TIME Magazine proclaimed 2008 “The Year of the Youth Vote.”25 More than half of American citizens between the ages of 18 and 30 voted, a strong showing by historical standards. The nadir was 37% in 1996, and each presidential election since then has seen an increase in youth voting. Millennials are also committed volunteers, compared to young people of the past 30 years. In general, building on improvements in young people’s civic engagement seems a promising strategy for national civic renewal.

In the 2009 Civic Health Index, Millennials emerge as the “top” group for volunteering. However, the differences by age are generally small. The only group that stands out this year are the Boomers, who volunteer at a rate about six percentage points lower than others. Despite the fact that Millennials have a higher volunteering rate than Boomers, a greater proportion of Millenials neither volunteer nor give money, food, or shelter, compared to Boomers. This may be because Millennial’s housing situations may not be conducive to providing shelter or food as their age (as young as 15 in our sample) may mean they still live with parents or in student housing. Also, because they are young, Millennials needing to call for help may be more likely to lean on their family, especially parents or grandparents, before approaching those inside their peer network, due to their limited resources.

Millenials may have more opportunities for formal volunteering than Boomers do (e.g., through high school or university), but less access to disposable income, as a significant portion of Millennials are currently unemployed or going to school. Millennials may be seeking opportunities to volunteer and keep up or increase their skill levels as they complete their education and find themselves without employment. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that 15.5% of people aged 18 to 24 were unemployed during the first quarter of 2009, nearly double the national average.

Millennials responded well to various possible incentives for increasing their civic engagement, especially the voucher for college education. The most common response to this suggestion was “Would be VERY helpful (10)” with an average response of 5.9 on a 1-10 scale. They also thought paid time off from work and tax incentives would be significant. They gave more positive responses to many of the incentives suggested than other generations.

In the past, we have found the youngest members of our society, the Millennials, utilize new technology for civic purposes the most. For example, they are far more likely than older generations to use the Internet, blogs, web-contents, text messaging and social networking sites to gather civic-related information and express their opinions on various issues.

This year’s survey allowed us to explore the relationships between online forms of engagement and community-based civic activities. We selected a group of Millennials who use social networking sites to promote civic causes, express their opinions on issues, and gather information related to civics, and compared their levels of engagement to that of their peers. We found that Millennials who use social networking sites for civic purposes are far more likely to actively engage in their own communities in each of the activities we measured.

Although we cannot conclude that belonging to social networking sites promotes civic engagement in their community from our data, it is encouraging that civic use of social networking sites cut across income and educational gaps, meaning that low-income youth and youth without college experience were nearly as likely to use social networking sites for civic purposes as youth who had higher income or college experience. As we found in 2008, the civic engagement gap appears to be smaller among young people who engage online, and this year, we found that young Americans who are highly engaged online come from diverse economic and educational background, and are also highly engaged off-line.

It is possible that young Americans are building and strengthening online connections that open doors to opportunities not previously available to young people from all backgrounds. Online engagement opportunities are less structured and perhaps more accessible to everyone because there is usually no membership fee for social networking sites and users can join or create various opportunities for civic engagement quickly and without bureaucracy. In a way, online platforms provide organic and more grassroots forms of engagement. Online engagement is not only for Millennials. In fact, this type of civic engagement opportunity might be especially important during a recession, when formal infrastructure for civic engagement is breaking down (for example, via lay-offs in nonprofit sector). Online platforms provide engagement opportunities for many Americans who may not belong to a formal volunteering organization.