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Amidst concern about declining youth political engagement, it is often suggested that social media can provide a solution to this challenge. In this article, however, we argue that these online tools have not thus far mobilised a new audience to become engaged in either institution-oriented activities or political expression. Instead, we found that some young people are far more engaged in using social media for political purposes than others, and that a substantial proportion of young adults never use social media for this purpose. Using latent class analysis (LCA) of a unique web survey of young Britons aged 22-29, we show that the principal driver of online political engagement is political interest (even after controlling for socio-demographic characteristics). On this basis, we conclude that social media may be providing a new outlet for some young adults; it is not re-engaging the young adults who have already lost interest in politics.

Attitudes towards social groups that have traditionally been marginalised or discriminated against have changed markedly in Britain over the past three decades. This change is particularly marked in attitudes towards homosexuality and racial diversity which, as public opinion surveys have regularly shown, have become more accepting over time. This change is often attributed to older, less tolerant generations being replaced by young cohorts who are more inclusive and open minded in their attitudes to cultural others. The paper explores this argument by examining trends in people's attitudes towards a variety of minorities, including the said groups, but also immigrants and foreign workers. It starts with a discussion of several perspectives predicting different trends with regards to these attitudes. A distinction is made between optimistic ones (i.e. those anticipating rising levels of tolerance) and pessimistic ones (i.e. those expecting stable or declining levels of tolerance). Subsequently, the paper presents trend analyses and an analysis of age, cohort and period effects to broadly assess the explanatory power of these perspectives. Using these approaches, we find that tolerance towards racial minorities and homosexuality has indeed risen across the board, and that young people are also more accepting of these groups than their parents or grandparents and previous generations of young people. These trends broadly support the optimistic perspectives. However, we also find that prejudice has not disappeared from youth attitudes altogether; for a sizeable minority of youth, it has merely shifted its focus to immigration. Not only have unwelcoming attitudes towards immigrants generally become stronger, young people are not always the most tolerant age group regarding this social group. These findings are thus more in line with the expectations of the pessimistic perspectives.

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There has been a resurgence of interest in cosmopolitan theories of citizenship over the past two decades, as academics and policymakers have sought to understand and conceptualise citizenship affiliations that transcend the nation-state. As part of these debates, a number of theories have been developed to try to explain the emergence of cosmopolitan dispositions, and in particular, why some citizens develop these dispositions and others do not. This article seeks to refine these theories by testing their assumptions on a youth sample, by drawing on the findings of the wider youth socialisation literature, and by comparing the relative merits of different 'sources' of cosmopolitanism (namely cognitive engagement; contact with cultural Others; learning a foreign language; and exposure to discussions about international issues in the public and the private sphere). To do so, the analysis draws on data from the 2009 International Civic and Citizenship Education Study (ICCS) and its survey of young people aged 14. Using these data, this article will show that each of these theories are positively associated with cosmopolitan sources, but that the strength of these relationships is variable and that not all sources of cosmopolitan dispositions are equal. Based on these findings, this article will argue that schools can play an important role in cultivating cosmopolitan dispositions at this particular life stage. ARTICLE HISTORY