The Myth of Woke Gen Z
8 min read
For years, Gen Z has been either derided or praised for supposedly being “woke.” Its members have been called snowflakes, mocked for performative “slacktivism” and embracing trigger warnings, and described (favorably and unfavorably) as climate warriors and gun-control activists. Some older commentators have even proclaimed them the nation’s last hope. (The number of people who’ve argued that Gen Z might “save the world” is … not small.)
But that progressive reputation was called into question when Donald Trump won last week’s presidential election—partly thanks, it seems, to Gen Z, which encompasses voters ages 18 to 27. Exit polls and county-by-county analyses, however imprecise, indicated that young voters had shifted right since 2020. That’s especially true for young men—most of all young white men, who made up one of Trump’s most supportive cohorts. Democrats also lost ground with young women, though. According to some national exit-poll data, the party’s lead among 18-to-29-year-olds was cut nearly in half. And county data (which are considered more reliable, though still imperfect) indicate that counties with large populations of 18-to-34-year-olds moved 5.6 points rightward since the 2020 election.
People had good reason for thinking that more young adults might vote for Kamala Harris. Surveys have shown that the group cares about blue-coded issues such as the environment, firearm safety, diversity, and inclusivity. One 2023 poll found that, compared with Baby Boomers and Generation X, Gen Z is more concerned about criminal-justice reform and racial equity; in 2020, Pew found that Gen Z members are likelier to say the government “should do more to solve problems” rather than leaving things to business and individuals.
But, as researchers told me, priorities change; young adults can care about progressive causes and still be moved by messaging that speaks to their deep unease and uncertainty. Many of them are struggling—to feel financially secure, psychologically safe, or hopeful. Trump, in his campaign, managed to mirror what many young people already felt: The world is a frightening place, and it’s not getting better.
Every generation is more multifaceted than its stereotypes suggest. Even before this election, Gen Z’s political leanings were more complex than older adults made them out to be; famous young activists such as Greta Thunberg and Malala Yousafzai could never have represented the more than 2 billion people globally who were born between 1997 and 2012. But particularly in the past few years, surveys have found young adults to be “not off-the-charts liberal,” as Corey Seemiller, a Gen Z researcher and professor at Wright State University, put it. When she and her collaborator Meghan Grace polled thousands of respondents in 2021 and 2022, they found a “massive difference between women and men,” Seemiller told me; women were nearly twice as likely as men to identify as being on the left side of the political spectrum. Still, less than half of women said they were politically left; about 20 percent identified as on the right and about 20 percent as “in the middle.” That survey result might not have seemed shocking at the time, but in hindsight, it suggested that not that much needed to change, Seemiller said, for many young people to tip into voting for Trump.
It’s true that some progressive causes, including climate change and gun control, have typically appealed to members of Gen Z regardless of gender. But in the past few years, those priorities seem to have changed. Now many young people are more concerned about the economy, a topic that was a centerpiece of Trump’s campaign. “Gen Z is a very financially concerned generation,” Grace told me. Relative to their elders, they’re saving more earlier and are “much more financially conservative.” A University of Chicago study from earlier this fall similarly found that young adults across races and party affiliations rated inflation as the most important issue related to the 2024 election; economic growth ranked prominently as well. That doesn’t mean that young adults stopped caring about lefty causes—but they’re more ideologically varied than some imagined. In their 2021 research, Seemiller and Grace found that, compared with participants who simply fell down the middle on most issues, twice as many young people identified as “center blended”: very liberal on some issues and very conservative on others. “If you hit a nerve with something they really cared about,” Seemiller said, “you got their vote.”
So what nerve did Trump hit? One common thread preoccupying many young people, Grace told me, is a desire for security. “When you think about things like their passion for the environment, desire for school safety, financial success, affordable housing,” she said, “all of those things have the same spin on them: I just want to feel safe.” They generally want to go to class without worrying about shooters, to grow older without witnessing the planet’s demise, to pay rent without draining their whole paycheck, to believe they can make ends meet. Trump campaigned on fear—he warned of an economy in shambles, crime and danger lurking, undocumented immigrants taking work from “forgotten men and women.” Much of that wasn’t rooted in reality: Violent crime rates are down in the U.S., for instance, and undocumented immigrants tend to fill jobs that American workers say they don’t want. Still, fear resonated.
Other populations who voted red last week were clearly drawn in by some of that messaging—but Gen Z might have been particularly susceptible, researchers told me. Young adulthood is a scary life stage, one in which many people are just beginning their careers and starting to save money, low not only on resources but also on power. The future, to many of them, probably feels deeply uncertain. Having left behind their old life contexts—family, school, the political and religious beliefs of parents and neighbors—they face the daunting task of finding new communities and driving principles, Jennifer Tanner, a developmental researcher, told me. (Young adults, she noted, are particularly vulnerable to cults, which can grant them a sense of direction and camaraderie.)
In many ways, the transition to adulthood has become harder in recent years. College tuition is ever-rising, which leaves many people with overwhelming debt. Sky-high rent has made living below one’s means even trickier. And the ways young people have traditionally found new purpose are shifting: They’re marrying and having kids later or not at all, and religious participation is less common. Young men, whose rightward turn was especially pronounced in this election, may face particular challenges. They’re now less likely than women to get a college degree. And although the military used to be an alternative route for many non-college-bound men to find structure and a sense of pride, recruitment has been down over the past two generations. Now, Tanner told me, that population is left wondering: “What do I have to belong to?”
Trump had plenty of help convincing Gen Z that they could find solace on the right. Podcast hosts such as Joe Rogan and Andrew Tate spread the message to millions of young men that they’d been spurned and needed to take back power. Tradwife influencers sold an idealized conservative vision to huge counts of young women while preparing perfect desserts. Trumpism may also have reached many young adults through their parents—most of whom belong to Gen X, a notably conservative generation (and, if the exit polls are correct, the one that supported Trump more than any other last week).
Parents have always had some sway over their children’s beliefs, and studies suggest that many have a mediating influence on their grown kids’ voting behavior. But young adults today, on average, have particularly strong ongoing relationships with their parents. In a Pew poll from last year, a majority of 18-to-34-year-olds said they look to their parents for advice. And nearly 60 percent of the parents in that survey said they’d helped their kids financially in the past year; 57 percent of 18-to-24-year-olds in a January poll reported living with their parents. Someone who depends on their folks for money or a roof over their head might feel some extra pressure, whether consciously or not, to align with the family’s politics.
But another person who might have nudged Gen Z rightward is Kamala Harris. The vice president’s campaign hardly mentioned climate change or gun control—issues which, though they’ve dropped in importance for young voters more recently, might still have been “unifying” across race and gender if they’d been highlighted, both Grace and Seemiller told me. Harris did talk about some economic policies, such as lowering housing costs and instituting a price-gouging ban. But she also hammered home that she’d save America—and democracy—from Trump, and piece together the norms he shattered. That wouldn’t necessarily have resonated with Gen Z, the oldest of whom were only 21 when Trump was first elected in 2016, the researchers I spoke with told me; a world with Trump is the only world they’ve really known as adults. In Seemiller and Grace’s 2021 survey, “access to voting” and “political dysfunction” were pretty low on the priority list. “They might not have been hearing the issue that mattered to them,” Grace told me. “And so it really had to be simplified down to: Do I care about the economy or do I care about this other thing they’re talking about?”
The dark irony is that a Trump presidency, in all likelihood, will be particularly hard on young adults. Economists have warned that Trump’s plans, if they come to fruition, will only worsen inflation. Trump is not likely to cancel student-loan debt. And well before November 5, LGBTQ youth were already at starkly high risk for suicide; now they’ve seen their nation elect someone who poured millions of dollars into anti-trans ads, and is expected to roll back policies that prevent discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. The crisis hotline for the Trevor Project, a suicide-prevention nonprofit for young LGBTQ people, reported a nearly 700 percent increase in reach-outs on November 6.
Of course, whatever happens next won’t affect all young adults in the same way—and ultimately, more voters under 30 still chose Harris than Trump. But anyone who was surprised by Gen Z last week might want to stop assuming they understand the young people of the world, and instead start listening to them.
