit to voting.

Now with over 23 million users in the UK, Facebook is perfectly positioned to reinvigorate apathetic young people and get them involved in political debate. According to Facebook European public policy director Richard Allan:

“Facebook has as many users as voted for all of the three main parties in the last election – social networks will prove to be as central to political debate and the general election as the post, the phone and television have been in the past.”

The nature of social networking sites revolves around discussion and the sharing of opinion, and Facebook directors believe this can help bring large numbers of people back into the voting system.

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