Yes, democratic socialists have racked up electoral victories in primaries in New York, Colorado, and New Jersey, and recent polling suggests that Gen Z has a more favorable view of socialism than older generations — and prefers socialism to capitalism. By the numbers: A Cato Institute poll ahead of America’s 250th found that more than half of Gen Z supports socialism (53%) compared to the 45% who support capitalism.

But I’ve been asking the young people in our summer focus groups to define socialism, and there’s not a real consensus on what it actually means.

Beyond that, I’ve yet to have a focus group participant tell me they’re a full-throttle democratic socialist (even if they like the policies they say democratic socialists are proposing). So assuming that all young voters are well-versed in socialism and embracing the ideology outright is false.

Most recently, I asked a focus group of left-leaning young voters between the ages of 19 and 33 what socialism means to them. While all eight participants said they had heard of it, only one defined it head on.

• “Democratic socialism is obviously a subsect of socialism which in itself is a theory that promotes the involvement of the state in public welfare,” said a 21-year-old from Miami, Florida. “Especially coming from a Hispanic background myself, you hear a lot about socialism being thrown around as something equivalent to like the devil. It’s the child of communism in a lot of Latin people’s brains and it’s something that, to them, has destroyed countries. You look at other cases of democratic socialism, you see that Norwegian countries tend to implement it quite well. And then also the US has a lot of cases of democratic socialism like [what] Zohran Mandani is doing for example or is vying to do welfare like healthcare, education, all of these things kind of encompass that and so I think it’s up to perception.”

I asked the group to share policies that come to mind when they think of democratic socialism. It’s becoming more and more clear that many progressive ideas that were central to the 2020 Democratic primary (like paid family leave and universal healthcare), are now broadly coded as socialist — and these are policies that young liberals widely embrace.

Here’s what some shared.

• “Universal healthcare,” said a 21-year-old from Boston, Massachusetts. “That’s just the first thing that comes to mind, is the government’s involvement in making sure that everybody is cared for and everyone’s health remains a priority despite their income. And I think that is something that makes me view socialism in more of a positive light because some people obviously don’t have the same financial situations as others. That doesn’t mean that they should be undervalued in society.”

• “When I think of democratic socialists, they’re trying to meet the needs of the people,” said a 23-year-old from Arizona. “Expanding access to healthcare. Making college or education more affordable. Raising the minimum wage. Investing in affordable housing. Expanding programs like paid family leave or for child care. And I think I also associate it with higher taxes on wealthier individuals or large corporations to help fund those kinds of public services.”

Asked to name candidates or politicians that are doing a good job right now, it’s obvious that DSA candidates are rising. But that’s not the full story.

Participants listed New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, and Melat Kiros — the DSA candidate in Colorado who’s likely to become the first Gen Z woman in Congress. But they also named Senators Jon Ossoff and Mark Kelly.

When I asked the group if they’d label themselves a democratic socialist or socialist, not one person raised their hand (at risk of sounding like a broken record, Gen Z hates labels). But some are starting to “lean” that way — and that matters.

• “I would say I lean towards it, but I haven’t completely been with that party,” said a 19-year-old from Colorado.

• “I would say I’m in between democrat and democratic socialist,” said the 23-year-old from Arizona.

• “I would definitely lean that way,” said the 21-year-old from Boston.

So what?

As the 2026 midterm elections come into focus, our research demonstrates that young liberals are still wary of outright embracing “socialism,” even as many support policies that increasingly read that way. Politicians who loudly advocate for bold, progressive policies will continue to capture attention and relevance, while those without a clear vision or an ability to articulate what they stand for will fall by the wayside — regardless of their party affiliation. And when it comes to Democrats, if traditional (i.e. establishment) candidates continue to cede ground by failing to illustrate what the America they want to live in actually looks like, they’ll continue to lose — not just in the 2026 midterms, but in gaining this generation’s loyalty.

Noteworthy reads

• Relatedly, this piece from the WSJ’s Future View titled ‘Socialism and the Young’ offers a great analysis from a number of young adults

• Gen Z Fell Out of Love With Work. I Don’t Blame Them., Emi Nietfeld for The New York Times

• Call Her Mommy. Gen Z women are paying for, and parenting, their boyfriends., Angelina Chapin for The Cut

• Young Adults are Letting AI Do Their Talking for Them – Even In Person, Natalie Kaufman for The Wall Street Journal

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

Last week, we covered a brewing generational phenomenon. As Gen Z emerges from its post-Covid social hangover, young adults are paying big bucks to hangout with friends, buying things like tickets to concerts, sporting events, or even group dinners — but they’re not always getting paid back. As we’ve covered extensively, IRL Summer comes with a hefty price tag and there are plenty of young adults spending money without thinking how they’re really going to pay it back. For a generation dealing with enough economic anxiety as it is, that’s not great.

Understanding all of this, we decided to dig deeper into the current finances of our generation.

And while yes — there are plenty of young people buying now and paying later, there’s also a growing trend in young people’s awareness of how they’re spending and saving their money and plenty of nuance in Gen Z’s money habits.

As summer winds down and fall planning begins, we wanted to know how young people rectify their itch for all things community with their need to save. So we asked them.

Our summer fellows hosted listening sessions in their own communities to break down trends in spending and saving.

I read through their dispatches, and here’s what I make of it:

1. Our generation is interested in short-term and long-term saving, given what we saw during COVID and how it affected the global economy. That includes saving on plans with friends

2. As much as we love to complain about our financial woes, we’re facing the same stressors as older adults

3. And having grown up on buy now, pay later and amid inflation that’s coincided with our entry to the real world, we’re still getting the hang of our finances

Read more

But I’m not the only one who’s been paying attention to the lines and what they signal.

Last week, rolled out a new cover story about this summer’s ‘humiliating’ and ‘exhilarating’ lines by the one-and-only Brock Colyar (who’s penned famous titles like ‘It Must Be Nice to Be a West Village Girl’ and ‘The Cultural Ascendancy of the New Young Right’).

I sat down with Brock to talk about the piece — and why we’re all waiting in line.

Here’s our conversation, edited for clarity and brevity. We’re also trying something new at The Up and Up, and you can watch our full conversation on our YouTube channel. Make sure you subscribe :)

You’ve covered youth and nightlife culture in New York City for years. When did lines stop being something that people just tolerated and started being something that actively seek out?

BC: Coming out of the pandemic, there was such an explosion of young people hanging out and doing new things. We were all talking about Dimes Square, and I had a nightlife column at the time, and everybody was going out, and it felt like everybody was doing ketamine and going to the rave, and then I feel like we got just the right amount of years away from the pandemic, and over the last two summers, I feel like things started to change, and the youth culture started like gravitating more towards influencer culture. Not that that didn’t exist already, it did. [But] it felt like that started to be the predominant way we thought about young people and Gen Z in New York.

Last summer is the first time I started noticing the lines. I was writing my piece about the West Village Girls, and obviously all of them were standing in line for Swedish candy at the time. And then this summer, you know, it just felt like it got so much more intense. I live in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, and even in my neighborhood, which when I moved here, say six years ago, felt like a quiet kind of tony, waterside neighborhood. All of a sudden, there were lines everywhere. I live very close to Radio Bakery, and like there was a line there every morning, and then of course the West Village just got even more intense.

From my perspective (and I write about this), there’s a social aspect to lines — of people wanting to be around other people, wanting to be where the people are. We’re in this moment post-Knicks victory in New York City, the World Cup really popped off. To what extent is there a social aspect to the line-waiting culture, and how does that fit into the narrative of summer 2026?

BC: When I started on this story, I had read a few pieces and seen a few comments online, kind of suggesting that the interest in line waiting had something to do with a third space or people getting to spend time with each other, and I will say two things.

So, I think to some extent it’s about community, but I don’t think it’s about community as much as some people want it to be. You know what it reminds me of? There’s something quite innocent about it. It’s like when I was in high school and I couldn’t drink yet, and so the only thing to do with friends in your spare time was go (I’m from Tennessee), so in our case, go to Sonic or go hang out in a parking lot with our Sonic drinks. It feels like that, kind of just an innocent, non-alcoholic way to spend time with friends.

Gen Z is used to instant gratification. You can literally have fro-yo delivered to your apartment in five minutes from Pinkberry. So why is it that people are going and waiting in line at Mimi’s, Culture, Myka, or Birdie’s and not either going to Pinkberry, which has no line, or ordering it to their apartment.

BC: There’s something very conducive about the lines to conversation, right? Because you’re waiting and you’re wondering how long it’s gonna be, and you’re wondering if it’s worth it. I feel like that is a conversation starter. I mean, I was having to ask people these questions because I was writing a story about it, but I think naturally people were starting conversations with each other by just being like, ‘Hey, how long have you been waiting?’ And that gets people talking.

I also think there’s something about all of this, the way that TikTok has affected the city. TikTok has allowed all of us to kind of be tourists of our own city every night. I look at TikTok in bed, and I’m seeing things that are in my neighborhood. I learned of a restaurant opening in my neighborhood because of TikTok this week, and I might not have noticed it for months just walking past it. But the internet [is] encouraging us to get out and be tourists in our own city or something, which I think is kind of fun.

In the piece, you cite a quote from June of 1981. What’s the through line between that era’s line culture and this one? And do you think that what’s happening is now something new, or it’s just the same thing that’s always happened, but with a new TikTok flavor?

BC: This piece from 1981 in New York Magazine, which is so great, is about line culture. It’s really funny to go back and read it because, I mean, it’s just a completely different era of the city, and you see how charmed our lives are now. Because the writer is talking about lines, but it’s the ‘80s, and I think there was a sense that the city was overcrowded, and so he’s talking about waiting in line at the bank, waiting in line at the post office, waiting in line to get through the Holland Tunnel. And now, the things that we wait on, are these kind of frivolous, small luxuries.

You also talk about the herd mentality that people caught themselves in. Did you find that most people were self aware about being manufactured from their For You Page into a line? Or were people in denial about it?

BC: People knew the reason that they were there. They knew that they were trying to kind of do what everybody else was doing. People knew that they were joining the masses and standing in these lines. People were very self aware about that, and in fact, a lot of times when I was talking to people, they would kind of distance themselves. It’s like they didn’t want to be known as one of the line people.

But I don’t know if I really think that there’s anything wrong about this herd mentality. When I was writing about the West Village girls last year, there was something a little bit queasy or uncomfortable to me about the ways in which they kind of fetishized homogeneity. They kind of wanted to look like each other. They wanted to go to the same places as one another. They were all trying to fit this very specific type, which I found, again, a bit disturbing. In this case, I don’t know if I felt that. People would talk as if they were like detectives or sleuths. Like, of course, if you’ve seen something 1000 times on your iPhone, it’s not so much that you’re doing what everybody else is doing. A lot of people were going to try to form their own opinion, like they wanted to decide for themselves if it was worth it. And that’s like a human instinct… of course people want to do that.

Do you think people were resentful if they went and there wasn’t a line? Are people actually are craving the experience of being in the line?

BC: I don’t think people are craving the experience of being in a line. I do think it’s kind of a nice time killer. Again, people would say things to me like, ‘Oh, I’m just not ready to go home.’ Like, ‘I don’t want to go sit at a bar or pay $70 for dinner right now.’ So it’s a nice way to kill time with your friends. But I don’t know if anybody was looking for it. In fact, I think a lot of people are kind of looking for ways to cheat the line. Personally, I’m in Greenpoint, so all these places with lines, I know what times of day they’re not busy, and so I purposely go at those times. And I think a lot of people are doing that. I mean, Radio Bakery. If I see that there’s not a line, I will just go in and buy something, even if I’m not hungry, and save it for later. It just feels like a small miracle. Like, oh, there’s not a line today, so I want to go.

You brought up another point about how people don’t want to pay $70 for dinner. But at lot of these places, the fro-yo, or the sweet treat, or whatever it is, is relatively expensive compared to the same version of it that you can get at the supermarket. So I’m curious, at a time when economic anxiety is really high, when the New York mayor just won a campaign running on the fact that the city’s unaffordable, how do you square that circle? Why are people willing to spend this type of money on treats?

BC: Some of the stuff is expensive. A $9.50 PB&J croissant. I think I paid $14 the last time I went to Myka, and that was with one little serving of soft serve and I think one or two toppings. However, I think that that is just the reality of what things cost in New York right now. And at the end of the day, my $14 yogurt is cheaper than pretty much every cocktail I’ve had in the last two years. It’s cheaper than any lunch I could buy, even at Chopped, where I get my salads during the work week.

It also reminds me of that statistic that gets thrown around like the lipstick effect in fashion. Which is when there’s times of economic anxiety, people spend their money on small goods. They don’t buy the Chanel jacket, they buy the Chanel lipstick which costs $70. So, I think there’s some level of that happening here. Also these are kids who have a ton of disposable income. These are well-to-do New York City kids. Everybody works in marketing and is making fine money.

From your point of view, what lines are worth it, and what would you wait in line for?

BC: It’s funny because you know that SNL skit, the Big Dumb Line, that came out last year. The kind of joke of it is that you get to the end of the line and you get a shitty dollar slice of pizza. I think one interesting thing that’s happening in terms of the places I was writing about is, it’s all pretty great. Like these are small businesses, all kind of like artisanal items. I didn’t really discuss this in the piece, but you see plenty of pop ups on the weekends in a neighborhood like Soho, where people are standing around waiting for a long time for free shit, and it’s usually you know just something awful. But in these cases, I think it’s all pretty great. I think Caffè Panna is delicious. Again, I live near Radio Bakery. I go all the time. L’industrie is great. I can’t really get on board with most of the trendy bagel places because I’d rather just go to Tompkins Square, where there’s also usually a line.

The yogurt is the most mystifying because again, like, how good can fro-yo be? But I have to say, I had Myka, it was pretty damn delicious. I hate to be too excited about this chain of frozen yogurt, but it’s really good.

If you had to bet, what’s the next thing that people will line up for?

BC: We’ve hit so many of the basics. It’s funny how so many of these, the critique that people make is that they’re things that you can get anywhere in New York, or things that New York is known for. So I feel like we’ve done the pizza, and we’ve done the bagels, and the like weird Frankenstein, only-can-get-it-in-New-York pastries.

Like a new lobster roll place just opened in Greenpoint. It was a pop up. A lot of these places I wrote about also were pop-ups at one time that turned into brick and mortars. It was a pop-up that has turned into a brick and mortar. They’re selling lobster rolls with a full pound of lobster topped with caviar and uni. Of course, you can’t see the prices online, but it just opened like last week, and it did kind of make me think, I wonder if we’ll start getting slightly more upscale versions of these things. I walked past The Mark Hotel recently, and they were doing kind of luxury, caviar-topped hot dogs. So I kind of wonder if this is something creeping up.

Noteworthy Reads

• ‘Don’t Forget About Us’: 10 Young Trump Voters Score Trump’s Second Term, Kristen Soltis Anderson and Adrian J. Rivera for The New York Times

• Moving Back Home Used to Be a Sign of Failure. Now It Shows Financial Savvy., Rebecca Picciotto and Nicholas G. Miller for the Wall Street Journal

• Is After Midnight the New Peak Hour for Gen Z Shoppers?, Roy Stephen Canivel for Women’s Wear Daily

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

A few weeks ago, I unpacked Gen Z’s obsession with Love Island. Two weeks later, the season’s wrapped, Trinity Tatum and Bryce Dettloff have been crowned Season 8’s winners, and group chats are starting to move on.

But on to what, exactly?

Tomorrow, long-awaited films like Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey” and Alice Oseman’s “Heartstopper” will be released, but will they sweep our generation the way Love Island, or even this summer’s hit movies “Backrooms” and “Obsession” have? Perhaps become a new generational favorite?

To learn what makes a TV show or movie a “favorite,” I hosted a listening session with The Up and Up’s summer fellows. Here’s what they told me.

Spoiler alert, depth isn’t dead. It’s just not in your living room. And relatability goes a long way — that can include leaning into my generation’s collective skepticism and distrust.

Read more

Nature is healing, and IRL summer is bringing Gen Z out of its digital socially isolated cocoon. But for many, that comes with a hefty price tag.

As young adults gravitate toward spending on things like concerts, sporting events, and trips — i.e. shared, in-person experiences — they’re fronting large purchases on behalf of their friends. But they’re not always getting paid back.

By the numbers

According to a recent report from Zelle, the digital payment platform:

• 76% of Gen Z consumers “who have fronted money for a group trip say they were not fully repaid”

• 20% “have canceled plans, muted or ignored group chats to avoid repayment”

• 55% “say it created tension or negatively affected a relationship,” and 14% “say they have ended a friendship or relationship because of repayment disputes”

So while it might finally feel like this generation is healing from its loneliness era (and it really seems like they are, because according to the report, Gen Z is starting to spend the most on group travel and events), there can be a steep cost associated with hanging out the way they have been.

And for a generation dealing with deep economic anxiety, that’s not great.

So, why does this seem to be a particular problem with Gen Z? Our intern, Abbey, weighs in below. From her POV, there are three core dynamics at play.

First, there’s the age component. Younger people are more likely to mix money and social life since we have fewer commitments (and no jobs, lol), and that means spending more on group trips. But apart from being the youngest generation with any real purchasing power, Gen Z has been raised on the Buy Now, Pay Later doctrine. Klarna — i.e. the service that lets you do exactly that — may have budgeted for losses in delayed repayments, but our friends certainly did not.

Then, there’s the tech. Money has always been a sensitive spot in relationships, and now it’s easier than ever to lend and lose money. Along with platforms that let you send money with just a click, you can even send money you don’t have yet. Gen Z’s FOMO and need for instant gratification is manifesting in a sort of klarnamaxxing: commit to the plan but not the payment plan.

And when it comes to avoiding repaying their friends, young people are showing our COVID-era roots. There are deft abilities with technology paired with the crutch of going mute, camera-off. You can transfer funds in an instant, but also close yourself off. So while people want to make plans, to be outside, they’re comfortable muting groupchats and ditching plans to avoid uncomfortable conversations.

This summer, with dynamic pricing, inflation, a poor job market, etc… stuff is expensive and Gen Z is feeling the weight of that as we try to balance community and personal finances. Let’s not swap lost time for lost savings.

Noteworthy reads

• In turning to trade school, Gen Z confronts an Enduring Stigma, Callie Holtermann for The New York Times

• Where Gen Z’s time goes: How the generation compares with millennials, and why experts are worried, Joelle Gross for NBC News

• Gen Z is ‘job scrolling’ in the office while on the clock. Here’s what that says about the workplace, Jennifer Mattson for Fast Company

• Gen Z’s Band of Brothers, Mary Julia Koch for The Wall Street Journal

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

I held two focus groups with more than a dozen Gen Z voters this week, ages 18-25, from seven states: Florida, Pennsylvania, Arizona, New York, Nevada, Indianna, and Illinois.

They were the latest in our Gen Z politics series, where we’re asking about the key themes and issues they’re focused on ahead of the 2026 midterms. Earlier this week, I wrote about what young voters are looking for from politicians — character, hope, accountability, transparency.

When it comes to the political issues young people are focused on, we talk a lot about economic anxiety. But I’m not sure many people really understand what this actually feels like for those going through it.

Here’s what you need to know — and how young voters’ economic anxiety is impacting their politics.

I asked the participants in our focus groups to share what their financial concerns look like.

From balancing school, retail jobs, and work study programs to using student loan refunds to pay for basic necessities, opening up new credit cards to pay for additional expenses, and supporting their parents — here’s some of what we heard.

(TL;DR? I highlighted some especially noteworthy points)

• “This summer, I do research at school, which is paid. I work at Athleta. I work at Ulta. And then, if I can find babysitting or anything like that, I’ll do that,” said a 20-year-old student in Pennsylvania. “Because I was in a pinch last summer with some family stuff going on, I decided to take out another credit card. And that was helpful like at the time to pay for stuff. It wasn’t like a crazy amount that I was approved for, but paying that back when you have to potentially pay for school or potentially pay for books or paying just to get back and forth from work, it can kind of feel stressful to feel like, okay, ‘When am I actually saving money?’”

  “I also kind of rely on my refund during the semester, but recently I’ve been considering whether I should just cap my loans at my tuition amount and not get a refund. That way I will have to pay less once I get out of school,” she said.

• “I’m currently renting an apartment. I’m sharing the rent across two other people. We each pay a third… $550 a month. I also work at Target part-time, and I also am paying for college. Usually during the school year I am relying on my refunds from school to pay my rent, to pay my car payment and car insurance, phone bill, internet, stuff like that. So through getting those refunds, even though they’re through the loans that I will have to pay off eventually, that gets me through the semesters, and then I catch up on winter and summer breaks,” said another 21-year-old college student in Pennsylvania.

• “I’m paying for rent, but it’s not rent for myself. I’m paying for it for my mom. I feel like one of the things that stresses me out the most financially is not necessarily about my own personal finances because I’m lucky enough to have help, I guess. But when it comes to my mom who’s super old, an immigrant, [and] she got laid off like two years ago and it’s just been very difficult for her to find work. So the housing that I’m receiving from the government, which is not that bad compared to a lot of the housing in New York, but basically I’m letting her stay there,” said a 20-year-old from New York.

• “I work part-time and if it wasn’t for the generosity of my best friend’s mother, I would not have a place to stay because I don’t really make enough to afford rent around here and also go to school, which I’m doing. I’m not currently under a lot of financial stress, but I’m very aware that I can’t move out or even saving for big purchases in the future is is very slow going because I only work part-time,” said a 22-year-old in Arizona.

• “I work full-time as a teacher. Make a solid salary… it would be enough to live on my own, but like it’d be paycheck to paycheck. [If] you have a bad car bill or you have something wrong with your car, [it would] probably send me back behind. If I was to live my own, I’d be one bad break away from not being able to. And I feel like that’s [how the] majority of Americans feel. Where they’re either underwater or just barely treading water,” said a 25-year-old in Illinois.

When young voters talk about economic anxiety, it’s these experiences that they’re thinking about. And our focus group participants aren’t alone. In fact, this is how most young people across the country are feeling — 65% of young people said the cost of living and inflation are a top concern in a recent CIRCLE/When We All Vote survey, just ahead of healthcare and housing costs.

So what?

In the past few weeks, we’ve seen outsider candidates (including those who call themselves democratic socialists) win by running on a message that the system is broken, failing everyday Americans.

The takeaway here is not that young people are now all Democratic Socialists. It is that addressing economic anxiety is vital to winning young voters, and therefore, elections. And right now, for some young people, it feels like they’re the only candidates doing that.

After all, how could anyone expect a candidate who ignores the everyday experience of young people to resonate with them?

Here’s more of what I heard about why this style of politics is meeting the moment — but why it’s not actually about socialism.

Read more

So far this week, I’ve held two focus groups with young voters across the country. We covered a range of topics — from their economic outlook to why it’s a massive misconception to assume all young voters are suddenly Democratic socialists (I’ll explore all of that in depth later this week, stay tuned 👀).

Amid a very public conversation playing out about the types of candidates we should welcome into a “big tent” political party — I was really curious to hear what exactly young Americans are looking for from their political leaders, since it seems to be a question political operatives, pundits, and even candidates are struggling to identify.

Raised in an era of complete chaos and, for the most part, a total vacuum of political leadership, they’re prioritizing yes — hope and change — but also people who take responsibility and are held accountable for their actions.

It might not be sexy, but now more than ever, that’s what they’re looking for.

I asked, point blank, what are you looking for from your political leaders in one word? Here’s what they told me.

• Hope

• Understanding

• Accountability

• Transparency

• Representation

• Plain english

• Open-mindedness

• Courage

• Being proactive

• Honesty

• Genuine care

• Character

The young people I spoke to are wondering why so many Democrats waited so long to call on Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner to step aside despite the growing list of allegations and controversies surrounding him, including sexual assault allegations and a tattoo resembling a Nazi symbol.

Others were quick to call out the hypocrisy of politicians who will let poor behavior on their side of the aisle slide, while going after candidates of the opposing party for similar actions.

“You shouldn’t condemn the actions of certain people in office and then kind of sweep others under the rug simply because of where you stand politically. That’s a huge problem, and I think it shows where things are right now,” said a 21-year-old man from Florida.

And a 25-year-old man from Illinois said this goes back to the question of what Americans want from their politicians:

Many Gen Zers Rooted Against Team USA. Here’s Why.

Young people are getting very into the World Cup, hosting watch parties, making fan-edits, and leaning into sideline fashion. And while Team USA is out, many young Americans still have a team to cheer for because they weren’t rooting for the US men’s national soccer team in the first place. I unpacked why for .

Read it here.

Noteworthy reads

• Gen Z women are the most pessimistic about the American Dream, Terri Rupar for The 19th*

• Weddings are getting pricier just at Gen Z gets in the game, Emily Peck for Axios

• Why Gen Z bros are ditching their MAGA hats, Astead Herndon for Vox

• Remote Work Is Making It Harder for Grads to Find (and Keep) Jobs, Owen Tucker-Smith for The Wall Street Journal

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

That’s no surprise to us at The Up and Up – where we’ve been tracking young Americans’ distaste for business as usual for quite some time.

On the left, the success of progressive candidates in states such as New York and Colorado have many thinking the Democrats’ tea party-era is here — and that young people are leading the charge toward insurgent candidates (some of whom consider themselves Democratic socialists). That might be true. But to suddenly assume that the average young American is a socialist gets the story all wrong.

Here’s what people are missing.

Young people see a system that’s broken and want politicians who will fight it. It’s really that simple. Everyone freaked out when President Donald Trump gained support from young voters in 2024, assuming they were suddenly all Republican, and today, the same is being said about young voters and DSA candidates.

But it’s really not about political party, ideology, or a precise label.

It’s about the appeal and messaging of candidates who are looking to break from the past, who can inspire with a vision for a better future and a commitment to fight for you.

So far this summer, our focus groups have centered on a complete rebuke of both parties. Yes, New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani and his brand of politics may resonate. But not one person in our focus groups has said they’re a socialist. That matters.

As the cycle heats up, we’ll continue tracking how young voters are feeling, what their energy signals, and what traditional wisdom might be getting wrong. So stay tuned.

This summer, along with Emilia Kim, who you heard from last week, The Up and Up is lucky to have Abbey Locker on our team — a recent graduate of McGill University, where she studied psychology and cognitive science. For the next few months, Abbey will help shape our content and research. We’re grateful for her expertise.

Today, Abbey and Emilia have teamed up to unpack more on Gen Z’s complicated relationship with patriotism. Their readout is below.

This week, we, along with the rest of America, have spent a lot of time thinking about our nation’s history and culture. The people who built this country have already given us 250 years of innovation. From the Constitution to smartphones, the past 250 years have held progress that shapes how people all over the world live, work, and connect.

Yet, this year’s celebrations don’t read too differently than years past. Plans included lighting fireworks to watching the world cup, or deciding to leave town for the holiday. But surely this can’t be just like any other 4th of July.

America is turning 250 this weekend, and for keeping the same constitution, that’s actually quite a long time. So we asked our fellows, community members, and our friends for their point-of-view. Here’s some of what we heard.

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It’s almost America’s 250th birthday, and younger and older Americans are pretty divided when it comes to how proud they are of the country.

Recent data shows that *not shockingly* young Americans are less proud of the nation than any other age cohort — with only about one third saying they’re proud to be an American in two new polls.

• Just 34% of young Americans ages 18-29 are proud of being an American according to a new poll from Public Religion Research Initiative. Meanwhile 66% of Americans 65 and older, 59% of Americans 50-64, and 43% of Americans ages 30-49 are proud of being an American, according to the same poll.

• And just 31% of young Americans 18-29 are “extremely” or “very” proud to be an American according to a new NBC poll, while 75% of Americans 65 and older say the same. On the contrary, the NBC poll also found that nearly one-third (34%) of 18-29-year-olds “feel little to no national pride,” while just 9% of seniors said the same.

That’s a noteworthy drop from last year, when Gallup data revealed that less than half (41%) of young Americans ages 18-29 were extremely or very proud to be an American.

Zooming out, the country has seen some pretty bleak moments over the past year.

• Political violence is rampant.

• We’ve been at war.

• US immigration agents killed two US citizens in Minnesota.

• Economic anxiety is sky-rocketing.

But there’s also a lot to be optimistic about.

• We’re healing from the loneliness epidemic, coming together in person and outside (even if that means waiting in line).

• The Winter Olympics and World Cup have given Americans something to rally behind as a country.

• We’re hope-maxxing.

• And next-gen political leaders are breaking through, offering some relief to years defined by the same two guys.

We recently asked our community members and fellows what patriotism means to them, and if they feel patriotic. Here’s some of what we heard:

• “Patriotism means feeling proud of the country and supporting decisions made by political leaders. I wouldn’t necessarily describe myself as very patriotic but I do feel very lucky for all of the opportunities I have within this country,” said a 21-year-old in California.

• “Having a strong spirit for your country. I don’t feel patriotic but I do feel like I have a duty to contribute for my country,” said a 17-year-old in Hawaii.

• “Patriotism to me means loyalty to one’s country at the base of it. Currently, the term has been shaped by political rhetoric that excludes immigrant communities and individuals such as myself. It makes the current state of our country feel more divided and less welcoming to live in, especially for future generations,” said a 17-year-old in Arizona.

Truth is, the story of young people and their relationship with American patriotism isn’t as cut and dry as one might think.

We’ll be digging further into these dynamics and breaking down what more of our community has to say about American patriotism and the country’s 250th later this week, so stay tuned.

Noteworthy Reads

• The Glitchy, Goopy Look of Now, Callie Holtermann for The New York Times

• When AI Puts Gen Z in the C-Suite, Isabelle Bousquette for The Wall Street Journal

• Taylor Swift’s Fans Have Been Training For This, Julie Beck for The Atlantic

• I’m a Gen Zer who spends all day online. Mahjong gave me a reason to connect in real life., Amanda Geffner for Business Insider

• The safest girl on the Internet, Chrissy Correa for Bustle

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

Emilia, a rising sophomore at Johns Hopkins, has been meeting with our fellows regularly and held a listening session with them last week — focusing first on entertainment and media habits. Her readout is below.

Be on the lookout for more analysis and insights from Emilia over the next couple of months, including part two on how Gen Z watches, listens, and scrolls.

Unpacking my generation’s Love Island fixation — and what it says about our media habits

Every few months, like clockwork, my generation discovers a show, floods social media with clips and commentary, organizes watch parties around air dates, and then forgets about it the moment the finale airs. Love Island, Euphoria, and Stranger Things have all cycled through: clips flood our feeds, only to vanish soon after.

I’ve been curious about this pattern. We’re all watching the same shows at the same time, but why? Is it the algorithm, a need for escapism, or something else entirely?

To find out, I hosted a listening session focused on entertainment and media with our Up and Up fellows from all across the country. I asked them: What are you watching right now? Why? And, importantly, with whom?

That last question turned out to be the most vital of the night. I quickly realized the pattern I noticed was grounded in a collective appetite for conversation and community. In a world riddled with isolation and anxiety, having a common TV show became a quick way to form new friendships.

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It’s no secret that the job market for Gen Z is bleak. That’s true for recent high school and college grads looking for entry-level work. But it’s also increasingly the case for students looking for summer opportunities to make some cash and stack their pre-professional resume.

Some data

• Summer hiring for teens is expected to fall (from 801,000 teen jobs gained last summer to 790,000 this summer, according to a report from the outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas) — after last year’s eight decade low

• That would be the worst summer hiring total for teens since the Bureau of Labor Statistics started keeping track in 1948

And a Business Insider piece explored a rise in young people looking for extra work in the gig economy; i.e. taking shifts on apps like Uber or GoPuff.

To learn more about this summer’s tricky job market, we asked young adults in our Gen Z community about their summer plans.

Their replies ran the gambit, from retail to lifegaurding, waitressing, corporate internships, and even a school teacher taking on extra work in the summer as a “mosquito sprayer.” And we did have a few tell us they had experimented with platforms like Instacart “to have some money.”

The through line was that those without a job weren’t in that situation from a lack of trying. But the reality of a summer without work is affecting their finances and their own sense of self-confidence.

Here’s some of what we heard:

“Working part-time at a movie theater, working part-time at a local congressional campaign,” said an 18-year-old student in Arizona.

“Full time camp counselor,” said an 18-year-old in Arkansas.

“I do not have a job this summer, rather I am spending my time traveling,” said a 20-year-old student from Pennsylvania, who also said the most recent situation she felt least confident was when is is “applying for jobs that I may not have the proper experience for and feeling like I am behind in life.”

“No,” said an 18-year-old in Arizona, who also said his biggest financial pinch is tuition.

Beyond the obvious financial strain and emotional toll — a tale that many will say is as old as time — the job market is increasingly becoming a political issue for potential young voters.

The Up and Up’s take

Summer jobs are a right of passage — one that boosts confidence, cultivates independence, and builds resiliency. They also, of course, help students save up for college or pay their way through it. In arming fewer young adults with these opportunities, we’re not only bleeding that professional experience, but cultivating frustration from members of a generation desperately searching for it.

Noteworthy Reads

• Gen Z’s Great Retreat from Risk, Arthur Brooks for The Free Press

• New College Grads Are Doing Better Than the Vibes Suggest, Bryan Walsh for Vox

• Gen Z Singles are trying to make solomaxxing aspirational, Jason Parham for Wired

• The hippest new members club in New York is a ‘grandma gaming’ salon — that charges $2.5K a year, Kyra Breslin for The New York Post

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

My biggest takeaway is just how swingy our generation has become.

We know that 56% of Gen Z calls themselves independent, thanks to recent Gallup data. We’re now seeing that play out in real time as young voters describe how their politics have shifted since 2024.

There’s been plenty of focus on the young men who’ve shifted away from President Donald Trump — but those aren’t the only young voters’ whose politics are in flux.

When I asked the group how their politics shifted since 2024…

The right-of-center voters on the call said they’ve shifted slightly left, thanks to immigration enforcement and Trump abandoning key campaign issues. And some of the left-leaning voters on the call said they’ve become more critical of their own viewpoints, moving away from “group-think” and a leftist mentality. They said they’re willing to be more conciliatory “to the other side.”

By this point, I think it’s widely understood that Gen Z is anti-party establishment and rejects traditional party labels. But many still underestimate how unorthodox Gen Z voters’ thinking is — and how willing they are to take a little from both parties while largely rejecting the polarization that’s plagued the country for their entire adult lives.

They’re not interested in a candidate who fits neatly into partisan boxes or is willing to parrot party talking points.

Other key takeaways

• The politicians they say are doing a good job (Mamdani, AOC, and Marco Rubio were the most popular names)

• Why they’re are resonating (they’re hyper-visible and symbolize a next-frontier type of politician)

• AI is officially a political issue (there’s a strong appetite for regulation around data and privacy, age verification for minors, labels on AI-generated content, and limiting water for data centers)

• Intimacy with local politics (it’s not lost on them that’s where the decisions that affect their lives are made, from rent/housing to education and yes, data centers)

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Like many New Yorkers, my game-time plans included joining a large crowd in the West Village. It was one of many hot-spots for communal viewing that popped up across the city thanks to the array of social entrepreneurs who thought to livestream the game for their neighbors.

Turns out, that livestream on 7th and 11th Ave was set up by the founders of Hoost, a brand-new marketplace for social experiences — thanks to a projector from Facebook marketplace, good neighbors, and a lot of chutzpah. They scoured the city for a place to project game three – and landed in the heart of the West Village. So they went back again on Saturday, and popped up just around the corner, across from Le Dive (thanks to a tip from a friend who lives next to Apollo Bagels.)

Hoost’s co-founder is Hussain Sheikh, a 23-year-old graduate of Babson College from McLean, Virginia. He launched the platform two and a half weeks ago (before Boston and New York Tech Week) and has been “all over the place” since. Here’s what he told me about their successful NYC pop-ups and what the energy signals for the rest of the summer.

Our conversation has been edited lightly for clarity and brevity.

Tell me about Hoost.

HS: Hoost is an app. There’s a marketplace that lets you book spaces, services, and sponsorships for events and pop-ups. We like to focus on social experiences rather than doing any corporate events. If it is a corporate event, it would be more geared towards the social aspect, because we feel like community and gathering are really important, and creating curated experiences is an awesome thing to do, and it’s very much in demand right now, and we feel like no one else is solving this.

It lets you book spaces, services, so you’ll be able to go and look up a warehouse, rooftop cafes, untraditional spaces as well, such as museums. You’ll be able to book that out by sending inquiry requests to multiple venues at the same time. Then you’ll be able to see what availability and pricing works for you, what matches your buy, rather than you having to go into every single website alone and submit the same inquiry multiple times, filling out the same form. This consolidates that into one place, and then on top of that, you’re also able to book services, think vendors such as DJs, photographers, AV equipment, food and beverage. For food and beverage, we really like to focus on experiential food and beverage rather than just pure catering, because pure catering, you can really just get from anywhere. We like to focus on stuff that almost, if you know Jack’s Dining Room, they do a great example of this, but very experiential, like food vendors, like someone will come and shuck oysters for you, or someone might make pizza in the spot for you, and then hand out slices. Very much in person and connected to the attendees. Our last layer is sponsorship. We’ve been seeing a massive pour of money into brands, or from brands into events.

Why is this type of platform having a moment?

HS: If you look at all the different RSVP and ticketing platforms, their growth is crazy year-over-year. Insane numbers. People are craving community and connection and that’s just something that’s not going to go away. My co-founder and I were already really interested in this industry, just coming fresh out of college, going to parties, going out, studying abroad, just being out and about. It’s amazing, right? Connecting with people, talking with people, experiencing with people is something that is never going away.

Every single brand is trying to get into an event, and then even niche communities — there’s so many online communities that are craving offline experiences. Offline experiences are just growing through the roof. According to an Eventbrite survey, it’s like 70% [plus] of Gen Z prefers to spend on experiences or materialistic things.

People are also drinking a lot less from Gen Z. That doesn’t mean that you can’t have a good time. There’s sober parties, sober events, events with just CBD and stuff as well. There’s like a wide range of alternatives growing. Because people are drinking a lot less, a lot of bars are unfortunately suffering. So people are going to more of these pop ups and experiences — they’d rather go to the pop up in the museum than go to the same bar that they’ve been going to forever.

You mentioned the power of community — being fresh out of college, going to parties, studying abroad. Is this a post-Covid resurgence?

HS: From 2020 to 2022, that graduation class from high school, but also from college, it’s like you didn’t really have a graduation, you didn’t get to do your prom, you didn’t get to do all this stuff. You had bundled up energy. You wanted to go out and about, and it’s just like right after Covid, the flood gates released, and it’s so much travel, so many experiences, everyone’s trying to do that. You don’t know what you have until you miss it, or until it’s gone. Covid took a lot of that away, but now we’re finally seeing a massive growth back.

Covid was over a few years ago, but it feels like people are socializing now more than any year since then. Why do you think that is?

HS: I think it has to do with AI. New York City is a different beast, because it’s always been going on, and I love New York City. But growing up in DC, in Boston, there’s not so many events happening there, not so many social experiences. Now we’re seeing a trend there, and then even in smaller cities, you’re seeing everyone go to a lot more events. People are starting mini festivals, just from both a social perspective, from the consumer, and then also from a brand perspective.

Biggest takeaway from the Knicks events?

What are the next events you plan to do this around?

HS: World Cup events. We got reached out to a bunch about projecting Summerhouse.

Will you do anything for July 4?

HS: There’s so many events that are going on in the city and around the states for Fourth of July. So, it’s like, okay, what can you do to stand out, and honestly, the best thing is like what gets in front of people’s eyes super fast? We could sell out an event, but having an experience like the Knicks, projection is a pretty good entry to start that out. So we might play some American classics, like Independence Day, even though it’s a movie with aliens, and some other movies, or some clips, maybe some songs that really resonate with the Fourth of July, and then just building on you have that going on. You might have a DJ somewhere as well, you might have someone serving up hot dogs, someone serving beers, stuff like that. Mixing and matching is really what creates a proper event.

And in an ideal world, what other community moments could you create for people to come together?

HS: The projection is one thing. But we don’t do just projections. I think it was a quote I saw this weekend, sports are the last frontier of collection. It doesn’t matter your political view, your religion, your race, any of that stuff, it just brings people together. So that is something that’s pretty awesome, that we obviously saw. Maybe New York’s like a whole separate breed of community, being New Yorkers, but regardless, it was awesome. I think after that the World Cup is a great opportunity to bring people together.

Another thing would be like TV shows and movies as well, straight projection. But our target events, as I said earlier, are socially oriented events. Our go to market is more like EDM house pop ups, health and wellness events, and then also these projected like streams. So you would have like something like this, and you’d maybe have like a food vendor that was there, you might have like a little bit of entertainment as well on the side, someone doing spray paint t-shirts, out of the box stuff.

We want people to have taste, because taste is the most expensive thing right now, right? It’s something that’s not going to go away, regardless of whether there’s AI, there’s no AI. Having taste is super important, and that taste makes amazing events, and we feel that we have good taste to give ourselves a good kickstart.

What’s one thing people are misunderstanding about how young people are hanging out right now?

User-generated pop-ups, essentially?

HS: Exactly. You had UGC online on TikTok, Instagram, but now you’re seeing UGC for events, and UGC for events is a lot more powerful because you can get a lot of really good content from UGC events.

Noteworthy Reads

• No Home, No Retirement, No Kids: How Gen Zers See Their Future, Jessica Grose for The New York Times

• Welcome to the Praise Kink Era: Why Gen Z Prefers Compliments Over Dirty Talk in the Bedroom, Ashley Fike for Vice News

• Did ‘Backrooms’ and ‘Obsession’ Really Kick Off a Gen-Z Horror Wave?, David Fear for Rolling Stone

• Why Gen Z is Paying for Silence, Hani Ritcher for Reuters

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

Earlier this week, I published a list of summer trend predictions from today’s biggest tastemakers across industries — tech, media, politics, fashion, sports, dating, and culture.

I was struck by how much they agreed that this summer will be spent together, in-person, outside.

READ IRL SUMMER IS HERE

Post Covid, crushed by a loneliness epidemic, exhausted by optimization, and amid an ongoing technological revolution, these predictions speak to a hunger for the real, the human, the communal.

But it’s not just trendsetters feeling this shift. Last night in NYC proves this.

Today, we’re diving into our Gen Z community’s summer trend predictions.

Here’s what they shared about their hunger for humanity, what it signals, and what it means for those trying to reach them.

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Like clockwork every June, predictions about what will become the trend of the summer come flooding in.

I have thoughts about what will be in and out for the next few months: longer lines, packed outdoor concerts, more block parties and a growing desire to “be where the people are.”

But after asking tastemakers across tech, media, politics, fashion, sports, dating, and culture what they think will define the next few months, one thing stood out. The most interesting trend wasn’t any single prediction — it was how many people arrived at the same conclusion from entirely different directions.

Whether they were talking about domestic travel, World Cup watch parties, women’s sports, dating, fashion, or politics, many described some version of the same shift. After years of living online, people are looking for each other again.

Here’s what they have to say about a summer that will be defined by connection.

‘IRL energy’

Lingala, trend forecaster and author of : IRL Energy. We kicked off the year with the “analog life” microtrend on Tiktok, but in reality, most people haven’t logged off. Still, I’m sensing a summer of communal joy, at least in New York. We had a rough winter this year, and people are eager to get outside. Over the past month, when going out to bars and parties, I’ve sensed people actively mingling with strangers again in a way that I haven’t seen since before the pandemic. Plus, the Knicks are energizing the city in a way I’ve honestly never seen before. It feels somewhat similar to joyful vibes in Brooklyn in the days after Zohran won, but sports inherently has a much more unifying spirit than politics. I think this all bodes well for a summer of love in the city.

Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-FL), first Gen Z member of Congress: This summer I’ll be listening to a lot of salsa music and spending as much time as I can playing music with friends. There’s a lot happening in the world right now that feels heavy between the war in Iran, ICE terrorizing our communities and so much more. But for me, salsa music has been a source of joy and grounding through all of it. Which is why a few months ago, I started a salsa band with some of my friends from high school called “La Orquesta Yeya,” named after my late grandmother.

If anyone in Central Florida is looking for a salsa band for an event, DM me at @maxwellfrostfl.

Arvia Few, dating coach and matchmaker: We’re watching a real cultural shift happen in real time, from hot girl summer to village summer. People are exhausted by the isolation of modern dating and they’re turning back to community as the answer. This summer is about getting off the apps and leaning into the people already around you to find love, or to help someone else find it. Dating is becoming a team sport again.

, co-founder of Run For Something: Touching grass. This summer people are going to literally and metaphorically be outside. Between the rise of Bricking and other screentime locks, the increased distaste for AI, and the deeper desire for local community, the hot new (old) trend will be anything that gets people together IRL and off the internet.

Laurence Milstein, co-founder of creative agency : Line culture is going to pop. From Dot Cakes in NYC to Community Goods in LA, the endless line for viral products has become the content itself (and the comments section has strong opinions). This summer, waiting hours just to post “you got it” is starting to feel less aspirational among younger consumers. For Gen Z and Gen Alpha, effortless access and rejecting the overhyped may become the new cultural capital.

, youth culture expert and author of : I think young people are going to be seeking out joy and fun at every possible moment. “Whimsymaxxing” first started showing up at the start of the year, but I think it’s going to really take hold over summer — just look at dotcakes! The world has felt so heavy and dark for Gen Z for too long, and they’re ready for a change.

It’s a party in the U.S.A.

, president at : This is the summer of domestic travel. For the last decade, it’s felt like summer was synonymous with Europe (my feeds are always filled with photos of Mallorca, the South of France, and Copenhagen). But after years of putting international travel on a pedestal, I think people are rediscovering the appeal (and nostalgia) of the American summer. Maybe it’s just me getting older, but between crowded airports, expensive flights, and families now traveling with young kids, there’s luxury in simplicity. I’m personally much more excited about the idea of going to places like Maine, the Hamptons, or Wyoming and avoiding the red-eyes, customs lines, and week of jet lag that can make the juice not worth the squeeze.

, Gen Z historian and author of : More domestic travel because of the increased price of planes and America 250 fervor. An anti-euro summer if you will.

Teen vibecoding

Andrew Zucker, contributing editor at Town and Country: My summer trend prediction is that a growing number of teenagers will launch vibecoded apps and won’t re-enroll in high school in the fall.

Live sports to socialize

, co-host of : The World Cup sparks a relationship boom. Few cultural events bring people together like the World Cup. I know several couples who were brought together by the beautiful game. Expect a romantic boom as young people get together in bars and parks to watch the world cup.

Sara Falkson, founder of Robyn Athletic: Women’s sports fandom isn’t just growing, it’s becoming part of Gen Z’s identity. The 2026 WNBA Draft drew 1.5 million viewers, up 20% year over year, while emerging leagues like LOVB and the PWHL are creating entirely new communities of fans and athletes. We’re seeing a shift from aspirational beauty to aspirational strength, with athletes becoming role models for a generation that values performance, confidence, and authenticity.

John Antonelli, co-founder of Real Sports: The 2026 World Cup will accelerate the trend of live sports becoming a bigger part of social life. From house watch parties to packed sports bars for the World Cup, Wimbledon, the NBA Finals, and the Stanley Cup, live sports will be the anchor of the summer.

Easy breezy style

, founder/CEO of Saie: Glowy bronzed skin thanks to Glowy Super Gel! 90’s inspired fashion with floral dresses and loafers.

Aja Win, content creator: I think being content at home during the summer is extremely under appreciated. You don’t need to chance the high of being where everyone else is. Not smoking cigarettes, I don’t understand how this became a trend. Packing in outfits is always the way to go so you’re always put together even if dressed casually. The French 75 should be the next it drink.

, Founder of : When it comes to the U.S., I think we’re going to be seeing more Nantucket Americana vibes. And we all want to be Dua Lipa this summer: white lace dresses, gold hoops, oversized sunglasses, and falling in love in Sicily. Glamorous but effortless.

Trust, transparency, and consequences

Astead Herndon, host of ‘America, Actually’ and editorial director at Vox News: My summer prediction is Trump hits his lowest ever approval rating. It was about 34% after Jan. 6 and I think he’ll [head] into fall and midterms near the same number. My non politics opinion is Drake’s Shabang is the closest we’ll get to a song of the summer from that album, not Janice STFU 😂

, author of Chaotic Era: As the midterm elections heat up this summer, undisclosed influencer marketing campaigns will keep sparking drama across the political landscape. Expect a wave of stories exposing social media creators (on both sides of the aisle) quietly pocketing checks from campaigns, PACs, nonprofits, and lobbying firms to push pre-packaged talking points. Will something be done about it? I’m highly skeptical.

, founder of Ahmed Baba News: Hot expert summer. After years of anti-intellectualism being marketed as authenticity, I think expertise is making a cultural comeback. The Trump administration’s blend of incompetence and incuriosity is reminding Americans that people who actually know what they’re talking about are underrated. Whether it’s among creators, podcasters, or politicians, ignorance is becoming less cool when it’s ravaging the economy.

, political data at and founder of Split Ticket: I think an emerging political flashpoint will be the job crunch that young people are seeing. We’re increasingly looking at job markets that are eliminating or seriously slashing entry-level roles for professions that used to pay a lot of money with abundant opportunities. How politicians respond could shape the alignment of an entire generation in a way we haven’t seen since 2008.

‘Real’-life reckoning

Ella Katz, host of Taller Toddlers: I feel like we are going to see the fall of the traditional influencer. A disinterest in unrealistic content. And an appetite for people as people. People getting the opportunity to build brands if they are authentic. Less value on “having followers” or being “put together…” Another prediction is brain health being all the rage.

, founder of : Posting more *real* content — historically social media hasn’t been real life, but I think people are tired of perfection online. I think this summer you see more people showing their true and authentic selves online.

, columnist & political pundit: If last month’s viral graduation speeches were any indication, I predict using AI as anything much beyond an enhanced Google will go the way of jeggings, QR code menus, and pterodactyls — at least for those of us outside Palo Alto and FiDi. It’ll increasingly become viewed as perhaps not a scarlet letter, but a Silicon (Valley) one, serving as an embarrassing social stain on those who carry it.

We’ll check back in with them in August to see how they fared…

Noteworthy Reads

• Will Gen Z be the generation to revive moviegoing?, Sarah Witten for CNBC

• Fake it ’til you make out: Gen Z New Yorkers are going on ‘practice dates’ — with people they don’t even like, Marissa Matozzo for The New York Post

• Gen Z rewrites how Americans work, juggling multiple jobs and side hustles, Josyana Joshua for The Los Angeles Times

• ‘I can’t afford to stay’: Gen Z is moving out of Miami, Sophia Hernandez for NBC Miami

• Can California Convince Teens to Work in Construction?, Mimi Dwyer, Yasu Tsuji and Karl Mollohan for The New York Times

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

For coffee, for frozen yogurt, for a table at a crowded wine bar. The line itself is part of the appeal.

Last Saturday, I met my friend for drinks at Le Dive’s new West Village location.

I’ve walked by it every day since it opened and noticed the same thing — a crowd spilling onto the sidewalk. Not just a busy restaurant, but a scene.

By 5pm, there was already a line. An hour later, the crowd had grown. Once seated, Le Dive’s allure became crystal clear.

It’s communal.

In the hour and a half we sat there, we saw plenty of people we know — a friend from college, work, from growing up. Both walking by us on the street and on the outdoor patio. It seemed like every table around us (most filled with twenty-something-year-olds) was having the same experience. The attraction wasn’t just the wine or the food, it was the feeling that something was happening.

I went back to earlier this week (on a weekday) to check out the scene. Even at 5:29 pm on a Tuesday, it was packed. And not just normal NYC crowds. It was exceptionally popping.

It’s not just Le Dive.

I’ve been thinking a lot about what I’m calling our current ‘line culture.’ The phenomenon where everything good has a line: your favorite drinks spot, fro-yo place, coffee shop.

Check out these photos from last weekend at Mimi’s frozen yogurt and Blank Street coffee — dueling lines directly across the street from each other.

What’s happening here? The pendulum swings back.

For years we’ve been talking about the loneliness epidemic, the decline of third spaces, and the growing amount of time young people spend online. Now the pendulum appears to be swinging back.

This also comes amid Gen Z’s push toward optimization. Everyone is looksmaxxing. We’ve all gotten so serious. That takes a mental toll.

READ THE UP AND UP ON SKINNY CULTURE

When it comes to the cost of it all, our line culture is an evolution of the ‘little sweet treat’ culture that permeated for a while. And it marks a shift back from Gen Z’s investment era, where young people were opting for bigger-scale purchases or experiences that would last beyond a singular moment (those have gotten harder and harder to afford).

Community is now the commodity

Here’s what this tells us about how Gen Z is spending their time — and their money.

1. Exclusivity sells.

2. But at the same time, everyone’s craving access to the same things.

3. Optimizing is exhausting.

4. Not everything has to be so serious.

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So he decided to create a “big-tent media organization” as he told me – not so that Americans come together and sing Kumbaya — but rather, to give the intellectually curious and politically homeless space to make sense of the world around them for themselves, without being told how they are supposed to think and feel.

Fast forward, and Tangle has more than half a million subscribers, plus another few hundred thousand followers on Tangle and Saul’s personal accounts across Instagram, X, and YouTube. Saul’s work has also been featured in The Free Press, Persuasion, CNN, Fox News, TIME Magazine, and more.

I sat down with Saul to learn more about Tangle, how it’s evolved since he started it seven years ago, and his POV on where media consumption habits will go from here.

Here’s our conversation, edited lightly for clarity and brevity.

Tangle launched in 2019, before the current wave of newsletter media. Tell us about your mission. Who did you originally imagine your reader to be, and who is that reader today?

IS: Our north star is trying to be a big tent media organization. The problem that we recognize is people are in information silos, everybody knows that they’re kind of trapped in their own algorithm, and we all have news consumption habits that tend to pull us towards people who are saying things we already agree with. The social cost of that arrangement is pretty apparent. If you look around, partisanship is really, really bad right now. It’s not just bad like we’re divided, it’s bad like the actual partisanship is pretty vitriolic. People are very angry at each other, very distrustful of each other. It’s incurring a big social cost on the country as a whole.

When I started Tangle, I understood there was a huge market for this, because distrust in media is at an all-time high. It was true in 2019. It’s only gotten worse now, and also the share of Americans who think of themselves as independents is really high. In fact, it’s larger than liberals or conservatives. Now we know from polling and political science studies that the people who say they’re independent aren’t always independent. Oftentimes, their voting patterns and who they align with are predictable. But there’s actually a lot of importance in the idea that somebody says, ‘I’m a political independent.’ It means they think of themselves as being open-minded, they think of themselves as being somebody whose vote will change depending on how politicians act or how a party acts. I wanted to target those people. I wanted to get those political independents under one roof, and I also wanted, I hoped, to bring in some partisans from each side who were maybe stuck in their own little information silos over time.

The audience has become a lot more partisan than I expected. The number of people who read our newsletter who have strong partisan affiliations is actually a lot higher than I thought it would be. Some reader surveys that we do have the split at like 40% liberal, 30% independent, 30% conservative. So, if you’d asked me seven years ago, I think I would have expected the independent group to be the biggest group of our readership by far. But actually, there’s just a lot of people who have partisan affiliations who are interested in hearing what the other side has to say, which I think is a market that a lot of other news organizations are just totally missing out on.

Young people are increasingly more independent. Gen Z is 56% independent, according to a Gallup poll from earlier this year, which is a higher number than millennials were when they were their age. Is there something specific about your formula at Tangle that is appealing to younger Americans right now?

IS: Even the younger Americans who identify as liberal or conservative have very little party loyalty.

So yes, I definitely think what we’re doing is something that is really appealing to a lot of younger Americans. Obviously, our core product is a newsletter format, which actually isn’t the best place to meet younger Americans. Where we see a lot of them come into our content is through our Instagram channel, our podcast, and our YouTube channel. That’s why those platforms exist for us. It’s why we’re on those platforms. But it’s really clear to me from hearing how they talk about and think about news that they have no reason to trust a Fox News or a New York Times or a Wall Street Journal, or whatever else. They view those kinds of mediums as being for their parents, for a different group of people, and they’re looking for something that has kind of a fresh look, that’s a new brand that they also feel like they have a high degree of trust in.

One of the ways that a lot of younger Americans are getting their information now is through influencers, personalities, things like that, and we sort of have the benefit of doing something that maybe the New York Times or Fox News or the Wall Street Journal can’t do, which is we bring personalities really front and center in our content, but we still have a newsroom behind them. A younger American might have a kind of parasocial relationship with me, because I write a lot of the takes and I host the podcast, and my personality is in the content. It’s present, we’re not talking like an institution, we’re talking like people, but I’m also not an influencer. I’m a journalist, and I have editorial standards, and I have an editorial team behind me, and so the news that we’re putting out is actually really reliable and factually accurate. We’re getting the best of both worlds there, and I think that’s helped us a lot with the younger Americans who come into Tangle as a news source.

You alluded to this, but for those unfamiliar, in your newsletter, you have ‘What the right is saying,’ ‘What the left is saying,’ and then ‘My take,’ what you’re saying. The my take section, as you mentioned, is personality driven, it’s whoever’s writing the piece. The “My take” section is unusual… a founder with an explicit opinion in a newsletter that’s explicitly non-partisan. How do you explain that tension?

IS: We view it as an act of transparency. It’s important for readers to know the biases that the person delivering them the news holds. In our current media ecosystem, and I know this because I’ve seen how the sausage was made, I’ve been in the newsrooms, a lot of journalists end up injecting their own opinion, whether it’s consciously or subconsciously, by the way they structure their stories. I mean something really simple like who’s the first person quoted in a news article, a straight news article, and what does the quote say. That decision is a framework for how people are going to view the piece and view the story that every team has to make, and in my view, there’s no way to make that decision, ‘objectively.’ It’s always a subjective choice about what the author thinks is important, what the readers think are important, what they’re trying to serve their audience as a news organization. That doesn’t mean everybody is subjective and there’s no way to do fair reporting or balanced reporting or nonpartisan reporting. It’s just reporters are people, they have biases, their sources are biased, the rolodex of people they call when a story breaks, there is bias in there. It’s less explicit than an opinion piece, but it exists.

We also have an introduction section of the story that is a totally neutrally written breakdown explanation of the story before we get into the opinion stuff. That’s probably the thing that’s closer to like an Associated Press, or Newswire, Reuters release. But people are interested in the personality element of it, and we tell our audience this particular part of the newsletter is opinion, and we’re doing this as an act of transparency, so you know what the author’s biases are. It’s interesting to hear how somebody personally is examining an issue, and I think it makes the whole kind of balanced nonpartisan viewpoint diversity framework a lot more engaging than it would if we just tried to be robots and summarize arguments from the right and the left without any input from us at all.

What’s the thing traditional news gets most wrong that Tangle is specifically designed to fix?

IS: Viewpoint diversity and the diversity of viewpoints that exist on staff are probably two of the biggest things that are problems right now for the mainstream press.

Viewpoint diversity, I think, ensuring that a story that gets published is not just being told through just a single lens, or even just two lenses, the right and the left. I mean, we fall into this trap too by having what the right saying and what the left saying, but we really do try and collect opinions that are from the center-left out to the far-left and the center-right out to the far-right, and offering dissenting voices that exist on both sides.

There have been a lot of studies that have shown that journalism as a profession is dominated by people with college degrees who tend to have left-leaning politics. That’s a hard thing to solve for, because you need to find conservatives who want to work as reporters, which isn’t easy. I’ve tried, trust me. But we have gone out and created a newsroom that I think actually has a lot of ideological diversity. There’s a lot of push and pull in the content. And I think the product that comes out on the other side is something that speaks to a wider range of Americans than a lot of news organizations might have.

Looking more recently, what’s the single biggest shift you’ve seen in how young people consume news over the past year?

IS: There are more and more young Americans who are realizing that their feed is not the thing that they want it to be, and is not a good way to get news. I mean, 15 years ago we kind of had a revelation as a society that the Facebook algorithm wasn’t good for us, and then leading up to the 2016 election, there was all this talk about the way the feed and liking and angry emojis and reactions and all this stuff changed what was being put into people’s home feed on Facebook, back when that was like the front page where everybody got their news. My generation, I’m 34, came to this realization, like, ‘Oh, this is bad for us.’ We were trapped in this little algorithm, this little information silo. And then Mark Zuckerberg obviously changed the way Facebook delivers news in reaction to the 2016 election, and downgraded news, and it became less of a destination for that. People moved to platforms like Instagram, TikTok, etc.

What I’m hearing more and more, especially over the last year, is them just trying to get out of that trap, get out of the algorithm, doom scrolling. There’s stories everywhere about the upside of phone bands in schools, about how Gen Z is going analog and leaving their phones, going to dumb phones, and buying records again, and you trying to hang out in person, and moving towards this kind of technological backlash that I think is fundamentally about the news feed that people have. That’s a really interesting development.

I talk a lot about my theory of the Two Gen Zs — that our generation was split down the middle by Covid, social media, and now AI. How do media habits differ between older Gen Zers and younger Gen Zers? If you were launching Tangle today, targeting a 21-year-old, what would you do differently?

IS: My personal observance of it, without, you know, I haven’t studied this super closely, but just what I get from interacting with our audience is that the pre-covid generation does a lot more sitting down, listening to long-form podcasts and YouTube channels and things like that. If I could go back and do something differently, I would have launched the YouTube channel or the podcast a lot earlier than I did. Our YouTube channel is only two or three years old. Tangle’s existed for seven years. And the podcast… we didn’t start until I was probably three years into it. We just took a while to get there, and I think it’s been harder to build that audience, whereas if we had been doing it concurrently from the start, it would have been a lot easier. I know from looking at the metrics of who tunes into what that our audience on the YouTube channel and Instagram and the podcast is just a lot younger than the newsletter audience.

Anytime I get an email that’s like, ‘I don’t care what you think, just tell me the news, why is Isaac offering his take’ or something, somebody who’s new in the newsletter, 98% of the time, it’s from somebody over the age of 50 or 60. It’s very rare that we get that kind of feedback from a younger audience member, which is interesting. I do think especially with the rise of AI, having that personality-first, human-first element is something that’s going to help us survive the wave of agentic news that I’m sure is coming.

You recently completed a college campus tour. After, you wrote in a message to America’s college students, that the division in our country is less Democrat vs. Republican and more in your words: “Indecent vs. decent. Fair reporters vs. hacks. Open- minded vs. closed-minded. Curious vs. incurious. Humble vs. arrogant. Nihilists vs. existentialists. Sycophants vs. dissenters.” Tell us about your tour and this takeaway.

IS: The college tour was a little bit spontaneous. I mean, we didn’t actually plan it out in the sense that I didn’t say I want to book a college tour, let’s go hit five campuses. We really got a cluster of invitations from colleges for me to come speak to them about media bias and literacy and the rise of independent media, and then we decided to schedule them in this sort of five or six week span, so we could do them all on a roll, and just pack it in. It ended up being a really powerful experience, because the kinds of students I got to talk to and the geographical makeup of the colleges were really diverse: Rowan University in southern New Jersey, Harvard in Cambridge, Davidson College in North Carolina, BYU in Utah, and then St. Olaf College in Minnesota. So very different parts of the country, very different student bodies, some big huge public schools, some small liberal arts schools, some Ivy League institutions. I was expecting the student bodies themselves to have really different questions and concerns and problems, but there was more similarity than I thought there would have been.

In terms of my thoughts about the divisions, it just came from being really eyes open about the dividing lines that we’re seeing and trying to think about them with a fresh eye. And when I was talking to college students or answering questions about different politicians or different political groups, like TPUSA vs. establishment Republicans, and abundance liberals vs. the Democratic Socialists of America, it occurred to me that a lot of what’s happening is not a policy debate. A lot of what’s happening is people who are really hardline loyalists to their party or figure like President Trump, people who are really open-minded, looking for new solutions to new problems.

We’ve talked a lot about how young people’s media diets. What’s your media diet? What are the go-to sources that you check religiously?

IS: My media diet’s insane.

I open my computer every morning, and it’s New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Fox News… Washington Post is in there sometimes too.

My inbox is where I get a lot of my news. I’m a newsletter guy, and I subscribe to a lot of news organizations’ newsletters. Independent media outlets like 1440 are places that I read who are offering quick breakdowns of what the biggest stories are. [For] insider DC stuff, Politico and Axios and Punchbowl. I read those. And then a ton of independent creators or journalists, writers. Everybody from Matt Iglesias to Ryan Girdusky, who does a kind of right-wing, nationalist newsletter.

I really do try and consume as wide a range of views and perspectives as I can, and I think that’s part of what helps me do my job. But it’s also important because we’re in a really fractured time from a media perspective, so what the New York Times is putting on their homepage is not necessarily what people in leftist circles are talking about or interested in. I want to make sure I’m keyed into all those different spaces.

What’s your biggest prediction for where content is going in the next year?

IS: I think the AI hype is overblown. I think tools like Claude and Chat GPT and things like that are basically much more advanced versions of what Google search was a few years ago, and most Americans are going to use them to get quick answers to quick questions, but I’m not sold at all about the idea that these LLMs are going to start replacing newsmakers and newsletters at scale.

So yeah, some AI skepticism and some hope for the places that are really doing good work to become more prominent.

Noteworthy Reads

• This summer’s interns are walking into a very different Wall Street, Alice Tecotzky for Business Insider

• Study says WFH, not AI, is stifling Gen Z job market, Dave Lozo, Morning Brew

• Darkness on the Edge of TV Town, Mary Julia Koch for The Wall Street Journal

• The Making of a Teenage Terror Suspect, Maya Sulkin for The Free Press

And I sat down with BBC’s The Global Story to discuss the biggest misconceptions around Gen Z and AI.

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Earlier this month, we hosted our first in a series of 2026 x Gen Z political focus groups.

The conversation featured 11 young adults ages 19-21, which means they’re all part of Gen Z 2.0, the younger half of this generation.

They flocked from across the country — Massachusetts, North Carolina, Arizona, New York, Pennsylvania, Arkansas, Florida, and Indiana — to our little corner of the internet on Google Meet.

Here’s the TL;DR.

The young Americans on the call *many of whom can vote for the first time in 2026* are fed-up by what one described as the “roller-coaster” state of our country, where conflict feels inevitable both at home and abroad. We talked about the war with Iran, artificial intelligence, gun violence, and division within both traditional political parties (which most participants want nothing to do with).

Asked the #1 issue that should decide the 2026 midterms, there was a clear consensus: ECONOMIC ANXIETY.

That phenomenon will shape how young people vote in November. This obviously, isn’t new (helloooo 2024) — but the way it’s manifesting for this cohort is slightly different than how it may be for their parents or grandparents.

While the words affordability, inflation, and cost of living get thrown around on panels of talking heads and in tv ads ahead of the midterms, the young adults we spoke to are coming at it from a slightly different angle.

For them, it’s not just about current prices. It’s how the financial squeeze and pressure of today will impact their life trajectory down the line.

They’re working multiple jobs to try to pay their way through college, spending money to help their parents get by while they should be saving up for their futures, and pulling into savings accounts that are meant to support them throughout the rest of their adult lives. As this cohort tries to kickstart the rest of their adult lives, they’re sacrificing for a future that feels anything but guaranteed.

READ A GENERATION OF LATE BLOOMERS

They’re stuck between a rock and a hard place, a fear that things might not actually get better, but forced to double down regardless, because there’s no other clear path forward.

This boils down to anxiety — about the present and the future.

Nearly every participant shared just how their personal financial situation has deteriorated in the past year especially. That matters.

Here’s some of what we heard.

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Hear me out. Gen Z has an unlikely hero: Pope Leo.

He plays Wordle, loves the Sound of Music, told young people they should be called Gen+ because of what they will contribute to the world. And now, after his official speech on AI, he seems to be speaking to this generation’s fears and frustrations more directly than almost anyone else in power.

At a moment when nearly every institution feels either performative, profit-driven, or absent entirely, *the pope* is offering something young people feel starved for: moral leadership.

In his Monday encyclical Magnifica Humanitas, Pope Leo addressed AI with a level of clarity and nuance that feels notably absent from most political leaders (cough Trump, cough) and even many tech execs themselves.

As Gen Z’s AI anxiety reaches new heights, the pope confronted the issue head on, not with blind optimism or apocalyptic fear mongering, but instead, with a vision centered on humanity.

That matters because Gen Z is the last generation to truly straddle life pre and post-AI, to try to build identities in a world increasingly mediated by algorithms, and left the most vulnerable to its disruption.

Lots of people talk about AI, but not all sound human doing it. Pope Leo toed that line.

READ A CHORUS OF GRADUATION BOOS

Here are the top reasons why:

1. What makes his message resonate is that he’s one of the few people discussing AI who does not appear personally invested in the race to profit from it. This is rare. Young people are deeply skeptical of institutions right now. Especially when those institutions stand to financially benefit from the very disruption they’re promising will augment human potential. The pope, by contrast, feels outside of that system and laser-focused on centering human interest over corporate interest.

2. There was empathy, compassion, and humility in his words. It feels like he’s looking out for his community, for humankind. His speech didn’t sound like it was written by AI. He also acknowledges that he is not offering a “comprehensive treatment of artificial intelligence” and is real about his own capability. That kind of honesty stands out at a time when so many leaders insist they are certain about the technologies they barely seem to understand themselves.

3. This is the most human a leader has sounded in a while. For years, much of the public conversation around AI has revolved around productivity, efficiency, optimization, and scale. The pope instead focused on dignity, meaning, labor, truth, and human connection, which are the exact things many young people fear are being eroded fastest by algorithms.

4. His take was notably nuanced. He didn’t reject AI (far from it… in fact Anthropic exec Christopher Olah was there for the speech). Instead of saying AI is inherently good or evil, the pope argued that innovation should be judged by whether it expands our collective potential and ability to flourish — not replace human purpose. That distinction is important, and it’s one a lot of young people are desperate to hear articulated clearly. Gen Z is exhausted by black and white thinking; they get enough of that on social media. They don’t want leaders who pretend AI will either save civilization or destroy it overnight. They want someone willing to be honest about both the promises and the tradeoffs.

5. The pope also did something few leaders currently do, calling out the question of who should be held responsible. Pope Leo directly challenged the people building it to take seriously its social consequences instead of just assuming it’s an unstoppable force of nature (Spoiler: it’s not. Its future is being decided by a select few who hold power in tech and politics, and Gen Z knows that). The pope is focusing on areas (truth, education, labor, purpose) where many young people increasingly feel institutions have stopped short of protecting them altogether. He’s calling for accountability, safeguards, and ethical standards.

6. He’s also asking the bigger-picture questions, which are at the core of Gen Z’s AI anxiety: “Where are we going? Toward what goal do we wish to orient ourselves? What direction should we choose as a people and as a human community?”

7. His honesty about the situation (that AI marks a tuning point for civilization) wasn’t just lofty rhetoric or something for a quick soundbite. It was rooted in history, data, and recommendations. One of the biggest complaints I hear from young adults is that leaders (in politics, education, the workplace) often talk about a problem without offering a clear solution. There was research that went into the pope’s encyclical, including evidence on the impact of tech on kids, teens, and young adults.

Noteworthy reads

• Gen Z’s preparedness paradox, my latest with for The Boston Globe

• Tinder is betting Gen Z daters would rather be offline, Samantha Kelly for Bloomberg

• Is it just us? Or is everyone wearing swimwear as streetwear?, Jessica Neises for Cosmopolitan

• Gen Z is turning to gig apps like Uber or GoPuff for summer jobs, Alex Bitter for Business Insider

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You’ve probably seen the videos of college grads booing commencement speakers talking about AI this week.

We’ve known for a while that Gen Z is AI anxious — and that their relationship to AI is nuanced. They love to hate it, hate to love it.

In many ways, young adults feel they are once again guinea pigs in a big experiment they didn’t sign up for, but will inevitably deal with the consequences of (smart phones, social media, Covid-19 mark a few other recent examples).

But what’s happening here is new. Unlike with smart phones and social media, Gen Z is being told how they’re supposed to feel about AI and how it’s going to take over their entire lives. And they are sick of it. Condescension is this generation’s least favorite language. And they’ve already heard enough from AI creators about how it will impact them.

Look beyond the boos and you’ll see there’s even more going on here.

Gen Z’s relationship to AI is driven by FOMO.

Time after time, young people tell me that they use AI not because they want to, but because they feel like they have to. These speakers’ AI references are hitting that nerve.

In one of my earliest AI-focused listening sessions at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, a then-college junior shared the following:

This dynamic has surfaced over and over — where young people forgo AI to take the ‘moral high ground’ only to get beat out by their peers who are using AI. And in the case of AI, the moral high ground has all but disappeared. When there are no rules at all, is there really any point in doing ‘the right thing?’ Or does it just make you a sucker?

Back to Gen Z’s AI FOMO, it’s reminiscent of the early social media days, except with one major caveat. Social media, at the get-go, felt fun. In many ways, it became a right of passage. AI doesn’t have that element.

And while Gen Z was socially native and digitally fluent, they are not AI native or fluent — but Gen Alpha will be.

Earlier this spring, we asked a group of young adults to reply to the following: “When I think about AI, the first feeling that comes to mind is…”

Here’s what they shared.

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