For young people today, being online is almost a given. They communicate, form opinions, discover opportunities, and build communities through digital spaces.
In Bosnia and Herzegovina, more than 81 percent of young people who participated in UNICEF’s Voices of Youth 2024 survey reported using the internet at least once a day.
But just because young people are online, it doesn’t mean they are really engaged with the people, institutions, and processes that shape their communities. The same UNICEF research found that 69 percent of participants believed young people had little or no influence over decisions concerning them. Do young people understand who is responsible for local governance, how to give feedback to the state, where to propose an idea, and whether anyone will listen?
This question matters to us at the Youth Council of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and inspired us to rethink our Youth Incubator, an online learning platform that guides youth from idea to action.
From having an opinion to having influence
Digital participation is not simply about moving traditional political processes onto social media. It is about what happens between knowing that something matters and being able to do something about it.
Before young people can influence a decision, they need to know it is being made, understand who is responsible, and know what options they have to make their opinions heard. Digital spaces can ease this process by making information easier to find and helping people organize and contribute.
Still, having a channel is not the same as having influence. The Council of Europe’s youth participation framework stresses that meaningful participation requires the rights, opportunities, tools, and support needed to participate in and influence decisions.
Low participation should therefore not automatically be interpreted as indifference. Meaningful participation is a skill that must be learned and practiced.
This is not only a knowledge gap, but an access gap. Even motivated young people can become disengaged when information is scattered, procedures differ, or participation ends without feedback.
Not another website
Bakir Komarica, participant in the Youth Incubator program, shared this feedback: “Through the Youth Incubator module within the Youth Policy Academy, I learned how to turn an idea into a clear advocacy initiative. Mine proposed transforming unused green space into a community garden. That short digital format gave me what I had lacked at the start: Clarity on who decides and how to reach them.”
Through the Digital Spark project, we are taking this idea further in concrete ways. We are upgrading the Youth Incubator to make it easier to use, particularly on mobile devices, while developing new learning content focused on digital participation and first-time voting.
Learning is only one part of the project. Through two short pulse surveys, we are asking young people directly what prevents them from participating in civic life and what would make digital engagement more useful.
A Youth Digital Participation Lab will bring young people, youth organizations, and other relevant actors together to test ideas for the platform and discuss how digital tools can better support participation.
At the same time, a social media campaign will translate these topics into accessible content and direct young people towards learning opportunities, consultations, and practical tools.
Together, these activities combine online learning, direct youth input, co-creation, and digital outreach. The aim is not simply to provide more information, but to create clearer pathways from information to participation.
Building impact
In Bosnia and Herzegovina, youth legislation and participation mechanisms already provide ways for young people to engage through youth councils, youth officers, consultations, and other processes. Citizens can also use initiatives and other forms of participation provided through local self-government, while some digital consultation tools have begun to complement more traditional mechanisms, including eKonsultacije, a state-level online platform that allows citizens and civil society organizations to comment on draft legislation and public policy documents during consultation processes.
These possibilities remain scattered across institutions and levels of government. A mechanism is only useful if a young person knows about it and understands when to use it, who to approach, and what to do next.
This is where the activities developed through Digital Spark can help the Youth Incubator progress — from providing information to helping young people navigate participation.
Rather than creating a parallel system, it can connect an issue with an existing pathway: Identify the responsible institution, direct someone to a youth officer or youth council, highlight an open consultation, provide a simple template, or connect an idea with an organization or mentor. Learning then connects to action: A course can lead to a participation mechanism and information about the responsible institution.
Bosnia and Herzegovina’s legal and administrative framework still needs to catch up with the realities of digital participation, which remains limited and fragmented, with online consultation mechanisms neither consistently available nor equally used across different levels of government.
The courses, consultations, Youth Digital Participation Lab, and platform improvements developed through the Digital Spark program are a first step toward bridging that gap, helping young people move from learning about participation to understanding how and where they can actually take part.
This gives a more concrete answer to the question: What happens after the click?
Ideally, the click leads somewhere — to knowledge, a person, an opportunity, a formal mechanism, or a next step. Follow-up is also essential. After submitting, respondees should receive an answer, a decision, or at least an explanation of what happened next.
That is the direction in which we want the Youth Incubator to grow: Not into another place for young people to scroll through, but into a clearer route between information, connection, participation, and response.
Young people are already online.
The real challenge is making sure they can also engage with the processes and people shaping their communities — and that someone is there on the other end.
