In 2024, young women voted for Kamala Harris by a 17-point margin, while young men voted for Trump by a 14-point margin. That divide ignited a whole era of attention placed on young men in America, and it’s certainly still there.

But a week out from election day, young men and young women are looking more and more united around one core issue: economic anxiety.

In a New York Times Siena poll, 0% of registered voters under 30 strongly approve of Trump’s handling of the cost of living.

Tl;dr: the gender gap is shrinking as young men, frustrated with the state of the economy, move away from President Donald Trump and the Republican Party. But that doesn’t mean they’re suddenly identifying as Democrats — even if they vote blue in 2026.

Let’s take a look at the crosstabs of last week’s Harvard Institute of Politics’ youth poll…

When it comes to who Gen Z plans to back for Congress, young men and women under 30 are pretty even, though Democrats have a slight lead with young women.

Meanwhile, when you look at their political ideology, it’s still split by gender.

Young women are still 12 points more likely to identify as liberal than young men. At the same time, men are 5 points more likely to identify as moderate and 5 points more likely to identify as conservative leaning or conservative.

To be clear: Democrats have not solved their problem with young men yet.

But… both young men and women are united in the fact that since Trump took office for his second term, they’re worse off financially. And that could drive a much more balanced youth vote in 2026.

Nearly half — 51% of young women and 46% of young men — say their personal finances have gotten “somewhat” or “much worse” in Trump’s second term.

Make no mistake about it, these economic concerns are what is bringing young men and women closer together in their vote preferences this cycle. But it doesn’t signal a permanent situation for Democrats.

Noteworthy reads & watches

Reads: Can’t Afford a Home. Can’t Afford a Baby. Can’t Afford Life. This Is 30., Troy Closson for The New York Times, Gen Z has buyer’s remorse on Trump, Andrew Prokop for Vox (featuring quotes from me!).Entire worlds are hidden inside teenagers’ phones. We asked 5 to share their screen time diaries with us., Rainesford Stauffer for Yahoo News. The Art of the City Teen Side Hustle, Dina Cheney for The New York Times. Why Andy Cohen Thinks Gen Z is Too Precious, Myles Tanzer for the Wall Street Journal.

Watches: I finished The Diplomat Season 3 and it’s as good as everyone says it is… Kerri Russell is just great. I started Nobody Wants This Season 3. Stay tuned.

Want to partner with us? Email hello@theupandup.us

If there’s one thing I’ve learned from spending so much time talking to young voters, it’s that their frustration with politics doesn’t fit neatly into either party’s narrative.

Ahead of the 2024 election, when much of the conventional wisdom was that Gen Z was overwhelmingly progressive, I warned that young voters were far more politically unpredictable than people assumed. And the election proved just how much we’d underestimated that.

Today I’m hearing many of the same frustrations. Young Americans are worried about the cost of living, angry about corruption, and exhausted by war. Many are disappointed with the politicians they supported in 2024. They were raised on instant gratification (social media, Uber, dating apps) and are used to seeing things happen quickly — and expect the same from politics. When change doesn’t come fast enough, they’re ready to look elsewhere. More than anything, they want to know who’s actually going to make their lives better.

That’s why I was particularly interested in the latest Harvard Institute of Politics youth poll, released today. It’s one of the most comprehensive looks at how young Americans are thinking about politics, and its findings reinforce much of what I’ve been writing about.

The culture war is over. Young Americans are far more focused on the cost of living, corruption, and war over the identity politics that have dominated so much of our political debate.

* Read: The Everyday Issue Election *

And despite how strongly they feel about these issues, fewer young people say they plan to vote in 2026 in either of the last two midterms.

• Just 33% of young Americans say they’ll definitely vote in November, down from 2018 and 2022 – two midterms that saw high youth voter turnout.

• The biggest drop is from young Republicans. Only 29% of “non-MAGA” young Republicans plan to vote.

This mirrors something I’ve been hearing in conversations with young voters – some of the same people who supported Trump in 2024 are already disappointed with what they’ve gotten, but that doesn’t mean they’re ready to embrace Democrats. A decent chunk feel politically homeless.

But there is some encouraging news for Democrats.

• The Harvard poll shows they have a 21 point advantage with registered young voters.

• That tracks with new analysis from the New York Times showing young voters moving sharply toward Democrats since 2024.

But the biggest mistake Democrats could make in the next few weeks (and years) is assuming that young voters moving away from Republicans means they’ve become Democrats.

That’s not what I’m hearing. Young voters are frustrated with the status quo, and they’re willing to change their minds when politicians don’t deliver. Some of the same voters who helped elect Trump in 2024 are now reconsidering their support, but that doesn’t mean Democrats have won them over, and even among young people who prefer Democrats, there’s a big difference between supporting a party’s ideology and being motivated enough to show up and vote.

Plus, as a reminder, a Trump-dominated political ecosystem is our generation’s only point of reference.

On my radar – TX, GA, MI, Talarico, Ossoff and El-Sayed

But while young voters nationally aren’t as amped about this election as they have been in recent years, there are a few states where we could see high youth voter turnout, thanks to motivational candidates.

The names that keep coming up in our focus groups are James Talarico, Jon Ossoff, and Abdul El Sayed. And I wouldn’t be surprised if young people turnout in higher numbers in Texas, Georgia, and Michigan than in other states.

But don’t be fooled by why that is. Yes, all three of these candidates have a social media savviness that’s boosted their campaigns. But it’s not their social media savvy alone that’s resonating.

1. They’re authentic.

They each have a distinct and authentic style of politicking — all three of these men are very different, and their differing personalities work for them in their own states.

2. They’ve leaned into key issues.

In a focus group on the day of the Michigan primary, young voters in Michigan told me they appreciated El-Sayed’s emphasis on healthcare. Talarico and Ossoff have both focused on corruption.

3. They’ll go anywhere and talk to anyone.

Jubilee, Fox News, town halls, campaign rallies, Austin City Limits Music Festival… each of these candidates have successfully blended in-person engagements with on-camera moments, turning their on-the-ground engagement into viral clips. These moments allow those in the room — and viewers in their feeds — to feel like they’re there in the moment, which is different from filming in front of a green screen or manufacturing a made-for-social clip in hopes of gaining attention.

4. And they’re also taking the election seriously.

This is, perhaps, the most underrated quality that young voters have been telling me they care about.

Don’t believe me? Here’s what I’m hearing.

Read more

Here are five I’m paying attention to this week.

1. President Donald Trump’s approval rating is 28% with young men under 30, according to the latest NBC News Decision Desk poll. Why this matters: In 2024, young men backed Trump by a 1-point margin, according to NBC exit polls at the time. So this marks a stark swing in the other direction.

2. Half of Gen Z says they’re open to a romantic relationship with AI, according to data from the Harris Poll. Why this matters: Gen Z has a love hate relationship with AI but is using it everyday — often because it’s easier than not using it. But while AI’s utility for work and school is obvious, ceding personal relationships to chatbots could have drastic consequences, especially for a generation that grew up amid Covid with already-stunted social skills.

3. Young men are still Obama-pilled. The former president has a 64% approval rating among young men, according to Puck reporting of data from Speaking with American Men. Why this matters: As we wrote about last spring, Gen Z is anti-establishment but loves Obama, and not just because they’re nostalgic. He’s an anti-dote to Trump and represents a bygone political era and version of masculinity that young men are craving.

4. Nearly half (48%) of Gen Z is part of an online community, according to a new Pew report. Why this matters: As much as Gen Z is leaning into its IRL renaissance, they’ll always be digital natives and still find use in forming relationships online.

5. More than 4 in 10 Gen Zers (41%) say “texting and emailing is draining,” according to Quad from The Harris Poll, compared to 26% of all Americans. Why this matters: Something that was supposed to decrease the friction of a phone call is now perceived as actually more difficult. And as a voice-note stan myself, I must say, I can relate.

Noteworthy Reads & Watches

Reads: The Case for the Entry Level Boyfriend, Sadie Kargman for The Cut, ‘You Barely Understand Regular Money’: Why Young Men Keep Gambling, Victoria Guida for POLITICO, Has Luxury Lost its Hold on Youth Culture?, Joe Bobowicz for Vogue Business, Lance Oppenheim Is Going Places , Alex Barasch for Vulture.

Watches: Today I joined for a conversation about Gen Z in the midterms. You can watch it here. And last week, I joined and for a conversation about her new book, ‘I Disagree’: Winning Arguments Without Losing Friends. You can watch it here.

Everyone should read Jessica’s new book, which you can order here!!

Want to partner with us? Email hello@theupandup.us

Icymi: A tough entry-level job market and continued inflation have contributed to my generation’s sense of financial gloom. We know this feeling is reshaping young people’s politics and where they choose to live.

But we’re now just weeks away from the midterm elections. And more than before, a sense that everything is just too damn expensive is impacting even their most routine spending habits.

Because I know this is coming… Yes, social media is crowded with examples of young people spending money on things that seem unnecessary – a $14 fro-yo, $25 trendy eye patches, or the $8 iced coffee they might even take into a job interview. But offline, where young people are not performatively posting their sweet treats, I’m hearing a different story.

Since June, we’ve asked our community where they’re feeling the biggest financial pinch. The results were concerning from the start — things like rent, gas, and tuition have crept up in costs, but so has the cost of travel and hanging out with friends (so much so that some young people are Klarna-maxxing their social lives).

Now there’s an even more alarming trend. Lately, I’ve been struck by how many respondents are telling us that groceries are their biggest financial concern. This isn’t a one-off thing. I’ve heard it from twenty-somethings across the country — in all phases of life.

The data backs this up.

A whopping 90% of students who had completed at least one year of college reported cutting back on buying food or skipping meals to afford something else, according to a recent survey by snack brand Nature’s Garden and Wired Research. And 20% of Gen Zers have either applied or thought about applying to food stamps, according to an Intuit Credit Karma survey from June.

And the fact that young people are struggling to afford their groceries is undoubtedly having a real effect on how they feel about the general state of things.

This week’s Fox News poll found that 43% of adults under 30 are “not at all” satisfied with the state of things in the country and 46% said their family’s financial situation is worse today than it was two years ago.

That’s surely related to why there’s been a surge in young people’s support for socialism. The same poll found that 47% of adults under 30 have a “strongly” or “somewhat” favorable view of socialism, while just 28% have a “strongly” or “somewhat” favorable view of capitalism.

As I’ve said before:

Being unable to afford groceries is, perhaps, the most mundane example of this generational reality.

The jury’s still out on whether or not this will manifest into votes in November. If young people do vote, this general frustration with the status quo is a good sign for Democrats, who have the upper hand when it comes to issues of affordability, given that they’re *not* the party in power. But that’s not enough. And if young people don’t believe candidates can bring down costs, I’m not sure they’re going to vote at all.

Here’s what we’re hearing.

Read more

Young adults are always the most transient. But the states Gen Z are leaving and entering tell us a lot about affordability in the country.

California and New Jersey lost the most Gen Zers, according to the data, while South Carolina saw the biggest gain.

Alongside South Carolina, Missouri, Washington D.C., Tennessee, Arizona and Washington saw jumps in its Gen Z adult population. And, interestingly enough, 19,287 Gen Zers moved from California into Texas (meanwhile, 13,362 moved from Texas to California).

A large part of Gen Z’s migration was thanks to higher education, according to the analysis, which found that 4 in 10 Gen Zers who moved state lines in 2024 were in college.

But that’s not the only factor. As the report’s author Matt Schulz put it:

“Where you live can absolutely have an impact and it can make a lot of sense for Gen Z to take advantage of some of the flexibility that they might have in pursuit of a cheaper place to live,” Schulz told Realtor.com.

So let’s be real. Amid today’s affordability crisis, money plays a huge role in where young people want to live.

On My Radar

We’re three weeks away from election day and it’s becoming more and more clear that these four stats show how Gen Z sees the midterms:

1. ECONOMIC ANXIETY: 50% of 18-29-year-olds are personally affected by inflation (Harvard IOP)

2. AI ANXIETY: 55% are “more concerned than excited about AI” (Pew)

3. DISTRUST: Trust in government “always” or ”most of the time” hasn’t topped 30% since 2007 (Pew)

4. BROKEN STATUS QUO: 53% support socialism, while just 45% support capitalism (Cato)

Calling all brides… 💍

As a 2026 bride, I’ve seen first hand just how all-consuming the wedding process can feel. I’m curious how others are feeling. If you’re a 2026/2027 bride please take our survey. And if you know someone who is, please send it their way.

SURVEY HERE

Noteworthy Reads, Watches, and Finds

Reads: ‘We’re not asking for luxury’: School protestors in Paris suburb feel abandoned by French state, Angelique Chrisafis for The Guardian.The High Schooler Waiting on Ralph’s Call, Samuel Hine for The Cut. Teens Who Can’t Put Down TikTok and Instagram Are Losing Their Sense of Time, Julie Jargon for The Wall Street Journal.

Watches: The Ziwe Hasan Piker interview that seems like it could be satire, except that it’s not.

Listens: The Wall Street Journal’s ‘The New Youth Vote’ podcast (featuring a cameo from me).

Finds: These Kitsch mini ice facial rollers have been saving me, big time. They also just feel really good.

Want to partner with us? Email hello@theupandup.us

A 20-point drop in young adults’ well-being since 2010

But this isn’t a Covid story. It’s about technology. Something important happened at the start of Covid — Gen Z’s TikTok use surged and the algorithmic for-you-page revolutionized social media for good. Enter the endless scroll.

Here’s the takeaway: This generation is ready for relief.

They know they’re unwell, they just don’t know how to fix it. Every young person I talk to is searching for ways to improve their mental wellbeing, but it’s hard when the entire economy is centered around the very tech they blame for their misery.

This has created a palpable sense of nostalgia among Gen Z, which has manifested in this generation’s culture, fashion, art, politics, social lives and obsession with the year 2016. This hunger for a ‘before-time’’ has also led to a rebuke of technology (mainly algorithms and AI) in exchange for a generational obsession with everything in person or around other people.

*Read: Are lines the new third space? or The summer Gen Z learned how to have fun*

As our intern Emilia writes:

The way I see it, the drop in young adults’ life ratings tells a bigger story. It’s only a foundation for understanding how my generation is feeling, helping to explain the counterculture taking shape around us. This summer, we saw in-person events trending, and it’s obvious to me why so many of us are over-valuing those experiences. When connection is slipping, we hold on tightly to showing up in person, as a way of taking back what the data says we’ve lost. It seems that’s the age we are in now; this fall, I’ve seen “phone-free” yoga nights, craft-ernoons, and hiking trips all over my college campus. Having participated in them myself, I can faithfully attest that there’s a stronger form of connection that emerges without the social crutch of a phone. People are choosing these activities over scrolling to rebuild community with intentionality, and I’d argue that’s a part of the story we need to pay more attention to.

Every generation of twenty-somethings faces its share of conflict, crisis, and economic instability. Millennials came of age in a recession, when the job market was notoriously bad. But data point after data point shows that Gen Z feels worse off — even since just six years ago.

Along with Covid came a buzzy conversation about mental health and it’s now far more socially okay to not be okay. That, of course, has its pros. It also means members of Gen Z may be more willing than prior generations of young adults to admit the pitfalls of their personal plight. Our generation has a reputation for being blunt, speaks off the cuff, and with little filter (a tone that’s incentivized on the platforms and by the very algorithms that have dictated our lives for the past six years).

Covid scarred this generation in ways we’re only starting to understand. But it’s really not just Covid. It’s the never-ending news cycle, economic anxiety, AI anxiety, inflation, threat of war, and political chaos that’s followed. Plus, there’s the constant comparison of ourselves to our peers across every metric of “success” — work, school, our social lives, physical appearance, and even ironically our mental health.

To better understand why Gen Z teens and twenty-somethings today feel worse off than the generation that came before them — and to hear their ideas for solutions to get out of the funk — we went straight to the source.

Here’s what they told us.

Read more

There’s a mother-daughter duo building a skincare clinic for a generation who grew up getting health and wellness advice on TikTok — or now ChatGPT.

Dr. Amy Wechsler and her daughter Zoe opened their first acne-only clinic, ‘Spotless,’ on New York City’s Upper East Side last November. Less than a year later, they’ve opened a second location in Greenwich Village.

The walk-in skincare clinic is built around the reality that dermatologist appointments are both hard to get and expensive, and figuring out what to actually do about your skin means sorting through an overwhelming amount of advice online. Spotless quickly gained attention for making ‘the pimple shot’ — a steroid injection that reduces inflammation — available on demand for $100.

Spotless was built against the backdrop of teens and twenty-somethings getting more of their skincare advice from social media, where medical expertise, paid influencer recommendations, and misinformation can all show up in the same feed.

Dr. Amy Wechsler, a board-certified clinician in both dermatology and psychiatry, along with a team of licensed clinicians, offers an alternative: medical expertise, fast.

In some ways, it’s the GLP-ification of skincare. A generation that has watched medicine transform weight loss is increasingly comfortable looking to medical interventions for other problems too — and expecting solutions that work quickly. The fact that Spotless has already opened a second location says a lot about the appetite for on-demand skincare. It also raises questions about who young people are turning to for answers, what they’re willing to spend money on, how a new generation of medical treatments has changed expectations for what can be fixed — and how quickly.

I spoke with Zoe Wechsler, the Gen Z face and brain of Spotless, about it all. Here’s our conversation, edited for clarity and brevity.

I saw a funny reel the other day about how millennials covered a pimple vs. how Gen Z covers a pimple. Where do you see generational divides in perceptions of, and stigma around, acne?

ZW: Our biggest patient demographic is 23 to 39. We see that spectrum. We sell Clinique acne safe concealer at Spotless and a lot of the patients on the older end will want to cover up [a mark] before they leave. If you have a pimple shot or an extraction, you’re a little bit red for like an hour or two. They’ll want to conceal it, or they want to use a pimple patch, or they’ll have a pimple patch packet of the clear ones in their bag just to cover it. And then our Gen Z, younger patients are just like, ‘No, I’m good.’ They’re like, ‘I’m fine.’ Or they’re like, ‘I have stars at home. I’ll put them on.’ It’s very much celebratory versus the, ‘this is such an inconvenience mindset.’

Your customers are seeing their skin on a screen all day. How has technology shaped our generation’s relationship to our skin?

ZW: It makes it a lot worse because we see patients all the time who come in and are like, ‘Do you see this on my face?’ And our clinicians can look with a magnifying mirror and they basically see nothing. We’re so much more hyper-sensitive to tiny things that come up on our face. And a lot of the time a pimple is so small that you can’t inject it safely or you can’t extract it. And if you weren’t seeing other girls’ faces all day on your phone or filming your own face, you wouldn’t even notice it if it’s that small. So I think it makes us more nit-picky, which I think can be damaging, especially if you’re someone who’s prone to picking. You can create scars.

What’s the worst piece of viral skincare advice you’ve had to undo?

ZW: Two things. Bone smashing. And beef tallow, which isn’t necessarily so damaging. It’s just disgusting and will make you break out more.

*Note from The Up and Up: For those unfamiliar, bone smashing, i.e. smashing one’s face with a jaw or hammer, hit the mainstream when controversial internet personality Clavicular, notorious for looksmaxxing, brought the term and dangerous practice into Gen Z’s vernacular.*

Do you see a gender divide in your clientele? Do young men come in, are they as prone to coming in — or is there a stigma there? And is the bone smashing more prevalent amongst young men than young women?

ZW: Yes. But the beef tallow is definitely split. When we were building the brand, it had to be gender neutral, because acne affects everybody no matter your age, your race, your gender, your socioeconomic status. Everybody gets acne. So you have to feel like you belong here, because you do belong. Everybody with acne belongs at Spotless. We try to do a lot of demystifying on social, [telling] guys to come in.

A lot of young people get skincare advice from TikTok/Instagram creators before doctors. Are you competing with that ecosystem or building on it?

ZW: I think we’re trying to set ourselves apart in that ecosystem by using science and clinical evidence as opposed to being like wellness-ey and not having any science to back us up. When we discuss curing acne, some people don’t agree with using medicine to treat acne, but it’s hard to argue with science. My mom’s a dermatologist and a psychiatrist. We use her voice and her platform and her 20 plus years of experience in treating acne as our voice. And because she’s a child and adolescent psychiatrist as well, she can speak really well to younger people without feeling like they’re being talked down to or judged.

Your premise is that you can’t get a dermatologist appointment when you need one. Is that a Gen Z problem, or a healthcare-system problem?

ZW: It’s a healthcare system problem. We have patients of all ages who come in, patients well into their 30s, who’ve been dealing with acne since their teens, who have been to 10 different doctors or tried to get into derms, and they hit roadblocks everywhere they go and they just give up. A lot of patients of ours have just given up on treating their acne which is really sad and not necessary. But you know, you try to see a dermatologist in network and you wait three months to see them and they spend four minutes with you. You don’t get answers, you don’t get a full picture of your family history, of medicines you’re on, etc. You’re not going to get comprehensive acne care. So, that’s a big thing. And then even if you do have a dermatologist that you like, it’s just hard to see them, especially for pimple shots.

Walk me through the cost of this — do you take insurance? Is this something you’re trying to make more accessible for people who can’t afford it?

ZW: We don’t take insurance. We provide every patient with a filled out super bill insurance receipt that they can submit to their insurance provider. Our consultations are $275. It’s our most expensive appointment.

Are you seeing young patients treat your service like other splurges or priorities in wellness culture?

ZW: We’re seeing it as a priority. We are a medical clinic and so we are different from botox and other aesthetic clinics, different from a massage or acupuncture. We try to really position ourselves as medical, but we’re as accessible as any other wellness studio. So I do see patients prioritizing it.

Gen Alpha and skincare are somewhat synonymous. What’s the youngest you’ve seen someone come in? And how/why do you think skin care differs even between Gen Z and Gen Alpha?

ZW: We can treat patients as young as eight. We haven’t yet. I believe our youngest patient right now is 11. But we definitely treat young people. Acne starts around puberty. So that can be at varying ages for different people, but a lot of them, they come in and our clinicians our first question when you’re really young is, ‘What do you do with your skin?’ And a lot of the time it’s just starting with, ‘Do you wash your face with soap?,’ starting really basic, because a lot of the time they’re just so young they haven’t started or they don’t know. So they come with the parent and we discuss what they are doing. Sometimes the kids don’t wash their face, they don’t put water on their face, they don’t get their face wet in the shower. So, we really just start there. And some kids come in and they’re using a hundred products that they convince their mom to let them buy. So, it’s usually one of the two. It’s either toning down the amount of products and seeing what’s actually going on or introducing a gentle skin cleanser and going from there.

Do you see differences in how Gen Alpha thinks about their skin compared to Gen Z?

ZW: Gen Alpha is more parent led, Gen Z is more TikTok led.

We’re in an optimization era: GLP-1s, wearables, AI. Everything that used to take time now has a shortcut, including a pimple. Is Spotless part of that trend?

ZW: I think the accessibility of pimple shots is part of that trend. It used to be you could only get pimple shots if you knew someone, you had an in with your derm, or you were a celebrity. [Now] you can be in and out of Spotless in 15 minutes if you need, if you are in a rush. So that I think is part of it. People do try to make it quicker in terms of starting an [acne] medicine at a high dose to optimize it. That doesn’t always work and that can lead to uncomfortable side effects. Nothing dangerous but not great. But I do think that the accessibility of a pimple shot is totally part of that.

And what does this say about our generation’s expectation for instant gratification?

ZW: I think it makes it tough when you’re talking medically because acne medication, regardless of how far we’re advancing, takes six to eight weeks to start working.

What’s it like to be the Gen Z co-founder of a business with your mother? Where do your instincts clash?

ZW: The funny thing about working with my mom is probably not what you expect me to say, which is that she’s always right. But we agree on so much, I think because we have this shared mission of curing as much acne as possible. On a rare occasion, if we’re disagreeing on something strongly, that means that something is pretty important. If we’re really disagreeing, if we see something completely differently, we just hear the other one out. We sometimes bring in our COO’s opinion or we bring in the clinical team or our social media team just to have another opinion. But usually we actually do agree because all we want to do is take care of people, and so the nitty-gritty of that can be challenging, but we do agree.

On My Radar

While Gen Z voters tell us they’re ready to move beyond the gender war, the gender gap still exists, according to a new poll from The 19th* and YouGov which found discrepancies amongst young men and women on a range of topics.

The divide in young men and women’s POV is old news. What's more noteworthy to me is the significant share of young women rejecting feminism and longing for a trad-lifestyle.

ABORTION: 69% of Gen Z women believe “abortion should be mostly or always legal,” while just 51% of Gen Z men say the same.

TRADITIONAL GENDER ROLES: 43% of Gen Z women believe “society would benefit from a return to traditional gender roles,” while 51% of Gen Z men say the same.

FEMINISM: 49% of Gen Z women “consider themselves a feminist,” while just 20% of Gen Z men say the same.

Noteworthy Reads, Watches & Finds

Reads:

• The Post-Me Too Generation Gets Its Me Too Moment, Zoe Yu for New York Magazine

• Sam Altman Sees the Future. Are We In It?, Mark Guiducci for Vanity Fair

• Mayors Are Filming Videos, Mamdani-Style, With Varying Degrees of Cringe, Julie Bosman for The New York Times

Watches: SNL…. I was so excited for the new season to start. My fiancé and I have a tradition of watching it every Sunday (or this week, on Monday). Some sketches don’t hit. Yet we still turn it on every week. I’m a big fan of the Gen Z cast members getting their moment — Marcelo Hernandez, Jane Wickline, and Kam Patterson.

Finds: Speaking of skincare… I’m constantly re-upping my supply of Sofie Pavit everything. Even though summer’s over, I’m wearing their Screentime sunscreen every day (and not just because I’m a redhead).

Want to collaborate? Email hello@theupandup.us

There’s less than five weeks until the 2026 midterm elections, and things are heating up in the world of politics. But my generation moves at the speed of the internet, and right now, politics isn’t trending.

According to young people I’ve spoken to in the past few weeks and months, it just feels… exhausting and disappointing.

Last month, I predicted we could see lower youth voter turnout this year than we did in 2018 and 2022, the other two midterms Gen Z’s been eligible to vote. There’s just less electoral energy now than there was back then.

Here’s what I’m hearing.

2018 saw a whole wave of new voters, coming of age amidst a backdrop of urgent social issues like Me Too and March for Our Lives, and it was the first post-Trump election. And 2022 galvanized young voters — especially young women — around reproductive healthcare access post-Dobbs and was a referendum for Republicans after January 6. But the 2026 midterm elections don’t have a hallmark event that young voters are responding to.

Economic anxiety, their primary concern, is more of a constant stress than a specific threat worth an immediate response. Plus, when jobs and inflation are part of the problem, voting can seem like a distraction from one’s daily to-do list — their job, their classes, taking care of their family.

Don’t get me wrong. Young people are absolutely paying attention. They’re hyper plugged in and see alarming headlines all over their feeds, all the time.

But their relationship to politics has changed dramatically in the past couple of years. As AI reshapes the economy, war wages, and inflation rises, their priorities have shifted from social issues to economic concerns. I know this because I’ve been listening to them.

As part of a recent Reality Check with our Gen Z community, we asked respondents to describe their relationship to politics right now, as if it were a person.

In a sign of just how over this all some young people are, one 27-year-old from Washington, D.C. called politics a “toxic all-compassing ex.”

A 19-year-old from Maine, where there’s a crucial Senate race underway, said: “I think I could get to know them better if I had more time.”

Overwhelmingly, there’s a sense that things are rocky, with little transparency or follow through, and it’s pushing young people away.

Here’s what we heard.

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The first-of-its kind partnership is a big deal and signals just how much Gen Z’s media habits are reshaping the industry.

It’s also proof of how legacy media and new media are creating new and necessary alliances to stay relevant in today’s shifting media environment. Both companies will benefit from the other’s audience and exposure. And it’s great for Talarico — a 37-year-old former teacher who has already caught young people’s attention and appeared on Jubilee’s ‘Surrounded’ show last year.

For those unfamiliar, Jubilee is a digital first media company with an exceptionally large YouTube presence (and 11 million YouTube subscribers). Their hallmark ‘Surrounded’ series features a debate between one person against 20 people of a different perspective. Ex. 1 young politician (Rep. Maxwell Frost) vs. 20 boomers, 1 liberal teen vs. 20 Trump supporters, the late Charlie Kirk vs. 25 woke students.

Love it or hate it, Jubilee has cracked the code in catching Gen Z eyeballs.

Jubilee’s heterodox format flies in the face of the curated ‘balance’ CNN panels typically seek out. But the unfiltered nature of their debates get attention — especially from young people.

And while the town hall collaboration with CNN will certainly look different than its typical made-for-Gen-Z social-first show (CNN is airing the town hall first and is responsible for the town hall’s audience as well as all editorial decisions, according to Axios), the partnership confirms that media executives are hungry for modern formats and looking to new media for inspiration.

*READ OUR RELATED PIECE: THE TRUTH ABOUT GEN Z AND THE NEWS*

‘It’s like a cigarette’ — More on Jubilee, and the truth about debate-style videos

Over the years, Jubilee — and the debate style videos the company is now famous for, which are similar in style to videos made by Charlie Kirk — have come up again and again in my focus groups.

Truth is, not all young people are fans of this format (mainly, because they think it’s inflammatory, and it for sure is) — but they’re hyper-aware of Jubilee. It’s everywhere.

In one such focus group, a 26-year-old from New York likened debate videos to nicotine.

A 19-year-old from New York said these videos remind him of a boxing match. “At first it seems interesting, but I agree hot mess is the best way to describe it. It’s super pugilistic. It’s like you’re seeing caricatures of caricatures face each other. It’s not really people. And so I still click on it because there’s something interesting there. Oftentimes I click it, I watch a little bit of it, but then I say I’m done with it.”

And a 22-year-old from Washington, D.C. complained that the whole culture of debate videos, “especially the type Jubilee posts,” is the problem with social media in general.

But for all the flack Jubilee and debate videos get, last night, I spoke to a class at NYU and everyone (everyone!!) was familiar with Jubilee. That’s rare in today’s crowded media ecosystem. And it speaks volumes about why CNN is teaming up with them.

A Few Thoughts

It would be hard to write a Gen Z newsletter today without referencing what’s now being referred to as ‘The Cornell 7,’ a 2024 sexual assault case, which was brought to light after The Cornell Sun (Cornell’s student newspaper), covered a newly filed lawsuit alleging a victim had been gang raped at the time at the Chi Phi fraternity.

Disappointment with Cornell’s administration, the Tompkins County district attorney, law enforcement in the area, and men in general is plastered all over my social media feed, mostly thanks to young women who are rightfully outraged by the description of the case — and the punishment the young men involved in the situation received at the time, which allegedly included writing essays.

Unfortunately, high-profile sexual assault cases like these are not abnormal — and certainly not new for members of a generation who grew up in the #MeToo era and, in many ways, saw little structural change. I mean, look at the White House. As a result, plenty of young women are still pissed, but they don’t necessarily expect anything to change.

“Women have honestly exhausted so many of the options available to make this less likely, and at this point, women online and those I’ve talked to in person are just fatigued by all of it,” one of our ambassadors told me today.

“As someone who was in a fraternity, it’s appalling that the punishment was only an essay,” said one of our young male ambassadors.

I’m left thinking about this post from Avalon Fenster, otherwise known as @InternshipGirl, asking for the men in her life to weigh in.

Noteworthy Reads

• The New American Dream Is Enjoying Life, Michelle Amponsah and Zijia Song for Bloomberg

• Middle-Schoolers Are Seeking Out AI Friends Instead of Real Human Ones, Julie Jargon for The Wall Street Journal

• The 7 Gen Alpha Slang Terms Adults Are Googling Most in 2026, Ashley Fike for Vice News

• He May Be the Most Extroverted Actor Ever, Callie Holtermann for The New York Times

Want to partner with us? Email hello@theupandup.us

Should a job applicant bring an iced coffee to a job interview?

In case you missed it, a debate over that very question is currently playing out online after a corporate recruiter, @caitlinrecruiter, posted a TikTok blasting “her Gen Z candidates” for showing up to job interviews with iced coffee, because apparently, that’s a thing.

@caitlinrecruiterCoffee & interviews … finish it beforehand 😅

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The post and most of the commentary that’s followed seems unserious. It feels like a silly and frivolous thing to argue about. But it’s part and parcel of the larger conversation about Gen Z and jobs — and a perfect example of the problem with how we talk about Gen Z and our habits.

This type of discourse is *exactly* what contributes to a stigma about my generation that is both unproductive and flat out wrong. As others have pointed out, it’s akin to the conversation about millennials and avocado toast, which many now look back on with regret.

It also assumes that all of Gen Z thinks it’s ok to show up to an interview with an iced beverage, and I’m telling you, that’s really not the case.

There are certainly qualms with how Gen Z approaches the job market — 20% of Gen Z have brought a parent to a job interview, according to career site Zety. So I’m not sure whether having an iced coffee in hand or not is what we should obsess over.

FWIW, I’d never show up to a job interview with an iced coffee. I’m way too type A for that. And when I explained this whole debacle to my mother, she quickly replied:

But I’m not alone, and apparently my mother wasn’t the only Gen Xer to parent her Gen Z kids this way.

I spent the past few days checking in with our Gen Z community to see how they *really feel* about the iced coffee question.

And most say they wouldn’t bring an iced coffee to a job interview either.

Why this matters, really

The controversy about whether or not young people should bring an iced beverage to a job interview really has *very little* to do with iced coffee.

Instead, it’s about:

a) our shifting corporate culture, which hasn’t looked the same since Covid,

b) the current job market, which is bleak for entry-level job applicants — just 30% of college grads got a job in their desired field last year, an 11-point drop from 2024,

and c) growing generational divides about cultural norms and behavior.

The bigger story here centers on a growing disconnect in expectations between today’s youngest employees and those in the position to hire them — and how those expectations are communicated.

For Gen Z, the world around us is changing at a faster-than-ever speed thanks to macroeconomic shifts like the introduction of social media, Covid, and AI, yet adults still expect our generation to play by their set of rules — rules that stood the test of time for years but have not kept up with the biggest inflection points of the past decade.

Take, for example, that fact that (as a friend pointed out to me in my research this week) the whole conversation about bringing iced coffee to a job interview feels dated, because since Covid, most young people aren’t going to in-person job interviews anyway. In fact, one of the biggest criticisms of the job search I hear from young people today is that the modern hiring process is frustrating and totally not transparent. Namely, it’s too digital and rarely includes face-to-face dialogue.

Read our May report — I Applied to 70 Jobs: Meet the Class of 2026

Zooming out, as our intern Emilia put it, when she thinks about the iced coffee debate:

I asked her to explain. More on that below.

Here’s what our Gen Z community has to say about the iced coffee debacle — and what it really signals.

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What they *really* mean is that something looks fake, that someone is being fake, or that someone is acting robotic, i.e. showing little emotion.

Gen Z’s AI angst is manifesting in their lingo.

This comes as the majority of adults under 30 report feeling more concerned than excited about AI — for the first time since Pew Research started tracking that sentiment.

One viral example of the latest vernacular trend was over the summer, when Love Island fans nicknamed the show’s Corbin ‘CorbinGPT’ because of his machine-like mannerisms.

But it’s everywhere.

@annazynskihearing thats so AI while watching tangled was something i never thought id experience #ai

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Just a couple of weeks ago, we declared that the counterculture is human as anything real, tangible, and decided by an actual person instead of a robot (or an algorithm) is trending with Gen Z.

It’s not that young people today are anti-progress or even anti-AI. They’re using it every day. It’s just that as AI becomes more and more ubiquitous in their everyday lives, they’re increasingly sensitive to and skeptical of anything that feels fake, produced, or obviously artificial.

Keeping Up

This week, The Up and Up’s ambassadors went on a mission to see what comes to mind when people their age think of AI.

I think that’s how most people feel.

Here’s what we heard.

On My Radar

Retail brand Pacsun released a youth trend report with survey insights from young Americans ages 11-24 and it’s chock-full of details about Gen Z and Gen Alpha’s priorities. Three dynamics stood out to me most:

• Asked their life goals by age 35, having a stable job is the top ambition, while meeting a life partner, getting married, and having kids ranked last.

• Young women’s hobbies are centered on art, storytelling, and social media, while young men are more into gaming.

• AI is making it harder for young people to plan for the future. The survey asked respondents about their “careers of interest” and — even if by a small margin — across every single career (including becoming an influencer, artist, skilled trades or hands-on worker, tech professional, and entrepreneur or startup founder), respondents were less likely than last year to say they are interested in the job listed. The only reply that saw more responses than last year was “not sure yet/still figuring it out.”

Noteworthy Reads

• The ‘unprofessional’ item Gen Z brings to interviews could be costing them jobs, Andrea Palladino for The New York Post

• The rising price tag of romance, Avery Lotz for Axios

• ‘Don’t spend $20 on an acai bowl’: gen Z are shunning private equity’s restaurant takeover, Alaina Demopoulus for The Guardian

• College Is Coming Apart, Ian Bogost for The Atlantic

Want to partner with us? Email hello@theupandup.us

Lately, it feels like everyone online is fixated on one of two extremes. Gen Z either parties too much or not at all. But that’s not really how young people are living.

In Tuesday’s newsletter, I linked to a New York Times story, ‘Trading Keggers for Wellness Darties’ about the rise of wellness events on college campuses as an alternative to drinking and traditional frat parties. It’s the latest example of Gen Z balancing wellness with going out.

This discourse is all over my own Instagram feed.

I recently wrote about how I feel like my generation, especially the youngest of us, has finally, finallyyyyyy learned how to have fun again.

But that doesn’t mean that Gen Z’s wellness obsession has gone anywhere.

*Read our related pieces*

• Skinny culture isn’t really about being skinny anymore

• The supercharged era

• Who says Gen Z is done partying

• A generation of late bloomers

Two things can be true at once.

Wearables, GLP-1s, and wellness culture are everywhere (and they have real, proven, and life-changing benefits) — just as Gen Z is coming out on the other side of a loneliness epidemic and embracing in-person everything. As a result, young adults are constantly optimizing their health and bodies — and also going out to have fun. Trying to do both can be exhausting.

Curious to learn more about how this is actually playing out, I asked some of our ambassadors, all high-school and college students. What I heard was less about a choice between wellness and partying than an attempt to do it all. Connection is driving both, but so are new pressures around health, appearance, and what it means to be having it together.

MAHA culture has certainly played into this. And the “ozempicdemic” is real, even among high schoolers.

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I’ve been thinking a lot about what that means for Gen Z. As entry level, white collar jobs get squeezed, people are also telling us they want work that gives them something technology can’t — purpose, responsibility, and a chance to become good at something. That made me curious about teaching — and service more broadly — as a first job in the AI era.

I recently sat down with Aneesh Sohoni, CEO of Teach For America and a TFA alum himself. We talked about why TFA tends to see more interest when the traditional job market gets tougher, whether young people who once might have gone into consulting or tech are considering different paths, and why he thinks Gen Z is increasingly asking not just “What job will I have?” but “What will I become?”

We also got into how AI is changing teaching itself, what he sees as the difference between the Gen Zers entering classrooms today and those from five or six years ago, and why a generation shaped by social media, COVID and now AI may have a very different relationship with work and community.

Here’s our conversation, edited for clarity and brevity. You can also watch our full conversation on our YouTube channel. Make sure you subscribe :)

I’ve written a lot about Gen Z and hopemaxxing, as I call it. I’m all in on this. There’s a massive opportunity when you think about the role that work plays in cultivating hope, purpose, and a sense of fulfillment. A TFA job is the first job that a young person has. In your eyes, what does a good first job look like in the age of AI?

AS: In the age of AI, but also broadly, a great first job serves as a leadership launch pad. This generation is craving a desire to make a tangible impact. And as I think about the opportunity a Teach for America teacher has to go into a classroom to work with students and to support them and help them on their journey, that’s a really powerful and incredible way to know if you’re making a difference in the world.

I hear oftentimes from this generation that they’re a little worried about working from their parents’ basement or going and working in a big skyscraper, not because it won’t be rewarding for them financially, but because they’re worried they won’t have the opportunities to build leadership skills. The idea of working with students, setting goals with them, motivating them to achieve those goals, those are very real leadership skills.

My sister’s a Teach for America teacher, and I’ve had a first-hand glimpse at what that looks like. But zooming out, who are the types of young people you’re typically seeing become a Teach for America teacher?

AS: This is a [group] that is purpose driven. They really view their role as having an opportunity to carry forward a vision that they have for the future, not just for themselves, but for their peers, for the country. At a moment when we’re seeing increased stratification – those who have access to opportunity are getting more, those who have historically had less are getting even less, and the gap is widening — you see people who really want to tackle that issue head on.

I think about my own experience joining the corps when I had the opportunity to just be in community with other teachers, to get to know them better. They became some of my best friends. I ended up marrying a Teach for America alum. The idea of being with others in that way is really powerful.

You’re seeing people join who understand that this is a very real opportunity to make an impact immediately on students. You can actually create real change starting with your first job and the proximity you have to students and families working in low-income communities. You’re finding people who themselves are learners.

As entry level, white collar roles get squeezed, is Teach for America seeing a shift in candidates who are applying? Are you becoming more of an option for young people who might have gone into a field like consulting or tech five years ago?

AS: It’s always been true that our recruitment efforts are countercyclical with the labor market. And so when there are challenges in the labor market, more people are interested in Teach for America. That said, I wouldn’t say that’s the only driver of interest in joining Teach for America. We’re seeing people who are asking very real questions about what it means to take on a first job. Rather than asking the question of, ‘What job will I have?,’ they’re asking the question of, ‘What will I become and what problems do I want to solve?’ These are very different questions.

Thinking specifically about the role of teaching in the AI era, if AI can tutor, grade, even generate lesson plans, what is the case that a 22-year-old or 23-year-old teacher is more essential now and not less? And how are you reframing that pitch to the young people you’re recruiting?

Having been a teacher myself, I deeply believe that AI cannot replace teachers. And I believe that because at the essence of what excellent teaching looks like is a relationship between an adult and a student. Students are looking for a sense of belonging, a sense of connection in school. They’re looking for an adult who can motivate them, help them achieve their biggest goals and wildest ambitions.

I think about myself as a student as well. I remember when I was entering ninth grade, I felt very lost going into high school. I wasn’t sure if I belonged in school or who my people were. And it wasn’t until I met my ninth grade debate teacher, Ms. Sarff, who believed in me before I believed in myself, that I started to feel like I did belong.

There’s a lot of potential if teachers are given the right training on how to effectively use AI. Whether to use it, why to use it, how to use it, and when not to use it. There’s a lot of caveats here around AI, I would say, in terms of whether it’ll actually help learning. There is potential if we can get that right. But what it’s not going to do is replace the teacher. In fact, I think it’s going to make teaching even more exciting because teachers will get to focus on the main reason they wanted to join the profession in the first place, which is the relationships with students.

There are teachers in The Up and Up’s Gen Z community who have taken on side hustles and second jobs to afford being a teacher. Similarly, we’ve heard from students who might want to pursue teaching but don’t think it’s financially feasible. How are you working to increase access to who gets to be a teacher?

AS: We’re trying to make it a more financially viable option. On our own, we are able to provide transition grants to our teachers to support them as they get started so that they can think about what it means to pay for rent or afford food before they get their first paycheck as a teacher. We also have a partnership with AmeriCorps, so all of our teachers as an earned benefit for completing two years of service, will get approximately $15,000 in an education award that they can use to either pay back past loans or debt or to apply toward future educational opportunities. We’re going to continue to try to make the financial viability of this profession possible. And there’s a bigger question to be had around what it means for all teachers to have access to a career and a pathway so that they don’t feel like they have to work multiple jobs. They can go all in on the thing that they want to do most.

I talk a lot about the ‘two Gen Zs.’ You’ve seen multiple waves of Gen Z come through Teach for America’s corps. What’s different about the teachers you’re recruiting today versus five or six years ago? Different motivations, different anxieties, or even the K-12 system?

AS: Let’s start with [the] idea of resilience. I think a lot about your typical 22-year-old right now and the journey that they’ve been through in their life. Sometime late-elementary school and middle school, social media became just a central part of their experience, before we knew enough to know about how social media might impact learning. I think about their high school experience where COVID and the pandemic and social isolation came to be. And then I think about their college experience and as they were preparing for work, the AI disruption, global disruptions, economic disruptions all woven together. The fact that they are here and still persevering and have a vision for the future for their country, to me is the definition of resilience. That’s much harder than anything I went through in those same years.

There’s this belief, especially as technology evolves, that we have to be careful. I think this generation generally has accepted that AI is here, but it doesn’t mean they’ve eagerly embraced it. They’re asking really important and critical questions, given the history of technology in education, around what will it actually require if this technology is here for learning to be possible and not get in the way of learning. So I appreciate the skepticism and that they come in with some balance of hope as well.

There’s also this belief that learning can happen anywhere. Perhaps we’ve thought about teaching and learning as happening in the four walls of a classroom or in a school building. But what if we extended that even further? I deeply believe this next generation is going to be the ones that are shaping where teaching and learning goes because they’re not stuck in constructs that that older generations are.

What techniques or strategies are they employing in or outside the classroom as a result of that?

AS: What I’m seeing most with our youngest teachers is this deep desire to just be really good at the fundamentals of what it means to be a teacher. And then from there thinking about what it means to be a teacher in today’s context.

We take our teachers through training on how to think about emerging technologies and AI. So, whether to use AI in the classroom and to clearly describe why they want to use it and then how they want to use it, taking into account the risks that could come with it.

We have one teacher in Michigan who decided to use AI to insert an incorrect step in a math problem rather than have students use AI to solve the problem and then have students analyze the output. We have another teacher who said, ‘How can I use this as a tool to deepen my relationships with students?’ They took all of the students’ interests, put it in AI, and is having AI integrate those interests into the curriculum that they’re teaching so that the students feel more of a sense of connection and belonging with their teacher as well.

It all fundamentally starts with their judgment around how to use the technology.

What’s the biggest misconception about Gen Z teachers?

AS: Broadly, perhaps not even just teaching, the biggest misconception is that the well-being challenges that they face are not real. Perhaps this generation got too soft, or perhaps this generation doesn’t have the same level of grit. I talked about resilience earlier. I think this generation is wise. I think this generation has gone through a lot. We would all seek to do well by listening to them and understanding their motivations.

On My Radar

• The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression rolled out their 2027 campus free speech rankings — their annual look at the schools doing best and worst when it comes to protecting students’ speech. At the top of the list is University of Chicago (no surprise there), while New York University clocks in last.

Noteworthy Reads

• Trading Keggers for Wellness Darties, Madison Malone Kircher for The New York Times

• 10-Year-Old Children Predict The Future, Callie Holtermann for The New York Times

• Quen Blackwell is Coming for Hollywood, Samuel Hine and MAR+VIN for The Cut

• The Kids Yearn for Transparent Tech, Kitty Guo for The Strategist

Interested in working with The Up and Up? Email hello@theupandup.us

The 2026 midterm elections are just weeks away. And while there’s been plenty of attention on Gen Z voters since they swung right in 2024, there’s still a lot that’s misunderstood about this generation.

They’re not just a woke bloc — 2024 proved that. But they’re also not red-pilled MAGA hardliners. And there are core differences in political ideology between older and younger members of Gen Z.

What they’re saying…

To get a better sense of how young voters, including 8.5 million potential first-time voters, are feeling ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, we spoke to them. In a series of nine focus groups and a reality check — one of our qualitative, community surveys — we heard from more than 70 young people, ages 17 to 33 in 28 states and Washington D.C.

The results are laid out in our 2026 Gen Z voter roadmap.

READ THE FULL ROADMAP, THE EVERYDAY ISSUE ELECTION, HERE.

The crux of it is that every midterm election has its theme, and in 2026, it’s about everyday issues.

Since 2016, we’ve been living in the culture war — where our politics have been dominated by topics of race, gender and social issues. In 2020, as Gen Z voters came of age, the culture war was at its peak and it felt like every candidate, race and issue was a reflection of our values.

But today, young voters’ concerns are more material and far less ideological. There’s a common set of issues unifying Gen Zers across the political spectrum: the cost of living, inflation, AI, war, corruption.

They care a lot less about being woke and a lot more about being able to get a job and pay their rent — let alone buy a home. And they’re looking for candidates who get that.

Gen Z voters really just want their politicians to be good, honest people, who work hard for their community and country. That means tackling the cost of living, working on government programs like SNAP and WIC, embracing social policies when it comes to healthcare, jobs, education, and regulating AI. It’s not that complicated. And it’s party agnostic.

Our findings are grouped into five sections:

1. Post culture war and post gender war. Identity politics are a luxury that most people don’t have these days. Instead of divisive social issues, nearly everyone agrees that the top issues are the economy, AI, war, inflation, and corruption.

2. Socialism isn’t the point, social policies are. When young voters support socialist candidates or say they favor socialism writ large, it’s really because the status quo isn’t working. Life feels totally unaffordable, but young people believe that it doesn’t have to be this way. They want the government to provide Americans with a social safety net and endorse policies like universal or at least affordable health care, affordable housing, a higher minimum wage, affordable education, paid family leave, taxes on corporations, etc.

3. Hopemaxxing is trending. There’s a hunger for forward looking policies. Voters want to hear what a candidates’ plan is to fix — rather than maintain — the status quo. And young people are looking for candidates to inspire. They’re tired of candidates who just blame the other side.

4. AI feels out of control… and voters want politicians to take it on. From labels on AI generated content to restrictions for minors and data center moratoriums, young voters on the left and right want AI regulated and see this as a necessary issue for any politician to have a stance on moving forward.

5. Pothole politics is mobilizing Gen Z. Don’t sleep on Gen Z’s appetite for local politics. NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani popularized the term ‘pothole politics’ i.e. the idea that he’s responding to voters’ concerns, even when they’re simple things like fixing potholes. He’s made a habit of fielding these concerns on social media and then posting reply videos showing how he’s addressed them. That boils down to transparency. Issues like infrastructure, potholes, and other local nuisances impact young people’s day to day. At a time when national politics feel impossible to influence, local issues feel more tangible, impactful and moveable. We’re hearing young people talk about local issues and how politicians are — or are not — responding.

READ THE FULL ROADMAP — THE EVERYDAY ISSUE ELECTION — HERE.

A prediction

As part of the roadmap, I’m also making a prediction. There’s less energy than there was in 2022 or 2018. And *unfortunately* I think we could see lower youth voter turnout than other recent midterms as a result.

2018 saw a whole wave of new voters, coming of age amidst a backdrop of urgent social issues like Me Too and March for Our Lives, and was the first post-Trump election. 2022 galvanized young female voters around reproductive healthcare access post-Dobbs and was a referendum for Republicans after January 6. But the 2026 election doesn’t have a hallmark event that young voters are responding to.

How people vote in the midterms will be all about the cost of living, but if young people don’t believe that any of the candidates can make a difference, they may not even show up.

Want to discuss?

Come hang out in The Up and Up’s subscriber chat. I’m ready for your hottest takes and political predictions. You can ask me anything, and I’ll share behind the scenes tidbits from our focus groups that didn’t make the report.

Interested in working with The Up and Up? Email hello@theupandup.us

Before traversing the media ecosystem like she does today, Yemisi served as Chief of Staff for the White House Press Office and as a legislative aide in the Senate. Today, she runs Podium Strategies and is a prominent voice in Democrats’ internal debate about where the party goes from here.

I sat down with Yemisi to get her point-of-view on where Democrats went wrong with young voters — and how to regain their trust.

Here’s our conversation, edited for clarity and brevity. You can also watch our full conversation on our YouTube channel. Make sure you subscribe :)

I feel like you’re everywhere these days. Can you tell us a bit about yourself and what’s informed your point of view over the past few years?

YE: The way that I view the world, I always tell people, is through the lens of having been raised in the bubble of southern Democrats. My parents moved to the states when I was in the fifth grade. We moved to Georgia, and I think the combination of maybe a Clinton heyday and this feeling for the Southeast region of being maybe the epicenter in some sense of energy of Democrats has been my guiding force and informed so much of what I believe in politics. Of — you have a party that takes care and provides for people, that protects its communities, that offers innovation and entrepreneurship lanes that put guardrails on business, but still allow businesses to flourish. So I felt like the America I lived in and what drove my politics was a very pro-capitalist, pro- business, tough-on-crime mentality, and that was a part of the community I come from. Because both of my parents are immigrants, and I would say that for a lot of immigrant communities, that’s your viewpoint. You want your kids to come here and just follow the rules, behave, and you want to do well.

What got you into politics in the first place?

YE: My awakening was with Barack Obama of like, ‘Who is this guy?,’ and ‘Why is he the most interesting thing I’ve seen out of anything that my parents have been playing on CNN?’ So I asked my dad, and mind you, this is like suburbs of Atlanta. This is, for those familiar with Georgia, this is like Paulding County, Cobb County area. Areas that might be looked at now as [Democratic] strongholds. But when when Barack Obama was running, it was just like nobody wanted to talk about Barack Hussein Obama. And I asked my dad if we could hop in the minivan, and if I could take these packets that I’d gotten from one of their regional offices, and if I could just knock on doors and hand out these packets. I mean, it was just like curiosity about door knocking. I’m so glad I did that when I was younger because I don’t think I have the resolve now to go up to people’s doors and knock.. we’re all in such insular environments. I mean, everybody’s got a ring camera, so nobody even comes to the door anymore. But that was really for me, just this like, ‘Wow, you can believe in something, and then you can tell people that you believe in it,’ and just go door to door, and it’s basically legal unless there’s no soliciting sign. But my dad, he’s from Nigeria, and has, I would say, aside from taking the citizenship test, limited knowledge of how government works, how many branches of government [there are], things like that. He was so excited that I was excited about being American and the possibilities that America had, that he drove me around door to door in all these neighborhoods. And people, I mean, they weren’t rude because I was a child, but they weren’t as enthusiastic back then as they might be now if you’re going and you’re door knocking for Jon Ossoff or something. Now that the tides have changed a little bit in Georgia.

That’s a great story. You’ve spent time on both sides of the political apparatus, so to speak, inside the White House — shaping messaging — and on the Hill, and now outside it as a commentator. How does your vantage point shape how you see this current political moment?

YE: It’s interesting now that doing the commentating, it’s like everybody everybody brings in their own perspective. I think everybody has a baseline understanding of government, and then when you layer it with your perspective, and for a lot of people, that perspective is where you grew up, how you see the world, and also where you’ve worked. So I find it such a great advantage having been in Congress and the White House because I tend to give more grace than other people. The hottest thing now is just to totally dump on Congress. But my first year working in Congress was also the first year that Donald Trump was president. I never got to work in the Barack Obama days that inspired me to work in politics.

I know what it’s like when you are that Democratic staffer in a minority in the House and in the Senate where I worked, so I think it ends up giving me a more well-rounded view of what they’re actually going through. And also, sometimes people talk about things. They’re like, ‘Why didn’t this pass?’ And I have to go, ‘Well, let me explain to you how a bill becomes a law and why things take time.’ So it’s helpful, especially in a world where everybody wants results now, I think getting to see it. And when I first worked in the White House, I worked in the Office of Legislative Affairs, so quite literally at the other end of the table of where I had been before. So I’ve gotten to see it from all the different angles of when you start the bill, and then when you’re trying to get the attention of the White House in order to pick up the bill and get the president to support it, all the way through to signing it.

When it comes to your commentary, you’re going anywhere that will listen. You’re willing to talk with people who are not just friendly outlets or who are going to agree with everything that you’re saying. So I’m curious, what is the biggest misconception that people have about what it actually takes to move persuadable voters. How are you having those conversations?

YE: I think Democrats biggest wins could come from the South if they wanted to invest in it, but it’s a lot of hard work to invest in states where you have this preconceived notion that most of the people in the state don’t support Democratic politics.

At one point, the South was a stronghold for the Democratic Party, and I think it could be again. But you have to meet these voters where they are, and that has honestly been one of the biggest blessings of constantly coming down south to do work is that when people are talking about certain things on TV. There is a way that pundits will talk about the south like everybody these is dumb. Like they don’t know what’s good for them.

And one of the things I learned, I learned this on on Fox especially, is I could have a disagreement about what President Trump was doing, but if I started it by saying, ‘Wow, this man’s a total and complete idiot,’ I lost the audience in the very in the very first few seconds when I was speaking. Because one, if I’m on Fox News, these people are not expecting somebody like me to be like the political expert that Fox News picks. Let’s be honest. I’m usually on a panel with men who are maybe a couple decades older, usually white. And so I’m offering a different perspective, but I just want to package it in a way that they will listen to it.

And if you are not giving your opinion or speaking about politics in a way that is digestible to a large audience, I don’t know that anybody’s ever going to actually accept your message. And frankly, having worked in the Biden White House, this was one of our big blinders. We actually had a rule where, like, we didn’t really put a lot of our senior advisors on Fox News because we kind of thought, ‘Well, what’s the point?’ None of these people are going to listen. But now, having been [going] on Fox for more than a year, I can actually say people do listen, and they are actually just as frustrated sometimes as you are. It is really just about how you talk to them about those frustrations.

When I’m thinking about politics, I’m thinking about Gen Z voters. You’re talking about how frustrating it can feel as a voter when you’re basically being talked down to from the moment someone opens their mouths. That happens a lot with young voters. And this is a very swingy generation who does not want to be boxed in by traditional party labels. Do you see moderation in Gen Z’s politics that doesn’t get much airtime, and why do you think it gets overlooked?

YE: It’s easy to say that the younger a generation is, the more left that they are, and that you get more conservative as you get older. But Gen Z is the most fascinating because they really are different on each issue. It used to be you could just be like check, check, check, check, check down the line, down the ticket, and it really didn’t matter. So the format of who a voter was, you didn’t have to get down into the weeds. And with Gen Z, you really have to take it, ‘Okay, do the piece on the economy, and then out of that, take housing,’ because there could be a difference of opinion there. And then even on cultural issues, we have this belief that just because people are younger, they believe anything and everything when it comes to the culture war stuff.

And I actually think that’s been one of the biggest blinders that a lot of Democrats have of like, ‘Oh of course they’re going to be on board with this.’ And it’s like, ‘Well no.’

Yes. And part of Gen Z’s rebuke of feeling boxed in and feeling like their politics were being dictated to them rather than decided on their own really took place when the Democratic Party leaned into identity politics, and it was like just because of someone’s age, or gender, or color of skin, or sexuality, or religion you were supposed to have certain politics. There’s been a real pushback to that. We saw that in 2024. And we’re certainly still seeing that today. You’ve been outspoken about your frustration with identity politics, and there’s a lot of debate right now about whether or not the Democratic Party has actually moved past that era. Have they?

I would love to believe that we have moved past, but then sometimes I’m online, and I’m thinking we’re switching out like names and and identifiers for these different litmus tests. That was to me, the whole part of the woke culture that spread, was we started making checks before we could even support a candidate or think through and it got so irritating when it became okay, ‘Well, do you believe that Black Lives Matter? Okay, well, since you believe that Black Lives Matter, do you believe in defunding the police?’ And you’d have you’d want to have conversations with people of, ‘Wow, let’s separate those two.’ A lot of Black people don’t actually believe in the messaging of defund, and a lot of Black people are actually concerned about how communities will look if if we take out law enforcement, and there’s this misunderstanding of how Black people actually engage with the police and what their beliefs are.

But a lot of damage was done. I mean, I’m incredibly frustrated that there were people who legitimately lost their jobs. I mean, there were award-winning chefs that apologized for making certain dishes because it was culturally insensitive that they made them because they didn’t reflect the historic and ethnic background of the dish. I mean, really, when I talk to people about this, I give these specific examples where I’m like, ‘This really happened to an adult, to a working professional,’ who really didn’t do anything of offense, but everybody got so swept up in this hive mind of who can who can truly outperform the next person, and I almost feel like we’re in that kind of spin cycle again with who can outperform again.

What does that look like now?

YE: I get so surprised where we are on, for instance public safety is one where I think, ‘Wow, we really are at a point where I think we’re coming back to it.’ I thought we were getting to a point where everybody could have conversations about the police, and it didn’t feel like, ‘Oh, okay, the police are racist, the police are pigs, and things like that.’ And I do feel like we’re getting back into that spiral, especially when we talk about our criminal justice system.

International conflict is one that I think gets people stuck, where I’m seeing people running for office in Iowa getting asked about what their position is on Israel and Gaza, and I’m like, we are once again diverting from the point and missing the plot.

Because what does everybody want to focus on? They want to capture those rural voters that Democrats lost, weren’t able to gain back after Barack Obama led the way when it came to places like Iowa, and we really want to capture young people. And I just think that a lot of people are more focused on what is happening here with this economy, and those are the conversations that are actually driving forces in how people vote.

Along those lines, what would it look like in practice for a campaign to build a coalition that doesn’t lead with identity but actually leads with ideas? And is that a message that you see any Democrats currently giving?

YE: If folks were in South Carolina right now, I would ask them, how do you capture the attention of the older Black voter? And the way that you do that is you talk about the hard work that they have done, the hard work in raising their families, in building their foundations and their communities, and how it feels so much harder every day to maintain that. I think if you go to people and you say, ‘Okay, you might not be at the bottom right now, because you don’t ever want to go to people and go look at this small town you live in, look at this rural area, it’s complete crap…’ That’s talking down to people, but, ‘Look at what you have built the pride that you have in building it, and how it feels every single day that the government is just telling you to survive, and at one point you were told that America is the country where people came and they thrived.’ And I’ve seen that with especially this particular demographic here, and also in Georgia, I’ve seen that moves people the most. And I’ll tell you there are a lot of people that have come down to the South and they’ve been able to really connect. People that I’ve actually been quite surprised by.

Rahm Emanuel was one who I’ve actually, speaking of commentating, I was critical of pretty heavily a year ago, and he had some really great interactions in the south, and his entire focus was just on education, remedial math, on getting test scores up, and there were so many moms who talked about him afterwards, and they were like, ‘Yes, I am concerned every day about the education of my child and them falling behind, and not only that, but then they’re not going to get scholarships to school. We’re going to go into debt with college.’ I mean, those kinds of issues are the perfect thing to catapult anyone above everybody else.

I saw when Andy Beshear came down to South Carolina, he did Jim Clyburn‘s fish fry, and openly talked about his faith, which I think a lot of Democrats have gotten away from, regardless what whatever their religious identity is, but the scarcity in talking about faith, I think, has really hampered us as Democrats, and it’s really ceded the ground to Republicans to to say that they are the party of of religion. And truly, I think, to me… I’m Anglican, and so as somebody with a Christian faith, when I think of Democrats, I think of people who not only have faith, but understand the underlying principles within that faith of compassion, of grace, of caring for others, I think more than Republicans.

If you had to name the single biggest thing that the Democratic Party still isn’t being honest with itself about heading into the midterms, what would it be?

YE: It’s a very hard thing to say you’re not the cool kid anymore, when you had Bill Clinton, Barack, you had you had all these names. You’re the party of JFK, of FDR. I get it. It’s very hard to say you’re not the cool kid anymore, especially when the other guy you look at him and you think, ‘Okay, but how is Trump, how is that the thing that’s bringing in this cool factor?’

If people are Democrats, they lessen the identity and tie to the national party brand in order to survive in their districts and their states, and I think that’s a real problem. I think it’s great that people are using whatever technique and tool they need in order to win. Shout out to Mary Peltola, Rob Sands, Josh Turek. Those are red states. Do what you got to do. But it sucks when you have to distance yourself from the very party you’re in because of where they’re standing, and it doesn’t seem like there’s a clear plan in order to increase the image.

I get it. Dems are harder on themselves than Republicans. Republicans accept a lot. Democrats, in my opinion, have always been harder to please because they’ve had higher standards. But at some point, especially when we’re looking at 2028, you can’t have a candidate that’s distancing himself from the national brand when he’s trying to run a country. So that is something I think there’s got to be a tough conversation about.

Noteworthy Reads

• The Generation That’s Never Had to Say ‘Hello?’, Alisha Haridasani Gupta for The New York Times

• Tennis Everyone?, Mary Julia Koch for The Wall Street Journal

• OnlyFans and AI training: why gen Z doesn’t care where our money comes from, Alice Lassman for The Guardian

Beyond the lines and the Love Island watch parties…

What I’ve noticed over the past few months is that this finally felt like the first summer Gen Z didn’t just talk about *or post* about living. They actually lived. And it felt really good. Perhaps so good, they’ll never look back.

As part of the research for our fall trend report, we asked our community for their take on the biggest trends of the summer and where they think that energy will shift as we move into fall.

READ OUR FULL FALL TREND REPORT, THE COUNTERCULTURE IS HUMAN, HERE.

I often think about Gen Z and how and if our generation really is that different from others.

What stood out most to me this summer is that things that have just been status quo for every other generation of young people — going to parties, watching sports with strangers, hanging with friends, finding new hobbies, going to concerts, or going to the movies — are now seen as trends because this is the first time our generation has genuinely experienced them.

So as it turns out, 2026 wasn’t just an IRL summer. It was the summer Gen Z embraced being social. Not just for the bit or for the post. Not because they felt like they had to, or because someone told them to. But because they wanted to.

Beyond the appetite for real, tactile hobbies and hanging out in person, I’m hearing a conscious untethering from the algorithms that our generation was raised on. Young people are no longer interested in having trends dictated to them by their for-you-page. Instead, they want to come to decide what’s cool on their own, or with people they actually know or have something in common with — and they’re hyper-aware of that.

Looking back, here are our community members’ biggest trends of the summer, and looking forward → what they’re excited for this fall.

🎂 P.S. My birthday is this weekend, and if The Up and Up speaks to you, the best gift you could give me is sharing the newsletter with a friend (or a few) who you think might enjoy it too :) I appreciate you!

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After a very IRL summer, young people are headed back to school, back to work, and soon, back to the ballot box. These past few months gave us plenty of shared moments. The country rallied around the Knicks who won in five and sent New Yorkers to take the streets. Americans packed bars and public spaces for the World Cup. There were block parties, Love Island watch parties, and Gen Z boom at movie theaters.

But the most interesting thing about this summer wasn’t any one cultural moment. It was where young people seemed to be finding them. After years of life increasingly shaped by feeds, platforms, and algorithms, young people seemed increasingly drawn to things they could choose and shape for themselves, from their hobbies and social lives to their local communities.

We wanted to see where young people are putting their time, energy, and money as we transition into the fall.

So we checked in with them through a series of focus groups and reality checks — our qualitative, community surveys. Overall, we heard from nearly 100 young people, ages 15-31, from 21 states and Washington, D.C.

As we move out of this IRL summer and back to school, work, and — yes — the upcoming midterm elections, we focused our research around three main buckets:

1. Their social lives

2. Their personal finances

3. And their top issues, across topics like politics and AI

Broadly, what we heard is that young people want more control over their own lives. After years of being told what to watch, buy, think and care about, they’re increasingly skeptical of anything that feels decided for them, whether by an algorithm, a tech company, a political institution or someone with a massive following. Instead, they’re gravitating toward the people, places and choices where they feel like they have a say.

Our findings break down into five core themes:

1. Community is culture. Everyone’s an expert in their own community. From restaurants to concerts and even politics, we’re underestimating Gen Z’s appetite for everything local. This fall, this is where the action will be. People still want belonging and shared experiences, but they’re not looking to recreate what everyone else already has.

2. It’s the anti-algorithm era. Analog energy continues. Tired of being fed everything from how to think to what to wear, young people are ditching the algorithm for their own sense of self, allowing offline and in-person energy to shape how they spend their time. In turn, there’s power in everything from run clubs to cook-book groups and mahjong nights. While posting with a niche influencer was a savvy political tactic in 2024, the opportunity now is the community itself — the run club, the salsa night, the neighborhood organization. In short, influence is shifting from people with audiences to people with communities.

3. Powerlessness is driving distrust. Distrust in institutions is really a frustration with who gets to make the decisions, as a small group of people, companies, or algorithms make choices that shape everyone else’s lives, and everyone is expected to accept them. AI is the clearest expression of that dynamic. Nobody asked for an AI future but it’s increasingly embedded in work, school, and everyday life. Gen Z is not anti-progress but they’re skeptical of progress that happens to them rather than with them.

4. We’re in a post-culture war period. The issues breaking through with young Americans are increasingly material (inflation, war, cost of living, AI, corruption) vs symbolic (culture wars, pronouns, civil rights). Many of the politicians breaking through are speaking directly to those concerns (e.g. Zohran Mamdani, James Talarico, Jon Ossoff, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Marco Rubio).

5. And there’s a hunger for people-driven politics. All of this boils down to a central theme. Young Americans are rediscovering community as a source of power. And when it comes to their politics, they’re deliberately routing civic energy offline. When national politics feels impossible to influence, the places where people can actually see their impact become more important.

READ OUR FULL REPORT, THE COUNTERCULTURE IS HUMAN, HERE.

Many thanks to The Up and Up’s summer interns, Abbey Locker and Emilia Kim, for their instrumental work on this report.

Noteworthy reads

• The Real Political Divide Isn’t Between Boomers and Gen Z, Rep. Maxwell Frost, Rolling Stone

• The Myth of Workplace Readiness, Amanda Hoover for Business Insider

• Shocking number of Gen Z shut-ins report zero face-to-face human interactions per day after COVID, Anthony Blair for The New York Post

And a watch/listen

I joined Vox’s Astead Herndon on America, Actually to break down some of the biggest trends in Gen Z politics. We dug into their top issues, why their politics are so swingy, and what’s on the other side of the gender divide. Check it out:

Interested in working with The Up and Up? Email hello@theupandup.us

The world’s changing before our eyes, and yet, for the most part, K-12 education has stayed the same. What that means for Gen Z is that while the rules of the proverbial game of life have evolved (thanks, in part, to their dedication to rewriting them), the training for adulthood hasn’t kept up, leaving the conventional K-12 education somewhat at odds with our current macroeconomic reality.

The result is that — according to new data from Gallup and The Walton Family Foundation’s ‘Voices of Gen Z’ Study — the current classroom experience is not meeting the moment.

Tl;dr: The K-12 experience would benefit from creativity.

Earlier this summer, in partnership with Gallup and The Walton Family Foundation, I convened focus groups with current high school students and recent high school grads. The focus groups piggyback Gallup and The Walton Family foundation’s new data showing that — despite some bright spots in K-12 education over the past decade — many students feel unprepared for their futures and are itching for innovation in what traditional “school” looks like.

It’s well-past time to think big about the role that school can and should play in young adults’ lives. There are bright spots of career-connected and experiential learning programs already leading the charge — those should be replicated.

By the numbers

According to the latest data:

• Less than half of Gen Z K-12 students “enjoy going to school every day” (just 11%) or “most days” (37%)

• 40% of Gen Z K-12 students do not feel prepared for their future (that share jumps 10 points to 50% amongst students who don’t plan to go to college)

• One third of students (33%) don’t feel like they belong at school

• Nearly half of Gen Z K-12 students (49%) don’t think school gives them the chance to “do what they do best every day” (a 14-point drop since 2023)

• Less than 20% of students say an adult has talked to them about “postsecondary options other than college”

Those with a bone to pick with *kids these days* may read these stats and say, ‘Ok, this has always been the case, school’s always been boring, and Gen Z doesn’t have it much different than anyone else.’ But think about how much has changed in the past six years alone, post-Covid and now with AI, and the massive paradigm shifts in the workplace (and really just life) as a result. Last I checked, the purpose of school is, in fact, to prepare kids for their futures, so shouldn’t we try to meet that goal?

As the function of work begins to look different and interpersonal skills become even more critical to success, schools need to — at least — arm students with confidence to thrive in the rest of their lives.

Right now, that’s not how they’re feeling. But they’re pretty blunt in explaining how to bridge those gaps.

Students may never feel “ready,” but they can feel prepared.

In short:

• Teachers and 1:1 connections with adults matter.

• Extracurriculars should be embraced, but often aren’t. Same goes for career-connected or experiential learning.

• As the ROI of a traditional college degree becomes more of a question, pathways other than those that involve a traditional college campus experience need to be supported by teachers and parents.

• And for a generation of late bloomers coming out the other side of an isolated, way-too-online childhood, human-to-human, social skills should be prioritized.

Here are some of their first-hand perspectives.

• “The structure of high school wasn’t very helpful to where I am now. I don’t really think most of my classes that I took in high school I have in my brain anymore. Like, I just don’t. But I would say certain people, specific teachers ... genuinely made an impact, and I still am able to go to them,” said a 20-year-old female from New York.

• “I wish that the school environment was more accepting of extracurriculars, because I think sometimes engaging in a club or an activity that you actually care about can feel like a punishment because it can set you back and give you less time for schoolwork. And I think teachers don’t really address that,” said a 17-year-old female from Pennsylvania.

• “I feel like in my high school, there wasn’t really a lot of pushing from the school or the teachers to try to get you [to] go out there and experience a lot of things. A lot of the kids that were more successful coming out of high school kind of had to do those things on their own and kind of had to find programs or places to go to that would really suit their interests. There wasn’t really a lot of that available, at least in my school. So, I feel like if there was a more widespread focus on that, that would be extremely beneficial,” said a 19-year-old male from Ohio.

• “Everyone wants to do different stuff when they’re older. I wish some schools could maybe have different types of classes that could benefit a wider range of people than just, like, your ordinary math, science and histories and stuff like that,” said a 15-year-old male from Massachusetts.

• “I think maybe it has to do with post-pandemic and everything, but people in school nowadays are kind of lacking social skills and sometimes, not all the time, but sometimes lack the tools to be able to just relate with each other. And I’ve been in a lot of situations where in the beginning of the year, the teacher will say, ‘Hey, don’t worry. We’re going to do a lot of hands-on work, a lot of talking-to-peer work,’ and it just devolves into paper packets and busy work,” said a 17-year-old male from Arizona.

• “When most adults talk about the future, the first thing they think is going to college and getting a degree. ... At least at my school, I also feel like when people mention like, ‘Oh I want to go to like the Marines or the Army or the military when I’m older,’ or if they want to go to a trade school or do something of that sort, I feel like sometimes teachers get a little bit self-defensive of college. ... I feel like there should be more representation that teachers show to other career paths. ... If I heard of other paths after high school, like trade and stuff like that when I was younger, I feel like what would have been my interest would have changed,” said a 15-year-old male from Massachusetts.

This survey data comes alongside the ongoing ‘Voices of Gen Z’ Study with Gallup and the Walton Family Foundation. Data from this series has been crucial for making sense of Gen Z’s AI anxiety, how they feel about their futures and present, especially when it comes to school and work, and shed light on Gen Z’s rightward shift well before the 2024 election. The Walton Family Foundation has also supported my work on these topics.

In a provocative campaign that signals where public sentiment is on AI, the former NFL center and Garage Beer co-owner suggested consumers drink the brands’ beer and sparkling water, then send their pee to “cool these data centers.”

Take a peek:

The brand collab is the latest in a recent slate of both subtle and obvious anti-AI marketing. Other companies have employed tactics like using messy handwriting to show anti-perfection authenticity or have explicitly stated that a visual was made by humans.

This comes as Americans are increasingly anxious about AI.

We know Gen Z has a love hate relationship with AI, but lately, we’re sensing more hate than love.

*Read our related piece, A chorus of Gen Z graduation boos*

According to Pew Research data released last week, for the first time since they’ve been tracking AI sentiment, “a majority of adults under 30 (55%) now say they’re more concerned than excited about AI.” That’s a 24-point jump since 2021.

That data tracks with what we’ve been hearing about AI lately from members of The Up and Up’s Gen Z community.

Asked how and if their feelings on AI and relationship to the technology had changed in recent months, more than a few young adults told us they’ve soured on it altogether.

(🚨 Spoiler alert! There were plenty more replies like these, stay tuned for a full breakdown in our Fall 2026 Back to Reality report, coming out next week 🚨)

• “I hate it, burn it down,” said a 23–year-old New Yorker.

• “I always had a bad feeling about it but I don’t want to fuel using this type of tech because it makes me feel dumber and like I’m contributing to a system that is taking jobs,” said another 22-year-old New Yorker.

• “My community and hometowns are plagued by data centers, and that only strains my relations with AI,” said a 19-year-old from Texas.

• “It is a plague on society,” said a 21-year-old from Maryland.

• “I am still very against generative AI. There is only one Earth we can survive on,” said a 17-year-old from Arizona.

So it seems that Kelce’s ad is well-timed, and strikes a nerve, at least with Gen Z. At a time when it feels like all the adults in the room are talking about how necessary AI is and how young people will be left behind if they don’t get on board the AI train, the Liquid Death x Garage Beer campaign demonstrates smart, counter-cultural messaging — and it’s something I suspect we’re about to see a lot more.

Relatedly, I spoke to The New York Times’ Callie Holtermann for her recent report on ‘The Teens Taking on Data Centers.’ Read it here.

More noteworthy reads

• Why Do Rich Kids Love Socialism?, Tyler Austin Harper for The Atlantic

• Gen-Z wants to text at the speed of carrier pigeon, Molly Liebergall for Morning Brew

• Television’s Hottest Genre is Today’s Job Market, Olivia Hau for The Wall Street Journal

• For Gen Z, Building Wealth is in the Stock Market, Not the Housing Market, Sophie June for The New York Times

Interested in working with The Up and Up? Email hello@theupandup.us

All summer, I’ve held weekly political focus groups with potential Gen Z voters.

We’ve covered a lot of ground:

• Their swingy politics and how their perspectives have shifted since 2024

• What they *actually* want from politicians

• Their economic anxiety

• What liberals really mean when they say they like socialism

• And why they’re “not asking for too much” by demanding social services

In each of these conversations, there’s been a common, often understated through line — one that’s now shining me right in the face.

I really can’t stress enough how rational most young people are — and their politics reflect that.

My generation’s politics have been sensationalized since the oldest amongst us became eligible to vote in 2016. First we were seen as harbingers of change that would help elect the first woman president, then we were revered as champions for racial and social justice that would save democracy — and later, once the younger half of Gen Z entered the picture, studied ad nauseam for shifting right and rebuking woke-ism while embracing the manosphere and trad-wife culture. Today, we’re all seen as socialists.

From my point-of-view, these trends are each worth examining with a fine-tooth comb. But when I zoom out and really listen to what Gen Zers have been telling me about their politics for years, it’s actually kind of… simple.

Across the country, Gen Z Americans really just want their politicians to be good, honest people, who do good for their community and country. That means tackling the high cost of living, working to fund government programs like SNAP and WIC, embracing social policies like affordable healthcare, housing, and education, and — today — regulating AI. It’s not that complicated. And it’s party agnostic.

Don’t believe me? Here’s what I heard this week.

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