If Parents Don’t Give a Damn About Politics, What Chance Do Their Kids Have?

Shôn Ellerton, August 2, 2025
Teaching kids politics at an early age could prevent the rise of nation dystopias.

There was this dude back in old Greek times called Plato. Never met the guy as he died well over two thousand years ago, but it sure would be quite a cool thing to do if we could, in Bill and Ted fashion, bring him to the present along with his student, Aristotle, and his teacher, Socrates.

What would he think of today’s politics?

I don’t think he’d be too impressed I expect. But would he have been entirely surprised?

I doubt it.

There’re two sayings from Plato which struck me as being particularly apt.

“One of the penalties of refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.”

And the other.

“The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.”

1. If it was written today, it would be ‘people’ rather than ‘men’, but let’s not split hairs.

It suggests to me that nothing much has really changed with the masses, the common people, those who bury their heads in the sand and don’t want to fight, those not showing the courage to speak up against unjust government overreach, and worst of all, those who simply do not care and share complete and total apathy of what goes on in government.

It simply staggers me that any adult in civilised society doesn’t take an interest in politics, because it is politics that dictates how a society works. And, I think, many of us are quite aware that there are societies on this planet which are not quite the societies we wish to be living in.

Or. Should I take that back? Maybe I’m wrong. Perhaps most of us are blissfully unaware that there are societies we don’t want to live in.

What does impress me is when children and young adults take a real active interest in politics. I am not impressed when full-grown adults don’t give a shit about what happens in politics.

Why?

Because they don’t give a shit about others who want to succeed in the society in which they grew up. They feel that voting is a chore rather than a privilege. They have absolutely no idea what any of the manifestoes are across the line of political candidates. They are beholden to government-sanctioned news cherry-picked to assure the viewer that what the government is doing is for your benefit.

I’m sorry. Ignorance is no excuse.

Citizenry should not grant one’s right of being ignorant in political affairs. Back in olden times, we’ve tried lots of ways to get the folk together in city and town halls, but those days are practically over. In my own suburb, I can only remember one occasion in which the people could join in and ask direct questions to the mayor and other local leaders. These days, those in power tend not to attend such events where random questions are asked by the people.

People in power do not like to be challenged. They certainly don’t like dissent and will do everything in their power to enact laws to silence, or even punish, those who do so.

By the age of ten, I had learned more of what happens around the world politically than most of my classmates. Perhaps from discussions I had with my father on many of his long drives in the UK, or perhaps, from watching too many episodes of Yes Minister, one of my all-time British TV comedy series. I, in turn, have had numerous discussions with my own 10-year-old son, who now, frequently asks questions on political and current affairs.

He’s a smart kid.

Here, in Australia, on more than one occasion, he would come home from school and talk about how stupid some of his classmates are with respect to politics.

Take this, for example.

Nearly all of his classmates think the current Prime Minster, Anthony Albanese, or Albo for short, is a good guy. However, the opposition leader, Peter Dutton, who lost the last election is a bad guy because he is bald. Similarly, with the US elections that were held last year, Donald Trump’s the bad guy and Biden is the good guy because he seems nice and likes ice cream. There were a couple of smarter kids who thought otherwise, one of whom, the father I know, a barrister of sorts, and the other, a girl from a Chinese family.

To me, this instantly reflects on the stupidity and ignorance of the parents who probably think all politicians are dimwits, don’t give any time to understand what’s going on in the world, would certainly never tune in to parliamentary sessions on the radio, and assume that kids would not be interested in politics.

Most parents don’t realise how much complex information a 10-year-old can ingest and retain. They may not have attained the wisdom to use that knowledge effectively, but they certainly can absorb it like a sponge. It’s also easy to assume that children should only be fed a diet of family movies, cartoons, nature documentaries, and those specially made kid’s TV series, the likes, would interest no adult. Yet, in the world of TV, the daytime news comes on, and we get smothered with the latest happenings in the world of stabbings, world warfare, and general ugliness perpetrated in today’s world.

Then, the kids start asking questions.

And sadly, many parents will try to dumb down answers to try to make them more palatable for kids to understand. Often, the parents don’t know what’s going on anyway, so they can’t give an answer at all.

I grew up in a rather different way than most other kids.

By the age of ten, I had watched so many old movie thrillers on TV portraying politics, dystopian societies, and crime. It was harmless viewing for kids because they were the old kind of movies in which there was no nudity, swearing, or violence.

Films like 12 Angry Men, The Manchurian Candidate, The Parallax View, The President’s Analyst, Colossus: The Forbin Project, All Quiet On the Western Front, Fail Safe, and Dr Strangelove. I was hooked on these sorts of movies. They were extremely well put together and I learnt so much as well. But, in those days, there wasn’t much of anything else except re-runs of Charlie’s Angels, A-Team, Dukes of Hazzard, and Starsky & Hutch, which were somewhat entertaining but shallow in content to say the least. Incidentally, these old thrillers which I loved so much were the sort of movies which would be instantly banned in countries like the Soviet Union and East Germany during that time.

Why?

Because they all represented government overreach and abuse of powers, although 12 Angry Men represented a failed judicial system in which spineless uncaring jurors would rather see a man going to the electric chair than to go home to their wives and have dinner on time.

It’s no wonder I hold a deep mistrust of government if they are simply allowed to do as they please without the people’s consent. More recently, that is accelerating, especially in countries like the UK and Australia where increasingly draconian legislation is passed on grounds of ‘safetyism’, a fuzzy warm word which appeals to the masses but with often malignant consequences, which may be either intentional or unintentional.

If we look at a generalised view of how generations think of politics and their involvement with politics, I think of it this way.

Baby Boomers, or those born between 1946 and 1964, are within their retirement years. Most have no idea or any care in the world to research further than what is shown to them on mainstream TV news. They seem to fully trust government along with their vast panel of experts. They adhere to old established rules and don’t particularly want much in the way of change. They are practically unchangeable in their political views, even when presented with reasonable and valid evidence.

Most of Gen X, or those born between 1965 and 1980, don’t take enough action in politics or simply view all politicians as clueless icons. Therefore, most simply don’t do anything at all. Many Gen X had secured their way of life before the onset of COVID-19, which, we all know, afterwards had a massive effect on the cost of living. Sure, they have worked hard to look after their families, but too many of them are shackled in the bondage of ignorance.

Millennials, or those born between 1981 and 1996, perhaps give us the best current hope for bringing a fight to ensure that governments do what they are supposed to do and to check against corruption and overreach. Although I am part of Gen X, I tend to identify more strongly with the Millennials. Unlike Gen X, Millennials are far more aware with how modern technology works and highly suspicious when government attempts to meld it to their own nefarious means. Millennials, many of which, have not yet secured a stable life, are deeply troubled by inadequate and wilful government interference to make the wealthy wealthier and the poor poorer. The Millennials are far more likely to take an active role in politics and tend to make a better effort to fish information from alternative news sources on the Internet. Those in government are aware of this trend and have been quite proactive recently in creating new legislation to introduce Internet censorship masked on grounds of child safety.

We have, of course, the Gen Z crowd being born between 1997 and 2012. This is the so-called Social Media Generation. Being fed a constant stream of TikTok videos and YouTube Shorts, this is also known as the generation of very short attention spans. Being raised in an Internet and video streaming world with a huge amount of choice, this paradoxically limits them to the stuff they want to watch and believe. They are not only incredibly malleable to being conditioned from external biases promulgated by content on the Internet, but they are also incredibly fragile. There is, indeed, data to support that some of Gen Z have incurred mental and physical harm onto themselves as a result. For many Gen Z, politics is wildly polarised and exaggerated to the point of absurdity. This is the crowd famous for posting unhinged TikTok videos of themselves shouting and pulling out their hair when characters like Trump gets elected. And yet, they know nothing of what happens in politics at all. Literally. Nothing.

Post 2012, we have the Alpha Generation. It’s a little too early to see what’s happening, but if we continue to immerse them further into the shady depths of the Internet without educating them on the real world, we will have a massive social problem. This new world is uncannily like the world portrayed by Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. Babies created through test tubes. Encouraging children to be engrossed in random sex play instead of having loving parents thus destroying the family unit (yes, that’s in the book), and, of course, supplying everyone with the fictional drug, Soma, as a reward. Today’s social media and online gaming apps are today’s soma.

The most dangerous aspect of government intervention with respect to policing the Alpha Generation with the Internet, is the alarming uptake of young people subscribing to VPNs, a way of circumnavigating Internet roadblocks put up by the government by spoofing your IP address from a different country of your choice. It only proves to show that if you make something forbidden, it only makes the reward more enticing when you get it. Once knowledge of VPNs becomes widespread with the Alpha Generation, it is only a matter of time when they know of portals to the Dark Web through the likes of the Tor Network and others of its ilk. The Dark Web, some of which is accessible indirectly through Newsgroups, is totally decentralised and uncontrollable and hosts more than ninety percent of the contents of the Internet, some of which, must be utterly horrific I could imagine.

The Alpha Generation over the age of nine must be educated on today’s politics and are not too young to do so.

They must be taught about dystopian societies even at this early age.

They must be taught that loving parents take care of them and not the government.

They must be educated that the government is only there to ensure we have an economy, to protect our shores, retain a safety net for citizens who need help, and to keep their citizens safe as enshrined by a robust judicial and legislative system.

They must be educated that the government has not been put in place to be a parental and moral guardian of the people.

They must be educated on the importance of free speech in society. However, they should be given guidance on what to think by their guardians because they have not yet attained the wisdom to exercise free speech completely.

But ultimately, they must have parents who are willing to give a damn about politics and not sweep the issues under the proverbial table.