Gen Alpha’s politics are starting to take form

They won’t be eligible to vote for years, but today’s current events will impact how they do.

A professor who studies generational differences once told me that generational distinctions are flat out bogus.

He had a point. No generation is monolithic. And yet, there are a set of shared global circumstances across any generation’s life span that shape how they collectively view the world. That conventional wisdom has been part of efforts to group those born in certain time frames into cohorts for decades.

For Gen Z, the sheer number of once-in-a-lifetime events, coupled with the rise of social media and its unforgiving pace, has created even faster than usual generational acceleration. This nuance led me to create the theory of the two Gen Zs, the idea that my own generation, which technically spans from 1997 to 2012, was split down the middle into Gen Z 1.0 and Gen Z 2.0 by the Covid-19 pandemic, which fast-tracked change across all parts of society. That divide was intensified first by TikTok, which not only transformed content creation and consumption, but our entire culture – and now AI, which is reshaping education, work, and life as we know it.

On the whole, generational cut offs are tricky to decipher, especially when dealing with factors like those listed above. Add the Trump era of politics and the unyielding news cycle that’s followed into the mix, and boy, it’s tough. So tough that Pew Research – known for grouping generations into cohorts with specific dates for reference – released an update in 2023, sharing that their process for comparing generations is evolving. “We’ll only do generational analysis when we have historical data that allows us to compare generations at similar stages of life,” Pew wrote at the time, adding that sometimes, young adults’ perspectives may differ because of their demographic, rather than their generation. They added: “Existing generational definitions also may be too broad and arbitrary to capture differences that exist among narrower cohorts.”

If Pew’s update is any indication, Gen Z 1.0 and 2.0 is just the tip of the iceberg. As I wrote in April, when we first saw quantitative data after the 2024 election start to reflect some of the political divides with Gen Z that I’d been chronicling, “now more than ever, we should rethink how we classify generational cohorts. And maybe the 15-year time frame historically used to break down generations should be updated to reflect the current speed of change in a digital world.”

With all that said, I’ve spent the past couple of weeks talking to more members of Gen Alpha than usual. There’s no exact time frame yet agreed upon yet for the start of Gen Alpha, but the tweens I’ve spoken to are outside what’s typically considered the range of Gen Z.

Here’s what I’m noticing. Just as the oldest Gen Z voters’ politics were shaped by the Obama years, the rise of smartphones and social media, and then the break down of norms as we entered President Donald Trump’s first term in office, that administration’s policies, and the social justice movements that followed in its wake, the oldest Gen Alpha voters’ politics are currently starting to form.

In my recent conversations with those as young as 11, I’m noticing an acute awareness and sensitivity to human rights, political division, and what they perceive as perpetual arguing.

These tweens are not simply young and idealistic. They’re paying attention and are cognizant of their parents and teachers’ constant stress (be it economic or otherwise). Children of government employees may feel anxious about their parents losing jobs. In many households, children of immigrants worry that their parents could be forced to leave the country. Even those who are not experiencing this personally see their friends and classmates grappling with heavy topics. On the whole, these tweens know about wars abroad that have taken the lives of kids their age and left others to grow up without parents. And they have been taught that they can’t trust anything they see online.

Meanwhile, Gen Alpha will be the first generation educated almost entirely in the AI era. Schools are currently finding their AI footing, but there’s no denying that this generation’s classroom experience and outside coursework will look markedly different than any generation that came before them. While we may be on the other side of a school experience defined by iPhones, with phone bans surfacing in schools across the country, new technologies will dictate how they learn and grow.

So what? The way our leaders act today will impact how Gen Alpha votes down the line. One of the most common things I heard from first-time voters in 2024 was that they wanted to return to a time when life was better, and brighter, pre-Covid. For kids coming of age in the Trump 2.0 era, that kind of nostalgia may hit even harder. And for all the anxiety I’m hearing, they’re going to want a future that doesn't resemble the present.

The bottom line is that we're teaching an entire generation that politics is chaotic, and at times performative, while real problems go unsolved. If we don't start modeling the kind of governance these kids actually want to see (collaborative, focused on solutions rather than spectacle) we shouldn't be surprised when they vote to tear down the system we've shown them. The question is whether Gen Alpha will have any faith left in democratic institutions by the time they get their chance to vote.

My thoughts on some events in Gen Z 1.0 and Gen Alpha 1.0’s tween years.

Noteworthy reads

What Gen Z is telling us, The Financial Times

How the diminishing value of a college degree is impacting the youth vote, Dan Merica and Matthew Choi for The Washington Post

Most of Gen Z is not spending any money on dates, Suzanne Blake for Newsweek

Would you hire a content creator for your wedding?, Elise Taylor for Vogue