Ever since the election, there seems to be a torrent of polling that shows Americans in their late teens and early twenties are fairly reactionary (young men overwhelmingly so). I’m old so I don’t know anyone IRL in that age bracket. But something about what the media has been claiming for months now doesn’t seem to sound right. Idk maybe it’s 100% true but it’s something I have a hard time taking the media’s word for. I know we have quite a few users here in that age bracket. What are your real-life experiences (i.e. not online) with this? Do you think this age demographic is actually trending reactionary?
(I do remember digging into the details of one poll, and while it seemed there was more affiliation with Republicans than previous, it also seemed like there were an also very large segment that were openly showing to be further left than the democrats? So maybe more reactionary sentiment but also more genuinely leftish sentiment?)
I don’t think it is really worth trying to cast political stances on a group of Americans who likely have voted maybe ONCE in their lives. The average American 20 year old is probably neither outright progressive or conservative unless they decided to major in Poli Sci straight out of HS or are one of those people who grows up in a political family and has the same politics/a reversal of them.
I cannot call myself ‘early 20s’ anymore, but I am still in my 20s for what it is worth and I do not think any of the people ~5 years younger than me that I’ve encountered in my day-to-day have been more conservative. Most people under 30 believe in climate change, can usually be convinced that billionaires (if not capitalism as a whole) are ruining the planet & need to be shot, and that free healthcare is a human right.
various sources for above numbers:
As always, polling is virtually meaningless when you’re trying to generalize a group of ~60 million (18-29yo Americans) but I think a lot of the ‘gen z is so reactionary’ is because we (leftists) are primed to focus more on that kind of stuff. Things like a video or tiktok of some fascist 18yo doing a racially motivated shooting or a drunk 21yo cracker frat boy shouting ‘fuck Palestine’ at a protest are more likely to be posted/shared in leftist circles on the internet (even if only to dunk on them) compared to like - various content about on-going protests/social movements/etc. And I get it - seeing something like one of the various ‘Stop Trump!!’ protests that is just a bunch of white boomers walking around with signs can get demoralizing, hence why a lot of that content is never posted/shared here but…
We’re 3 days from the year anniversary of the Stop Cop City protests at Emory University, for example. We’re not even a year out from various university protests/walkouts/etc across the country for Gaza/Palestine.
I personally do think that the kids (i.e. the 18-29 group; but I’ll even include 18-35) are the most progressive generation alive in this country and likely will probably get more progressive (don’t quote me on this) as we age into the planet burning down around us & climate refugees are being created every other month by freak ‘once in a century’ storms & we have a blue ocean & the AMOC stops cycling and…
anyways, tl;dr - no they’re not.