For a long time German youth was considered to be politically disinterested and non-ideological. Researchers attested to the young people that they counted above all the fun and the personal success. But even the last Shell Youth Study from 2015 showed that teens now tick differently than ten or fifteen years ago. The interest in politics is increasing - and also in the topic of environmental protection.
An indication of changed priorities are the school strikes "Fridays for Future". The 16-year-old Swede Greta Thunberg had the idea - now students worldwide strike every Friday for better climate protection. In Germany, however, the demonstrations during the classroom cause a heated argument. Are children and teenagers allowed to skip school to demonstrate? Do the school authorities have to take action against it with all severity?
In the SPIEGEL order, survey agency Civey asked 7500 Internet users whether they support student strikes for climate protection. The vote was divided - but the majority (51 percent) said they support the protest. 42 percent opposed it.
If you take a closer look at the answers, it becomes clear that the attitude towards school strikes also depends on age. The younger the respondents are, the greater the support. In the age group under 30, the agreement is 64 percent - the rejection at only 31 percent. From the age of 65, the groups of supporters and opponents of the school strike are practically the same size.
There are also significant differences between East and West. In the old federal states, the supporters with 54 percent are clearly ahead of the opponents (40 percent). In the new federal states it is the other way around: Here, the rejection of student protests dominates with 51 to 41 percent.
The attitude to the school strike is also strongly related to the political camps. Supporters of the SPD, Greens and the Left are 70 to 85 percent in favor. Supporters of the Union, FDP and AfD are against 60 to 85 percent against.
A nearly identical view of the mood resulted in a second question by Greta Thunberg to 7,800 netizens: The 16-year-old climate activist's involvement supports 54 percent - 36 percent of respondents voted no. Thunberg also received the highest approval among the under-30s and the lowest among respondents aged 65 or over.
Mathias Albert from the University of Bielefeld, who has headed the Shell study since 2010, considers "Fridays for Future" to be a remarkable phenomenon. "For the first time in quite some time, we're seeing something like youth protests - even transnationally - and we're seeing a protest that's about a generational conflict for the first time."
The political interest of young people is increasing. And disproportionately strong is this increase in the very young. "What we see is in line with recent youth studies," says Albert. "We've seen great potential for political engagement for a long time, but that never manifested itself," says the political scientist.
The coming battle between the generations has been around for quite some time - especially with regard to social security systems. Now this conflict has broken out, according to Albert, but elsewhere. "The disciples tell the elders that you have a responsibility for our future and do not perceive it."
Existential fear and political commitment
Klaus Hurrelmann of the Hertie School of Governance explained that the youth still showed much less interest in politics ten or fifteen years ago. "The generation born before 2000 had to take care of itself, and their own future career was uncertain, they had no security."
People with existential fears are not politically active, according to Hurrelmann. Those born after the year 2000 would scarcely have these worries. "They have their backs for other topics."
Hurrelman also considers the student protests to be remarkable, for example because they have been running for several weeks. "It's a long time for young people aged 14 and over." The "Fridays for Future" protests are not comparable to previous one-off protests by young people, which lasted only a few days. "This is different, it has its own character." That certainly has to do with the protagonist Greta Thunberg.
"They can afford that"
The Berlin social scientist is also amazed by the very conscious rule violation during demonstrations. The students accepted that their grades could suffer. "They can afford that, because they do not have to pay much attention to the grades," says Hurrelman. That was different with the previous generation. "They needed good grades to have any chance of finding a place to study or a job."
Do the school strikes possibly have something to do with the fact that young people feel more threatened by climate change than the older generation? In contrast, at least the last major study speaks to the environmental awareness of the Germans, conducted in 2016 by the Forsa Institute. Almost two-thirds of the 2000 respondents find climate change very threatening - almost uniform across all age groups from 14 years to 70 plus.
Differences between age groups, however, arose in the question of whether one can imagine participating in future demonstrations and actions for more climate and environmental protection. Twenty-five per cent of 14- to 19-year-olds considered this "probable," while the rate for those over 30 was only about 15 per cent. No wonder the ongoing protests are being led by the youngest generation.
How does the Civey method work?
The opinion research institute Civey works with a multi-level fully automated procedure. All representative real-time surveys are played in a Germany-wide network of more than 20,000 websites ("Riversampling"), so it is not only users of SPIEGEL ONLINE interviewed. Anyone can participate in the surveys online and will be included in the representative result with their answers if they have registered. From these users, Civey draws a quoted sample that ensures that it matches the population, for example, in terms of age, gender and population density. Finally, in a third step, the results are weighted by other attendees' socio-demographic factors and attitudes to correct distortions and prevent manipulation. More information can be found in the Civey FAQ.
Why is a registration necessary?
The registration helps to weigh the answers, thus allowing a result for the surveys, which is representative of the voting population in Germany. Each participant is asked for their gender, year of birth and place of residence. After that everyone can give their opinion in further surveys on different topics.
How do the results become representative?
The answer of each participant is weighted so that the result of a survey is representative of the population. For the Sunday question and the government monitor, this population comprises the population entitled to vote in Germany. The weighting is done fully automatically on the basis of the personal details at the registration as well as the history of previous answers of a user. More methodological details can be found in the Civey whitepaper.
Will you reach enough participants online?
Opinion polls are usually conducted by phone or online. The significance of the results depends on how many people can be reached and how many actually participate in a survey when they are approached. Internet connections and fixed-line connections are currently about equally widespread in Germany - with around 90 percent of households each, mobile phones even as high as 95 percent. The willingness to participate in all methods in the single-digit percentage range, especially experts estimate it for telephone surveys.
Thus, in both methods there is a group of people that can not be reached because they either have no connection to the respective network or do not want to participate in the survey. Therefore, a significant number of people must always be approached for a meaningful result. Civey surveys are currently in addition to SPIEGEL ONLINE in more than 20,000 other websites involved, including various media. This ensures that as many populations as possible can be reached.
How do I recognize the quality of a result?
Until the result of a survey becomes representative, enough different people have to participate. Whether this is already successful, makes Civey transparent, in that for each survey result a statistical error probability is specified. The number of participants and the interview time are also published for each survey.
What does it mean when the colored areas in the graphics overlap?
In our graphs, the statistical error is shown as a colored interval. This interval shows the uncertainty associated with a survey score. For example, on the Sunday question, one can not say exactly how many percent a party would get in a poll, but specify an interval in which the outcome is likely to be. If the intervals of two survey values overlap, then strictly speaking no statements about the difference can be made. For the Sunday question this means: If the poll numbers of two parties are so close together that overlap their error intervals, it can not be derived from which would currently perform better in the election.
What happens with my data?
The personal data of the users are stored encrypted on German servers and remain secret. Civey employees use only user IDs for reporting and can not associate users with their votes. The main purpose of the users' personal information is to weigh the answers and to ensure that the surveys are not manipulated. To prevent this, Civey uses both statistical and technical methods. In addition, Civey works with external partners who create audiences. Only when users have accepted the privacy policy of both Civey and an external partner, may your responses be used by the Partner to model those audiences. However, a partner does not receive information about your political and religious attitudes as well as those with which you can be identified. Civey users are also not ads based on their answers. You may object to the distribution to partners at any time here as a logged in user. More information about privacy at Civey can be found here.
Who is behind Civey surveys?
At this point, readers in the app and on the mobile / stationary website have the opportunity to participate in a representative Civey survey. Civey is an online opinion research institute based in Berlin. To compile its representative surveys, the software of the company, founded in 2015, merges websites into a nationwide survey network. In addition to SPIEGEL ONLINE include, among other things, the "Tagesspiegel", "World", "Wirtschaftswoche" and "Rheinische Post". Civey was funded by the ProFit funding program of Investitionsbank Berlin and the European Regional Development Fund.
DPA