In the lead-up to Victoria’s state election on November 28, a striking picture is emerging of a voting population that is younger, more digitally connected, and more complex than many political observers might assume. Roughly one in ten voters this year will be between the ages of 18 and 24, and with 4.7 million people registered to cast a ballot — the largest electoral roll in the state’s history — their voices matter more than ever. About 75,000 of these registered voters will be voting for the very first time, stepping into polling booths with fresh eyes and, in many cases, a news diet that looks very different from previous generations. Most of these young people get their news from social media, and around half say TikTok is their primary source of information, according to Victoria’s Electoral Commissioner, Sven Bluemmel, speaking at a Monash University forum. That reality has sparked understandable worry about disinformation and misinformation swirling through feeds, especially in an election where online influence is harder to police than the traditional ad or flyer. But Bluemmel offers a reassuring, and perhaps surprising, counterpoint to the usual hand-wringing: young people are not the ones keeping him up at night. In fact, he believes they are far more media-savvy than they are given credit for, and that the greater risk might be found in older generations getting trapped in algorithmic bubbles — the so-called “Facebook boomers” who may be more vulnerable to misleading content simply because they did not grow up navigating the endlessly shifting landscape of digital information.
Bluemmel’s comments challenge a familiar narrative that young voters are apathetic, uninformed, or easily tricked by whatever trends across their social feeds. “In terms of media savvy, I actually think young people are pretty damn good,” he said at the forum, pushing back against the assumption that they lack political awareness or democratic understanding. “I don’t see that; I think they are, they just express it in different ways, and they get their information in different ways.” This is not to say that disinformation is not a threat, or that young people are somehow immune to falsehoods. Rather, Bluemmel is pointing to a more nuanced reality: being born into a world of memes, viral claims, reverse image searches, and rapidly shifting hype cycles means many younger voters have developed a kind of intuitive instinct for questioning what they see online. They know that a clipped video can be misleading, that a headline can be bait, that an influencer’s political opinion is not necessarily journalism. Still, the electoral commission is taking the problem seriously. Efforts to combat disinformation include watermarking official communications, tightening regulations around electoral advertising, and pushing public awareness campaigns. But Bluemmel is realistic about how far these measures can go. He points to the Australian Electoral Commission’s “Stop and Consider” campaign, which encourages people of all ages to pause before sharing or reacting to political content, as a practical step toward building what he calls, in military terms, “target hardening.” You cannot stop every bad actor from launching a missile, but you can make the shield stronger — and that, he argues, is the best defense democracy has in an age of endless information.
Dr. Benjamin Moffitt, a senior politics lecturer at Monash University, agrees with Bluemmel’s assessment, and he takes it a step further. “I actually think young people are probably the most media literate generation around,” Moffitt said, pointing out that they have grown up in an environment where not all information is trustworthy and where critical thinking about sources is a survival skill. He worries less about young people becoming trapped in political silos than he does about older voters on Facebook, many of whom may have transitioned to social media later in life without the same instinctive caution. “To some extent I worry less about young people and political silos than kind of Facebook boomers,” he said. Moffitt’s concern is not just about false information spreading among older demographics, but about the deeper issue of political engagement. He notes that many young people are highly aware of the policy debates shaping their lives, particularly on issues like housing, where they often feel they are on the losing end. Rents are high, home ownership is slipping out of reach, and the future can feel precarious. In that context, Moffitt argues, misinformation matters — but it is not the only problem, nor even the most important one. “We could have all the misinformation and disinformation stuff in the world, but if the policies that are on offer are crap for young people, that’s not going to change a thing,” he said. In other words, no amount of digital literacy can fix a feeling of being ignored by the political system. If young voters tune out, it may not be because they are confused by social media, but because they are unimpressed by what they see on the ballot.
This is a crucial reminder that disinformation is only one piece of a much larger puzzle. The conversation about young voters and TikTok often focuses narrowly on the risk of fake news or foreign interference, but the deeper question is whether political institutions are actually offering young people something worth believing in. Both major parties, Moffitt suggests, have shown little genuine interest in addressing the anxieties of younger generations. Housing affordability, climate action, job security, mental health support — these are issues that resonate strongly with voters under 25, yet they are often pushed aside in favor of older, more reliable voting blocs. When young people feel that their concerns are treated as afterthoughts, their cynicism is not a failure of media literacy but a rational response to being overlooked. Still, there is something hopeful in the fact that they remain engaged enough to seek out news, even if it comes through TikTok or Instagram. They are not absent from the conversation; they are having it in spaces that older generations may not fully understand. The challenge for democracy, then, is not to drag young people back to newspapers or television, but to meet them where they are and to offer policies that respond to their real lives. That means recognizing social media as a legitimate arena for political discussion, rather than simply a breeding ground for lies, and trusting young people to navigate it with the same critical instincts they bring to everything else online.
For Bluemmel, the bigger picture is one of cautious optimism. Democracy, he acknowledges, is under constant pressure from a changing online environment, from the speed of misinformation to the erosion of shared facts. But he refuses to give in to despair. “Despite all of these changes, the one thing for me that has not changed is, you get one vote, I get one vote,” he said. That simple equality, the foundation of democratic faith, remains intact. No matter how noisy the digital world becomes, no matter how many manipulated videos or outrage-baiting posts flood social media, the act of voting still carries the same fundamental weight. It is a reminder that beneath the complicated debates about algorithms and echo chambers, there is a basic and powerful idea: everyone’s voice counts equally. That principle is especially important when thinking about first-time voters and the broader generation they represent. They may not follow politics the way their grandparents did, and they may not trust institutions the way earlier generations were taught to, but they are showing up, they are forming opinions, and they are asking hard questions about what kind of future they are being handed. The democratic system does not need to make them into perfect citizens; it needs to listen to them, protect the integrity of their vote, and give them something meaningful to vote for.
In the end, the story of young voters and the Victorian election is not really about TikTok or Facebook or even misinformation. It is about trust, relevance, and adaptation. The fact that young people get their news from social media is not a crisis in itself — it is simply a sign that the world has changed, and democratic institutions must change with it. Watermarks and regulation are useful tools, but they are not the whole answer. The real solution lies in what Bluemmel calls target hardening: making citizens more informed, more critical, and more connected to the political process. That work falls on educators, journalists, community leaders, and politicians themselves. It also falls on older voters, who might benefit from a little more of the digital skepticism that younger generations have developed. The election on November 28 will be a test not just of policies and candidates, but of whether democracy can remain meaningful in an age of constant noise. If there is hope, it lies in the resilience of voters themselves — especially the young people who are proving, quietly and steadily, that they are not the lost generation they are so often made out to be. They are paying attention, even if the way they pay attention looks different. And when they walk into the polling booth, their single vote will count exactly as much as anyone else’s. That, more than anything, is worth protecting.