Making sense of where young Americans get their news: people > organizations
Keeping tabs on past Gen Z candidates. Making sense of where young people get their news. And some thoughts on 'the two Gen Zs.'
In 2022, there were just two Gen Z candidates running for Congress — Karoline Leavitt and Maxwell Frost. I wrote about them at the time. While they were (and still are) on opposite sides of the political spectrum, they shared a common goal: there should be more young people involved in politics.
Just over two years later, they’re following through on that mission.
Leavitt, who served as the national press secretary for the Trump campaign, is poised to become the incoming White House Press Secretary for President-elect Donald Trump. She’ll be the youngest person to ever hold the position at 27-years-old.
And Rep. Maxwell Frost, the youngest member of Congress and first member of Gen Z elected to the chamber (he’s also 27), was elected co-chair of the Democratic Policy and Communications Committee this week, making him the first member of Gen Z in Congressional leadership.
And while they may be the two of the most high profile young people in politics, they’re not the only young people stepping up to serve. I wrote just after the election that Run For Something, which helps recruit and support young progressives running for state and local office, had seen a surge in sign ups since Trump’s victory. Two weeks later, 10,000 young people have signed up with the group, showing their interest in running. For context, 5,000 people signed up in the entirety of 2017, when RFS was founded.
Moral of the story — while young people may be frustrated with politics, they still want to be a part of what shapes the future. Young people want to tune in, not out.
The burgeoning world of news influencers
We’ve known for a while that of all traditional institutions, Gen Z has expressed the lowest level of trust in traditional news (along with Congress and the presidency, fwiw). And that young people are increasingly interested in getting their news from social media.
At a time when they aren’t sure where to find fact vs. fiction, some young people are opting for individual content creators, journalists, and personalities. According to a new study out this week from Pew Research and Knight Foundation, 37% of U.S. adults under 30 get their news from news influencers. That’s nearly 10 points higher than the number of adults ages 30-49 who said the same.
What’s more — according to Pew Research and Knight Foundations’s analysis — a majority of news influencers, which Pew/Knight describe as “individuals who regularly post about current events and civic issues on social media and have at least 100,000 followers,” are men.
63% of all news influencers are men
And amid the post-election discourse about who’s responsible for the content young people are consuming online, more news influencers say they are right leaning than left-leaning.
27% of news influencers say they identify as “right-leaning,” while 21% identify as “left-leaning”
At a time when civic education in the U.S. is sparse, a majority of young adults say news influencers are helpful to their understanding of current events and civic issues.
72% of young adults ages 18-29 say these creators have helped their understanding of current events and civic issues
What’s up with Gen Z’s shift to the right?: The two Gen Z’s.
I spent the week in D.C., having conversations about what happened, and what’s happening, with young voters.
There’s a key question on everyone’s mind. Are today’s young voters really more conservative than generations past — or did Trump just capitalize on a unique moment in time where young people were craving something no one else was giving them?
Having spent the last few years talking with young people all over the country, I see Trump’s inroads with young voters as the result of a perfect storm of factors.
In all of my work researching and analyzing Gen Z, I consistently see two distinct factions of the generation: those who graduated high school pre-Covid and those who really grew up during Covid. Surely, for anyone whose adolescence was impacted by a once-in-a-century global pandemic there are extreme social and emotional ramifications. Whether that meant entering a workforce disrupted by the pandemic, years of college Zoom classes and campus social distancing, or having high school and middle school defined by a year without much socializing at all, it’s had a massive impact on how we see the world.
But it hasn’t changed everyone in the same ways, and I’d argue that those members of Gen Z, who were younger at the peak of the pandemic, had a very different — and frankly harder — experience than those a bit older.
But Covid isn’t the only thing that has fragmented the experiences of Gen Z.
What might seem like subtle differences in age are exacerbated by the rapid speed by which social media has changed over the last decade. The habits of the older members of Gen Z (where I fall) vs. the younger members of Gen Z are distinct. Older members of Gen Z might have had a flip phone before an iPhone. Instagram and Snapchat didn’t exist until our time in late middle school. In high school (and most of college) there was no TikTok. But younger members of Gen Z have had an entirely different experience online. They only ever knew phones to be smartphones, with all the apps that exist today. They may be more prone to message on Snapchat than iMessage. And they are so acutely familiar with TikTok that they may not appreciate the way it’s transformed our culture.
To put this into perspective, I’m the oldest of four. I’m 27, I have a brother who’s 25, a brother who’s 21, and a sister who’s 20. Though we are all technically members of Gen Z, my sister and I often say we might as well be of different generations — given the speed of change in the world with social media and pre and post-Covid it sometimes feels like we grew up such different times, defined by completely different cultural moments, trends and events. We represent the two Gen Z’s.
And yet — ironically — we’ve both only ever been able to vote in presidential elections where Trump has been on the ballot. Weirdly enough, politics is the one thing that’s remained somewhat unchanged from the first time I could vote, to the first time she could vote.
Yet, the two Gen Z’s relationships to Trump has been shaped in very different ways.
The oldest members of Gen Z graduated high school and attended college during the Trump resistance era. With the Women’s Marches, March For Our Lives, climate strikes, and Black Lives Matter movement, it wasn’t only perceived as normal to attend a march or demonstration, it was cool to do so. “Resisting” was very much in the zeitgeist.
But younger members of Gen Z (this year’s first-time voters) graduated high school and attend college in the Biden-era. It is a very different cultural and political climate. Young people’s instinct is to push back against authority and with the Democrats in power, some factions of this younger segment have adopted Trump in a way that is almost counter-culture.
Young people’s move to the right was shaped by many factors, not just age. Economic factors and a general disdain for political correctness have also played into their rightward expansion. But it’s worth noting the external factors that didn’t have much to do with any one candidate, but rather an overarching political and cultural tide shift.
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