I’m a hot commodity in these presidential elections. And if you’re under 30, you are too. It doesn’t matter that you’ve never picked up a newspaper and I’m a journalism student. We’re practically the same person.

That is, according to the media these days. I’m in my late twenties so I’m part of that amorphous “youth vote.” You know, it’s the one that encompasses everyone from Peace Corp volunteers to young corporate lawyers. Suddenly, I speak for all of them.

The truth is there really isn’t a simple way to define this age bracket. I have peers who write for three different political blogs and those who blink in confusion when NAFTA is mentioned. My friend doesn’t talk to her older brother about politics without verbal warfare, even though they fall into the same “youth vote” category.

I’m supposed to be speaking to you about the young person’s perspective on the presidential election, as if I embody all the concerns and opinions of my generation. Now that many Americans have become political junkies—come on, admit it, you YouTube the political ads too—we would be wise to take the statistically comfortable, ideologically impossible groupings with a grain of salt. These include categorizations like Latino block and African-American voice.

This doesn’t mean I’m not worth listening to, but I’m one young voice, not all of them. Otherwise, I’d be a sleep-deprived college graduate who also dropped out of high school and traveled the world teaching sustainable farming. I’d have earned my masters in Asian American literature just before I got my job as a tech analyst in Silicon Valley and went to Iraq.

Candidates would do well to focus on the nuances of this voting group. And the media would too. I say, on behalf of us all.

And not just the “our country is in a mess” rhetoric. We were analyzing candidates as this 80-year-old Southern woman articulately explained NAFTA to me. She even knew the nuances between the Clinton and Obama healthcare packages.

I’m supposed to be the politically informed one. I’m the “youth vote” that is spearheading Barack Obama’s primary victories. I’m that amorphous group of students and coffee-shop servers, Peace Core volunteers and elementary school teachers, corporate business executives and unemployed couch surfers. I’m part of this semi-labeled faction under 30 that has become the media’s focus in the upcoming presidential elections. I’m the group showing sudden interest in political change. Kind of like, well, my grandma.

Yes, a younger generation is becoming increasingly mobilized. My colleague’s boyfriend halted work on his PhD dissertation to drive up and down California’s coast in a “Get out the Vote” Obama campaign. A recent poll commissioned by Rock the Vote surveyed people 18-29 throughout the country and found nine in 10 saying they would likely vote in November.

But so is everyone in my grandmother’s choir, and few of them have heard of Obama Girl, let alone You Tube. Young people aren’t the only ones creating this rise in voter turnout, even if the attention is constantly on them.

Ohio’s’ heavy turnout was not just youth demanding change. The under 30 group was outnumbered two-to-one by those over age 65, according to the Associated Press. Just a month ago, New Hampshire saw its highest Democratic turnout ever, but only 18 percent of the 18-29 “youth” bracket voted, the smallest percentage for any voter age group.

I’d like to see my generation thoughtfully engaged in political discourse. But it’s not just the “youth” who will decide this election. It’s an entire nation that is swept up in this revision of America. It’s motivating, but just as much for me as for my grandma. And now we have something to talk about.

>> a slightly condensed version of this was published in the Insight section of the San Francisco Chronicle.