Perhaps it is the accumulating weight of hypocrisy.

I can't speculate on the motivations of Kids These Days, but as an adult I feel like fewer politicians are in touch with what their constituents actually want or need, and the system is incredibly close to being irrevocably broken. I am certainly less inclined to write a letter to a politician. I can imagine that a teenager looking at the manufactured crises, how out-of-touch a lot of (particularly Republican) politicians seem to be from the way their own generation think and feel, and come to the conclusion that they can't make a difference in politics, and why would they want to?

Speaking as someone only a little past adolescence myself, I would hazard that a major cause is apathy and disgust. I think many people of my generation feel that the political system is broken, corrupt, incompetent, etc., and feel believe, even if we wanted to get involved in something we have so little regard for, we would be unable to actually make a difference.

A further cause may be poor education. My high school's offerings in political science were not that great (the only dedicated PS class was AP only), and I suspect this is not atypical for high schools around the country. Ignorance about the system can only reinforce the impression that nothing we do can change it.

David Buckingham has some great work about the more general disengagement of young people with political processes. As he sees it, it mostly has to do with the very real disenfranchisement and lack of agency granted to youth (which they themselves perceive and articulate) in big "p" Politics. As such, while kids hold firmly political views about many things, they are observed as not connecting these to sanctioned governmental and legislative processes. Personally, I'm curious to see how this drop relates to wider levels of political engagement among adults as well. Is it just the kids, or is it everybody? Knowing how these two relate would help to understand what's going on here.

How old are those adolescents? Pehaps I missed it, but in the free preview it doesn't seem to say.

What a very interesting topic... (I did my Ph.D on the development of political interest among teenager!). First, you are right to mention the small change (0.9 to 0.4). However, it's already very interesting that the index mean is as low as 0.9 to start with! One of the main reason why adolescents develop interest in politics is linked to socialization. Kids who have parents who talk about politics, for example, will be more likely to develop interest in politics. Even though the same holds with teachers talking about politics, it's really the family that has the most impact. Are parents still talking about politics, or as it became something "bad" that we prefer to not talk about? Or worse : do we only talk about it around our children in a negative way? At the end, the likelihood to engage in politics is the highest when adolescents are interested AND see politics positively.

Additionally, the president of the united states was appointed by one supreme court justice in 2000 rather than voted in by the citizens.

I have two kids - both in college (one just starting, the other nearly done). Their dad and I discussed history and politics with them a lot, albeit with very differing results.

The older one is very politically attuned: he keeps up with the news, watches Colbert/Daily Show, and is always on top of elections - he takes his responsibility as a voter pretty seriously. We spend a fair amount of time discussing candidates and issues whenever an election is pending.

The younger, not so much. She and her friends are decidedly apolitical. She votes and grasps (intellectually) the importance of it, but she finds the whole thing mildly distasteful. Her friends are roughly the same - she may well be the only actual voter among her circle of friends (not counting her brother).

What accounts for the difference? We've lived in some fairly conservative areas and many of her friends' parents express strong, right wing viewpoints. Her friends, by contrast, have fairly socially liberal attitudes, but do not express these openly, to avoid (even more) conflict with their parents (most of them are still living at home or are dependent on them for college expenses). In other words, being apolitical is a coping strategy for them. Seems to me that the younger has more-or-less adopted her friends' way of looking (or not looking) at the issue.

I remember why I wasn't interested: until you can vote, it's largely academic, since you can't do much about it. Or at least, that's how it seemed at the time.

here is the simple answer:

before the nixon administration, being a politician was a glamour job. after the nixon administration, it was a joke.

the reason we havent rebounded, even after all this time, is because very soon thereafter we discarded idealism for materialism. it's easier to buy than transcend, to strive rather than seek. anyone can have ambition, it doesnt take anything inborn, odd, unusually talented &, thereby & therefore, potentially superior, for one to be pushy. after nixon came madonna; we have been living in her world, under madonnafication, ever since. that, due largely to camille paglia's infatuation, she has been taken seriously by the intelligentsia is something only a hairswidth short of horrifying.

but, of course, she is only a symbol. if we didnt want her, if we hadnt become people who want her, she would go away [&, of course, miley wouldnt be naked, "feminism" wouldnt be sexytrendy, etc & ect].

thats the basic guts of the story. it's a framework, though, obviously, & only that. at its core is a reorganization & reworking of values. i dont mean focus on the family "family values" either—i mean the real thing: concern for people unlike, & often more unfortunate, than one's self—a thinking backed by [a rather selfless] doing. there has been no payoff for this behavior in decades, why should anyone—especially in this culture—want to do anything that isnt monetarily or mediavisually rewarded.

the [abbreviated, livin] end.

I'm a few years older than someone who was a teenager in 2001, but even I think "writing to a politician" sounds unlikely...because I hear it as writing a letter. Which I probably wouldn't do. Would I email? Tweet? Sign a petition? Share a news story or blog post about it on facebook? Much more likely. Ways of interacting with politicians and the political have changed a lot. Many of those changes have been since 2001, but even then, I suspect letter writing was going out of vogue even for those who might have imagined interacting with a politician about a cause.

It's too bad we can't go backward a few decades and view the trend over a longer term (and for that matter, have data that is less than twelve years old). I'd expect the early 1970s would represent a peak in adolescent interest in politics - particularly for males - as the Vietnam War made politics a matter of immediate urgency to teenagers.

However, looking at the questions used in the survey, I'm not sure "interest in politics" is quite how I would characterize the data. Rather, these questions really pointed toward faith in the electoral system as a vehicle for an individual to make a difference. The number of teenagers who participate in activism has actually steadily increased over the same time frame, as has the amount of time spent consuming news-related media, so I don't think we're actually witnessing a decline in interest in political issues. Rather, we might be seeing a small shift in thinking about how to get involved in those issues, one that is bolstered by overall declining voter turnout since the 1970s.

Virtually any study that involves a question about letter-writing, for example, is going to show a big shift in the last two decades; contemporary adolescents are as unlikely to write a letter to a representative as they are to write a letter at all. But since 2001, there's been an enormous uptick in petition-signing fueled by social media, which adolescents may not recognize as the same process.

Finally, it's crucial to note that these stats can't be extrapolated globally; I don't think anyone would look at the Middle East over the last few years and say that young people aren't getting involved in politics.

I am a teen myself, I recently turned 18 this past week. Personally, I believe this is due to greater media distractions. I see it is the majority of my classmates, they are overly concerned with Miley Cyrus and do not pay attention to the things that matter. The media has increased its audience over the years and is increasingly accessible. The powers in charge, no doubt, have much control over the media and they would rather shock us with things we shouldn't worry about than keep us informed to thing we will likely oppose in politics.

The reason for decline is simple - there are more distractions today than ever before.

I'm not saying a lack of interest in politics is good or bad. In fact, apathy for a broken system is what leads to revolution and change - so things may not be all that dire.

However, in my teenage years, in the 1980's, I woke up at 6am and watched the local news as I got ready for school. After school I would help my friend with his paper route, where I'd read at least the entire front page, if not more. In Seventh Grade history class my teacher would hold weekly current events trivia contests, and me and my paper-route friend had to be on separate teams because we always got 100%.

Why did this happen? Because TV had five channels, newspapers were still important, and the internet was 10 years away, and certainly not in your pocket. When we needed to call someone, we waited until 4th period and we found a phone in the nurse's office. One friend still had a rotary phone in his kitchen.

I don't mean to sound like a grumpy old man. I don't "long for the simpler days". I think technology is a wonderful thing. The attention span of the Millennials is shorter than any generation before, and I'm looking forward to seeing how news and political purveyors figure out how to grab it.

In the meantime, I'll be off reading local news on my iPad.