It would be foolish of me to claim to represent Britain's "youth vote", but I would like to share some thoughts about my first opportunity to participate in a general election, and the relationship between politicians and young people.

I have, in fact, voted once before – in the gym of my local primary school, for the European elections last year – and I found it particularly disappointing. In the end I voted for the Green party, but my lasting memory is of the old man whose sole job seemed to be pushing the large ballot papers into the ballot box with a ruler.

As I walked back up the hill to my house with my mum and two brothers, thinking about the tiny implications of my ballot-crossing, I felt profoundly underwhelmed by democracy. I hope now that my disappointment was caused more by a considerable sense of insignificance, given the size and facelessness of the EU, rather than early disillusionment at the state of politics.

In recent weeks, though, my sense of optimism for democracy has been renewed, despite the fact that I live in a safe Conservative seat where my vote will be utterly irrelevant. Perhaps this explains at least some of my electoral excitement – the possibility of proportional representation and the potential value of my vote in future general elections. The prospect of a hung parliament is peculiarly attractive to me; it feels like one big act of political rebellion.

Now that we apparently live in a three-party system, I can only look jealously on as my friends vote in swing constituencies. Some of them (though not me) are currently at posh universities, and so, perhaps unsurprisingly, almost all of them are planning to vote Tory. I would like to think that they have at least carefully weighed up party policies and have reached their unfortunate conclusions painfully, but it seems more likely that they are merely attracted by the prospect of low taxes on the types of career they plan to pursue.

Perhaps this has been the most striking aspect of my first general election: the extent to which people vote purely according to their own interest. My dad, too, has voted Labour in the past, despite disagreeing with most of their policies, as a token of his gratitude for letting him live in Britain (he came from Turkey in 1976).

Nevertheless, I find it quite depressing that so many of my friends are voting Conservative at only 19. But at least they are voting. Indeed, I know 17-year-olds who plan on trying to vote and some friends who say they will vote twice. I'm not sure if they are serious, but I suppose it is better than widespread political apathy.

And in the past, who could have criticised youth apathy? Historically, young people do not vote and so parties waste little time in courting their vote. The few attempts to break this self-perpetuating cycle – by claiming an interest in the Arctic Monkeys or the Killers – are at best condescending and transparent. If one message has been reaffirmed during this campaign, after the embarrassing Bucks Fizz karaoke, is that British politics cannot and should not act cool.

While friends were enjoying their first term at university, I spent three-and-a-half months after leaving school in rural Chile where there was also a general election. Despite the unbelievable number of campaign posters in little Coyhaique, the activists dressed up as Barney the Dinosaur and the portable bands playing campaign songs in the back of pickup trucks, I was told that the youth vote was still not high. (Not even a ban on the sale of alcohol 48 hours before the vote to prevent hungover Chilenos sleeping through election day seemed to help.) All of which must tell us that policies and not gimmicks will bring young people back to politics.

This is perhaps a small reason for the surge of Liberal Democrat support and the recent online registration of thousands of new voters. Their policies – to scrap tuition fees, their opposition to the Iraq war and their plan to scrap cold-war weapons systems – resonate with the pragmatic idealism of youth. In Britain, the TV debate and the prospect of electoral reform, from my limited perspective, seems to have renewed youth interest in voting. It would be a shame to waste it again by further patronising young people.

• More Guardian election comment from Cif at the polls