I Know Enough to Act! Youth’s Exposure to Political Content on Social Media and its Longitudinal Associations with Political Knowledge and Participation

Abstract

Social media have substantially altered the opportunity structures for citizens’ political engagement (Andersen et al., 2020). Still, there remains much academic debate about whether the complex information ecology of social media can be translated into learning and mobilizing effects over time. Therefore, this study aims to advance current research by more adequately reflecting youth’s current political practices and the opportunity structures of social media (Ohme & de Vreese, 2020). To do so, we consider whether and how exposure to broad political content on social media contributes to both objective and subjective knowledge about current affairs (Lee et al., 2021). In turn, we assess how these knowledge types might mediate the association between content exposure and two types of political participation: protest and social media participation (Kligler-Vilenchik & Literat, 2024). In addition, we investigate whether second-level incidental exposure to political content on social media moderates the association between exposure and learning, In this manner, the study accounts for an interaction between the opportunities to encounter information on social media and one’s motivation to learn (Nanz & Matthes, 2022; Weeks et al., 2022).

We conducted a large-scale three-wave panel study among Flemish youth aged 16 to 30 years (N = 2240). The data were collected in April (W1), May (W2), and June (W3) of 2024, during the 2024 Belgian elections. To analyze our data, we relied on Random-Intercept Cross-Lagged Panel Modelling (RI-CLPM) in MPlus. While we hypothesized within-person differences, we also tested between-person associations. Contemporaneous paths were assessed to account for potential directional effects within the same timepoint and minimize bias in the establishment of cross-lagged paths (Speyer et al., 2025). Our results unexpectedly point to a negative within-person association between political content exposure and current affairs knowledge. While we could only establish this result between W1 and W2, the finding might be attributed to youth’s increased interest in specific political issues. This could foster selective attention or exposure to content on particular issues and result in lower overall current affairs knowledge (Guo et al., 2024). Apart from objective knowledge, we found that being exposed to political content on social media increases one’s subjective knowledge on political issues shortly after exposure, which seems in line with thinking about youth as ‘monitorial citizens’ (Hustinx et al., 2012). Contrary to our expectations, we could not establish the moderating effect of second-level incidental exposure (Nanz & Matthes, 2022, 2025). When taking the differences between people into account, findings come to light that may suggest learning effects are rather due to stable associations between traits. First, we established that youth who are exposed to more political content on social media, hold more subjective and objective political knowledge. Additionally, we found that both social media and protest participation were higher among respondents with higher exposure to political content on social media. Finally, subjective knowledge was positively associated with both participation types, while there was a negative between-person association for current affairs knowledge. Although these findings seem in line with recent theorizing about social media fostering a “self-righteous circle” (Lee & Valenzuela, 2024), we argue they are above all symptomatic of youth’s current political engagement in today’s hybrid media environment. Overall, our results shine a light on the limits of social media in contributing to objective knowledge and reveal unexpected negative associations between objective current affairs knowledge and participation. Still, the particular entanglement between exposure to political social media content, subjective knowledge, and political participation prompts critical reconsideration of the normative assumptions surrounding “informed citizens” in contemporary democracies. In particular, it seems that not objective knowledge drives youth’s political participation, but rather different social, attitudinal or emotional processes.