In September, I was scrolling through Instagram and a photo from one of the celebrities I follow – Jonathan Van Ness – caught my eye. Van Ness is one of the guys on “Queer Eye,” a show where five gay men make over people in order to make them feel better about themselves.

While it’s a feel-good show and I highly suggest it, that’s not what stuck out to me about Van Ness’ post. Instead, what was interesting about this photo was that there was an older woman in it, and JVN – as he is known – said she was a politician. Van Ness’ photo was one of the first posts on social media I came across that emphasized the importance of voting.

The Skimm, a newsletter which summarizes the news of the week, also launched a campaign to get people voting. The editors at The Skimm talked about their desire last year to get people to register to vote. They said that this year, they were similarly encouraging people to go vote.

It seems like everywhere I look online there are ads encouraging people to get involved politically. Social media personalities, celebrities, brands, app companies and the social media companies themselves have been overwhelming feeds with reminders to vote in the upcoming elections.

This year’s elections are called the midterms, as they happen in the middle of a U.S. president’s term. This election is generally seen as a way for the majority party to gauge how their constituents like the way they have been leading. Midterms are incredibly important because each time they roll around, the entire House of Representatives is up for grabs as well as one third of the Senate.

Now, every time an election comes around, there are ad campaigns to get people to the polling station (how could we forget the ad campaigns during the presidential election two years ago?). What makes the midterm elections different is that less than half of those eligible to vote actually vote in the midterms. So, people with influence are getting involved to get people to vote on both sides of the aisle.

Young people in particular have an incredibly low voter turnout. I believe this is what prompted celebrities and companies to turn their ad campaigns to social media. We – as college students and therefore the young people who are actually able to vote – tend to not turnout, even though the power of young people has been proven many times, most recently in Bernie Sander’s rise to prominence. By engaging with young people where they spend their time and through people they admire or trust – for instance, I would trust JVN with my life – the idea of voting is placed directly in front of them in a way they cannot ignore. Plus, influencers think they can get young people out to enact change by making voter registration part of a larger campaign about voting.

I’ll leave you with my personal perspective on voting in a democracy: If you don’t vote, you can’t complain. There’s always a lot to complain about in politics, so I suggest listening to these celebrities and influencers so your complaints about all the things you don’t like about the nation’s government are validated.