Casual Social Media Use among the Youth: Effects on Online and Offline Political Participation

Abstract

Previous studies suggest that social media use among the youth is correlated with online and offline political participation. There is also a mixed and inconclusive debate on whether online political participation in the youth increases offline political participation. This study uses three models of OLS, two-way fixed effects, and an instrumental variable approach to make causal inferences about the social media use and online and offline political participation of the youth. The analyses provide evidence of a significant effect of casual social media use on online political participation and no effect or negligible effect on offline political activity and voting behavior. The results from fixed effects and instrumental variable models provide strong evidence of elasticity between online political participation and offline political activity in young individuals. On average, a one percent increase in online political participation increases the offline political activity index by 0.12 percent.