What Are Young People in the UK Saying About Brexit?

Emotive reaction

First of all, we looked at the reaction to the EU Referendum result. It’s important to point out that not all of the young people in our data were pro-remain, but the following were common themes we found in their tweets overall.

Generational friction

Young people who weren’t fans of the result displayed a lot of anger towards the older generations who voted leave.

When you voted to leave the EU but you gunna die soon so it's not your problem…. Typical voter for a #brexit.. ??? pic.twitter.com/qJ5HXh12wo

— baramuda (@baramuda) June 27, 2016

We found a number of tweets talking about the decisions of parents and grandparents in less-than-impressed words, illustrating the many family divides the EU Referendum caused.

Debating the EU referendum result with my step dad. I need more wine.

— Jαde. ?? (@Jadelsia_) June 24, 2016

My parents both voted leave; they have a few more years until they retire. Me? I have student debt that will soar with the inevitable >

— Emily Hunt (@emilydoesastro) June 25, 2016

Gallows humour

GIFs and memes mocking the result were rife across the internet, but they were particularly strong in the young people’s conversation.

The falling pound was the subject of a lot of ridicule.

leave the EU, they said

our economy will be fine, they said pic.twitter.com/t2Nrdr8nT4

— liam (@lixmkay) June 24, 2016

Start again

One of the most prominent links in their conversation on result day was this petition calling for another referendum. It garnered an impressive number of signatures, but it’s not going to happen.

Broken promises

The popularity of @BritishLogic’s tweet demonstrating the inconsistency of promises surrounding the leave campaign amongst young people was telling.

Well done everyone #EURefResults pic.twitter.com/XQyQDs8aOG

— British Logic (@BritishLogic) June 24, 2016

We’ll be covering “post-truth” politics in a later post, but the reaction of young people to Brexit pledges is really interesting. British youths are no stranger to broken promises – take the Liberal Democrats’ broken promise not to raise university tuition fees as an example.

As a group, the young people had a higher percentage of tweets talking about broken promises after the EU Referendum result than the wider population’s Brexit conversation.

We Are Undivided

One positive movement which came out of a fairly depressing situation for young remainers was the “We Are Undivided” campaign which seeks to unite young people from across the political spectrum in order to fight for the best possible deal.

Whether you voted #Leave, #Remain or didn’t vote at all – we want to hear what #Brexit looks like to YOU: https://t.co/rk3QjwhSKK #WeDemand pic.twitter.com/7PCIkjlwdK

— Undivided (@weareundivided) February 12, 2017

The campaign got an impressive amount of press coverage and we have tracked around 16k social media posts surrounding it between 1st June 2016 and February 19th 2017.

We Are Undivided is gathering demands from young people to present to Parliament. It gives a voice to those of voting age as well as those who weren’t old enough to cast their vote last June, and so far over 260,000 votes have been cast on their site.

Getting personal

So far in 2017, spikes in conversation from young people came (predictably) during Theresa May’s speech (17th January) and the day the Supreme Court ruled that Parliament must give Article 50 the go-ahead (24th January). In the latter case Gina Miller, a prominent campaigner, was a huge topic.

Generally speaking, we found that young people are more likely to have personal names as prominent topics in their conversations as opposed to names of events or parties or rulings, which are more common in the general population of Brexit Twitter conversation.

Moving forward

Looking at the data so far in 2017, there doesn’t appear to be much consensus. Links favoring all manner of political figures and stances are shared in the conversation. The We Are Undivided campaign has a big job to do in bridging those divides, but the success they’ve had so far is encouraging.

We’ll continue to track these conversations to see how they progress as the Brexit situation develops.

Got questions? Email us [email protected]