Depends on what
Voter turnout at the last European elections in 2009 was 50% for voters aged 55 or older; but only 29% for voters aged 18 to 24 (source). At least in the EU, there is a disconnect between the high energy and idealism expressed by many young people and the failure to turn up at the ballot box of younger voters. We investigated this apparent contradiction in the first Edgeryders exercise, and the result was more or less this: as you say, young people stand ready to participate, but only if the participation channel makes a credible commitment that participation makes a difference. Many young people don’t believe they can make any difference in the elections, so they don’t vote. On the other hand, the same people may participate passionately to exercises like the ones organized by Stefano and others.
So far, EU democracies have performed quite badly in coming up with credible participation channels.
As for me personally, I don’t want the world to hear me out. I want to be able to make the occasional direct change. For me, the space where I seem to be able to make a small difference is the open data movement – here’s my story. One European-level thing we made is a small service called TweetYourMEP, which allows you to, well, easily and find and contact any member of the European Parliament via Twitter – useful if you are trying to pressurize the parliament into making a certain decision.
But enough of me. What about Armenia? 