It could be you were just checked out. I certainly paid quite a bit of attention during the Bush years. (When I was a teenager) I wouldn’t say many of my peers paid as much attention but I grew up in a very conservative and rural area.
I did pay attention during the Bush era as well, I remember buying my first newspaper when US invaded Afghanistan. The point is none of us had any faith in those old farts. We wanted change and none of the parties represented change, they actually were the status quo to fight against.
Now it's like hope for a better, radically different world has just disappeared. It's with us or against us. There's no third choice.
I think it depends on how threatened you felt growing up. I grew up quite poor, and politics was a big part of my teenage years, because there weren't very many legitimate paths to stability or success where I grew up in the US. Friends I made as an adult who grew up in the more traditional upper-middle class milleu that make up Silicon Valley tech company rank-and-file were much more apolitical at that age.
