Running the political gauntlet of state primaries is not easy. Attracting young people to participate in the political process can be even more difficult. In an attempt to draw a younger audience

to often-tedious political discourse, ABC News co-sponsored the recent Republican and Democratic debates in New Hampshire with Facebook — the virtual junk food of college students around the globe.

The social networking site featured applications allowing users to participate in online polls and discussions, in addition to viewing video coverage of the event in an effort to “extend the dialogue both before and after the debate,” as Dan Rose, Facebook’s vice president for business development, explained to The New York Times.

Similar to past partnerships — namely that between YouTube and CNN — the incorporation of the virtual arena aims at attracting a younger audience, a demographic with habitually low participation rates in politics. But with participation rates only slightly increased by such co-sponsorships, the introduction of this new techno-gadgetry to the political arena doesn’t appear to address the true cause for young people’s disinterest in politics. Rather, these efforts at drawing youth are artificially relevant, only disguised as a political electronic revolution.

The issue at hand is more intractable than technological doohickeys can remedy. In fact, the popularity of presidential candidate Barack Obama with younger voters shows that the youth of today aren’t in search of more bells and whistles in politics, but rather a dose of idealism, an empowerment of the individual and a redefinition of the United States in the 21st century.

With his speeches drenched in a lexicon of positivism, Obama speaks to a certain contempt for the drudgery of politics. And though he may not be as relentlessly anticorporate as Edwards, Obama has spoken of a more refreshingly detailed plan to fight kleptocracy. Although some have accused his platform of not being the most pragmatic, it certainly is the most hopeful — an asset accentuated by Obama’s not-too-subtly-titled memoir, The Audacity of Hope.

Though both Clinton and Edwards may arguably have more experience than the relatively young Obama — Clinton as first lady and Edwards as a senator from North Carolina and running mate of John Kerry — even this is sometimes viewed as another advantage for the candidate. The less time spent in Washington, the less involved in the scheming of the Washington political machine and thus more able to work on behalf of the electorate — a kind of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington effect.

The ineffectiveness of using the internet to appeal to young voters in particular can be seen in Clinton’s cringe - inducing Soprano’s parody video clip. Filmed as an invitation to vote for the candidate’s campaign song, the video — which was posted only on the Internet — aimed to be humorous and showcase a more human side of the often plastically corporate former-first lady. Alas, even the charisma of Bill Clinton and the snazzy “cast your ballot online” opportunity couldn’t save the attempt from being more sad than charming, showing that however digitally tricked out your campaign may be, authentic pertinence to young people is hard to feign.

However naïve or inexperienced his opponents may claim him to be, Obama’s message has resonated with voters — particularly young people. In the recent Iowa caucus, more than half of the ballots cast for Obama were made by voters between the ages of 18 and 29. Further preference is shown in the discrepancy between Facebook and ABC polls. While ABC polls recently placed Clinton at a 49 percent to Obama’s 26 percent, Facebook (reflecting a far younger demographic group) had Obama at 60 percent and Clinton at only 20 percent — near inverse statistics.

There are more effective ways of attracting young people to participate in politics than chatting online or getting us to join groups declaring our political affiliations. And though the Internet serves as an amazing tool for the fostering of a healthy public discourse and spread of information, if it was technological shortcomings restricting political participation, involvement would have significantly increased with the popularization of networking sites.

although the Internet has changed many things, allowing politicians to appeal in numerous mediums to various demographics, it is fundamentally the message carried by such methods that resounds with young people. So instead of more Facebook applications, profiles of politicians and virtual candidate bobblehead dolls, give us something substantive, meaningful and of true relevance.

[Reach columnist Sarah Gaither at opinion@thedaily.washington.edu.]