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The First Gen-Y Congressman

By Jesse Singal - Jan 9th, 2009 at 1:02 pm

Time.com has an interview with Aaron Shock a newly-elected House Republican from Illinois who, at 27, is the youngest member of Congress and the first born in the 1980s:

[Y]our generation was very active politically last year. But most supported Democrats. Is there something your party doesn’t get about younger voters?

I think at times elected officials lose sight of the fact that the younger generation uses different means of communications. They don’t necessarily pick up the New York Times to get their news. They may go online, and they may use more things like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube — things that members of the older generation aren’t as accustomed to using to communicate with constituents.

If President-elect Obama’s campaign taught us anything, it was how to use new media to reach out to youth. If your source of information is your iPhone and your Facebook page, then hands down, Senator Obama did a much better job than Senator McCain. Job One is just reaching out and communicating.

Well, yeah. But it goes without saying that ideology behind the message is much more important than the vehicle used to deliver that message. If Obama had spent the campaign constantly posting to his Facebook page about the need to build a fence along the Mexico border and privatize social security, he, um, may not have picked up quite so many friends.

Tags: Aaron Shock, politics, youth politics