PHILADELPHIA – General-election presidential debates offer high-profile opportunities for citizens to learn about the candidates' positions and temperaments, since the matchups draw coverage across diverse media, including broadcast and cable television, newspapers, digital news sites, podcasts, and social media.
Importantly, debates also present valuable opportunities for parents to talk with teens and young adults about the rights and responsibilities of citizenship.
But few parents take advantage of these opportunities, according to a new Annenberg Public Policy Center (APPC) survey of parents and guardians conducted during the 2024 presidential debates – the June debate between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump and the September debate between Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, who succeeded Biden as the Democratic candidate.
Nationally representative APPC panel surveys conducted after the two debates find that while most parents or guardians of teens or young adults watched or listened to at least parts of the debates, less than 1 in 5 did so with a teen or young adult in their household or talked with them about the debate.
The surveys found that only 13% of the parents or guardians maximized the educational opportunities of the Biden-Trump debate by watching and discussing it with their child, and only 19% did so for the Harris-Trump debate.
"It is valuable for parents, teens, and young adults to use presidential debates to have shared media experiences and to then discuss those experiences," says R. Lance Holbert , director of the Leonore Annenberg Institute for Civics at the Annenberg Public Policy Center. "Debates are teachable moments, and the 2024 presidential debates were missed learning opportunities for most households."
Today, Holbert notes, a shared newspaper no longer rests on the kitchen table. News is now consumed as much or more often on individual smartphones as on living room TV sets, and parents often do not use the same social media platforms as teens and young adults. "By viewing and discussing debates as a family, parents help shape the ways in which teens and young adults approach political campaigns later in life," he says.
The Annenberg surveys
Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg Public Policy Center asked respondents who are part of an ongoing national probability-based panel of U.S. adults how they engaged with both the June 27, 2024, debate between Biden and Trump and the September 10, 2024, debate between Harris and Trump. The first debate survey was conducted July 11-18, 2024, among 1,496 U.S. adults; the second debate survey was conducted Sept. 13-22 and Sept. 26-30, 2024, among 1,744 U.S. adults. Data are weighted to represent the target U.S. adult population. See the end of this news release or the topline
