Australians will vote on whether to allow same-sex marriage. Picture Lukas Coch/AAP

WHEN plans for a postal survey to decide the question of same-sex marriage were announced, there was a chorus of concern about whether young people would be left out.

I couldn’t help but think that surely this was an over-reaction?

The idea that young people were too lazy to go online, register for the electoral roll and then post a letter, seemed just a bit patronising.

Really, who is that lazy?

If you believe the pollsters, these same young people care about same-sex marriage and could be crucial in deciding the outcome.

Previous Galaxy polls have shown about 80 per cent of those aged 18 to 24 years old back marriage equality. And judging from the number of rainbow filters I see on people’s Facebook profiles, this is an underestimate.

Even for those that don’t support the change, you’d think they would want to put their view forward.

But maybe for this generation of slacktivists, it really is too hard to post a letter.

The Australian Electoral Commission has been releasing numbers of new enrolments and they’re not as good as some community groups were hoping, even though you can do this online.

According to the AEC, there were 811,000 Australians “missing” from the roll as of June 30 and 279,000 of them were aged 18-24.

Yet the latest figures released by the AEC about enrolments — with just one day to go before the close of the rolls — show just 54,545 people across all ages enrolled between August 8 and 22.

This is even less than the 132,000 people that signed up in the lead up to the 2016 federal election.

I know that there are many reasons why young people may find enrolment difficult. If you don’t have a drivers licence or passport to prove your identity, or haven’t lived in your current house for at least one month, you won’t meet the requirements.

But for those that can, why aren’t you making your views known on an issue that will shape Australia’s future society?

Maybe it’s not as easy as clicking like on a social media post, but at least it’s guaranteed to have an impact. That’s something worth making an effort for.

RELATED: What you need to know about the postal survey

If you haven’t registered to vote, you really, really should. Picture: Christopher Chan.Source:News Corp Australia