http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rky2ltXyiWw Maybe there's a simple reason why some Middle Eastern regimes are unravelling: demographics.
That's the suggestion of political technology analyst Micah Sifry, who has an insightful post at Tech President looking at how government stability is influenced by urbanization, tech pentration, and percentage of the population under 15. He breaks down several Mideast countries wracked by ongoing protests according to how accessible the Internet is, how many people have cellphones, how many live in big cities and how young their people are. What stands out in the midest of these so-called "Facebook Revolutions" is that Internet penetration doesn't matter nearly as much as age or street knowledge or geek-savvy.
Sifry proposes that these trends indicate a restive "Generation Text" – thumb-typing youths in densely populated areas that are willing to demand the end to the security states that deprive them of freedom. It's not so far off from the idea of a "Youthquake," a 2000s-era proposition that tied the rise of urban youth to social and political instability.
Look at Tunisia, home to a successful revolution on Jan. 14. Nearly 75 percent of Tunisians have cellphones, 60 percent live in cities, and 25 percent of its population is younger than 15 year old; meanwhile, about a third have access to the Internet. The story of Egypt's revolution is far from over, as the regime of Hosni Mubarak turned violent today. But similarly, far fewer Egyptians have Internet access (20 percent) than have cellphones (40 percent), and a substantial proportion of Egypt's 80 million people are 15 and younger (a third) and urban (over 40 percent.)
If he's right, Jordan's King Abdullah has a lot to worry about. In the Hashemite kingdom, 80 percent of people have cellphones, 60 percent live in cities, and a whopping 40 percent are 15 or younger. Looking to stay ahead of the wave of upheaval, Abdullah fired his government on Tuesday as demonstrations got underway.
Yemen, by contrast, looks pretty safe on Sifry's measurements, even though the U.S.-allied President Abu Abdullah Saleh pulled a Mubarak today and said he wouldn't seek a new term or pass power to his son. Over 40 percent of Yemen is younger than 15, but fewer than a third live in cities and not even 20 percent own a cellphone. The Internet is a non-factor in Yemen: maybe 5 percent of Yemenis have access to it.
Similarly, Syria might host big protests this weekend, propelled by Facebook. But not even 20 percent of Syrians are online and only 30 percent have cellphones. But half live in cities and about 35 percent are teens or younger.
None of this is to say that urban youths on phones are an unstoppable force, or even that they're responsible for upheaval. Sifry's model doesn't look at the resilience of the security apparatus in each of these countries; the state of their economies; the health of civil-society organizations; literacy rates; and everything else that contributes to social revolution. Iran has a very urban and wired population – its cellphone penetration exceeds Egypt's; over 40 percent have Internet access – but its ruthless security services suppressed the 2009 Green Movement.
But the model isn't predicting what sparks a revolution. It's about what kind of kindling is there when a spark goes off. And there, it might make more sense to look at the kid texting in the city square than it is to track how frequently someone updates his Facebook wall.
Update, 6:45 p.m.:: Forecasting guru Alper Caglayan of Milcord writes in to say that "trying to explain increase in political violence with a single factor as done in this article does not work across all countries and decades of data":
Update, 10 a.m., February 3: Sifry emails with an additional point:
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