How the Past Year Has Politicized Gen Z
Why young peoples’ political opinions have changed and shifted since the COVID-19 Pandemic
In the midst of the pandemic summer, Cade Sbrocco, a student at Ohio State who’d lived in Erie, Pennsylvania his whole life, opened up Reddit’s top news page and saw footage from local protests after George Floyd’s murder. A video of a girl sitting and covering her eyes after getting maced in the face and then kicked down by a police officer had gone viral. Sbrocco recognized her name and was shocked to realize he’d sat next to her in high school classes. At first he felt deeply embarrassed to see how his small town was gaining attention, then angry. How could something like this happen? he thought.
In the small town of Erie, with a population under 100,000 people, protesters marched to City Hall and then the Erie County Police Department. After someone threw a brick through the window, officers in riot gear stood atop of the building and eventually launched tear gas into the crowd.
Within the past year, Gen Z has lived through a pandemic with a death toll of half a million people in the US, some of the largest protests against racial injustices, and growing inequality as a result of the pandemic. For many, these events were life changing and for Gen Z, their politics will likely be impacted much longer than after the pandemic ends.
“What we know about people’s political identities is they are formed at this point in people’s lives when they’re young adults, that they’re pretty steady over the life course, and that events that occur when people are of the age that Gen Z is now do have a kind of stickiness in influencing their attitudes,” says Syracuse University political science professor, Shana Gadarian.
Gadarian is currently working on a project that investigates the long term effects of the pandemic on peoples’ health behaviors and political choices. “For the most part, political socialization, and political identities are steady over time, which means that the pandemic might have very long term impacts on people’s views of what the state should do and what government should do.”
Just a few months after the pandemic began, an estimated 15 to 26 million protestors organized throughout the country after the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor calling for justice. Although racial violence is far from new, these protests were eye-opening for many young people, which sparked larger conversations about the criminal justice system and systemic racism against Black people in America.
Compared to previous generations, Gen Z receives their news online through nontraditional media sources like Twitter. A study conducted by Pew Research this year revealed that 18 percent of Americans get the majority of their political news from social media. Of that 18 percent, approximately 48 percent are Gen Z or millennials. For Gen Z, social media gives people the opportunity to engage with others politically and can have an impact on their beliefs.
Olsen and Sbrocco both recall seeing different footage of police brutality from the protests on platforms like TikTok and Twitter that were never shown on mainstream news. Because of this footage and discussions on social media, Sbrocco became in favor of defunding the police. He also realized that reforms are not enough.
A Gallup study in 2020 found that 70 percent of people ages 18 to 34 are in favor of defunding the police and 33 percent are in favor of abolishing police departments, compared to only 50 and 16 percent in favor respectively for the ages 35 to 49.
“This year has definitely made me realize that there is no reforming the system, because this is what it was made to do. We are seeing the fruits of a foundation of racism, it’s just changed over these years. It’s not in any way gone away,” says Morgan Williams, a 21 year-old junior at Chatham University, who credits Black revolutionaries like Angela Davis in her change of opinion from supporting police reform to abolition.
During the protests, Williams brought supplies like water and care packages for protestors because she was concerned about spreading COVID-19 to her family members. Gav Meiri, a student at Queens College attended protests once a week during the summer and noted how his experiences were different based on who he was around. He remembers noting the difference between how police interacted with white organizers during protests compared to black organizers.
“ I remember seeing like white organizers, going over to talk to the police and asking him to backup and the police just like automatically just respecting it and backing away as opposed to other protests that I’ve attended that have been black organized and black led,” Meiri said. “ One of them was distributing food in a public housing unit or a public housing compound. The police were like keeping very close eyes on us the whole time, even though we were just distributing food.”
Bryanna Olson, an 18 year-old student at North Lake College in Texas, marched ten miles during a protest in Denton, where she also registered to vote. She walked through different city landmarks learning more about the history of its Black citizens and as she continued through different neighborhoods, more people started to join.
“I’ve never felt such a sense of community,” says Olsen.
The effects of the pandemic and political events of the past year may also reinforce the pre-existing trend of turning away from the two major political parties. A 2018 poll found that membership rates for both political parties have declined and only 56 percent of people ages 18 to 24 choose to affiliate with the Democratic or Republican party.
For example, the Democratic Socialists of America gained nearly 40,000 members since January 2020 reaching almost 100,000 members as of February, according to Priscilla Yeverino, External Communications and Creative Assets associate of the DSA. “A deluge of mutual aid and community organizing started during the pandemic. We grew because people were able to witness the injustices that occurred with massive layoffs, lack of healthcare, evictions and American families going hungry while the rich got much richer and profited off of the pandemic,” Yeverino says.
Within the past year, the approval rate for socialism has increased by nearly ten points to 49 percent between the ages of 16 to 23, according to a yearly survey. This survey also found that more than one-third of Gen Z hopes that Joe Biden pursues socialist policies over capitalist ones during his term and that both Millennials and Gen Z have increasingly favored the eventual elimination of the capitalist system.
Overall, the effects of COVID-19 further exposed inequalities in the US. Nearly 21 million people lost their jobs due to COVID-19 resulting in a 15 percent unemployment rate, which had not been reached since the Great Depression. Certain groups have been disproportionately affected by economic inequality, such as, Black people, Hispanics, and low-wage workers. With disappearing jobs, many young people are forced to settle for lower paying work.
Williams lost her university job after campus shut down. She opted to work under the table as a nanny for her cousins for six dollars an hour. Then for the next academic year, Williams’ university increased the cost of tuition.
“The fleeting faith, or the dwindling faith that I had in United States, and like, the systems that I’m a part in, whether that be higher-ed academia, or capitalism, or even just nonprofit work, I feel like I just don’t have the same trust,” said Williams.
Olsen worked as an essential worker at her local grocery store at the height of the pandemic to make ends meet. In April of 2020 she received hazard pay, 15 dollars an hour compared to her usual 11.25 dollars, for only one week before it was taken away -even though covid-19 cases were still increasing and she was at risk.
“I saw a lot more people coming into my store, not wearing masks, and especially wearing a bunch of Trump merch,” she said. “It was a little comedic at the time. But then as it kept increasing, more and more people just stopped wearing masks altogether and were having parties. I got super angry.”
In addition to the politicization of covid-19 and racial violence, The United States was preparing for an important upcoming presidential election. Getting Donald Trump out of office was the main goal for young people.
A Pew Research Center survey found that only roughly 22 percent of registered voters between the age of 18 to 23 approved of Trump as president while 77 percent disapproved, a higher percentage than in Millennials, Gen X, and baby boomers. More young voters supported progressive candidates like Bernie Sanders and progressive policies such as a single government program to provide health care. The most important concern for young voters during the 2020 election was accessibility and cost of healthcare.
Because of the two party system, some young voters felt the pressure to vote for the candidate most likely to get Trump out of office, rather than a candidate that they could see improving the quality of life for citizens. For example, a report found that of those who voted for Biden, 29 percent of voters said that they made their decision as a vote against Trump rather than a vote for Biden.
“ I saw him as a necessary vehicle to get towards what is needed for the future, as a temporary stepping stone away from Trump,” says Sbrocco about his vote for Biden in the election.”
Although distrust in political institutions is not a new trend, some of Gen Z has lost faith in the American political system over the past year. In only two months, the average rating of trust for 15 major institutions decreased with the largest drops for the police, the US government, and the criminal justice system, according to a study by The Morning Consult.
“I’m never gonna be excited about a presidential candidate. Or a political figure,” says Olsen.
However, compared to 2018, young people in 2020 increased their political engagement through a higher rate of donating to campaigns, attending demonstrations, and volunteering for campaigns.
Since then, some of Gen Z is more optimistic on communities and mutual aid to provide a safety net through distributing resources, rather than the government. Although mutual aid is nothing new, it has been a tool to provide financial security for those affected by the pandemic and for various organizations like the Minnesota Freedom Fund, which raised over 30 million dollars to bail out jailed protestors in June.
“I think there are a lot of limits to what the electoral system could do. And I think there’s a lot of benefit to be gained from people working within their communities in a way that directly helps and benefits their neighbors,” says Meiri, who began volunteering at local food distribution centers. He would like to see more communities providing resources like food or clothes while also educating its members about democracy.
As time goes on and Gen Z becomes a larger voting group, we will better understand the long lasting impacts of last year’s major events.
“If the government provides people a better standard of living, if it helps fix income inequality, and advertises to people that it can be effective and functional- those are things that rebuild trust,” Gadarian says. “What we can anticipate is that if there is another big disjuncture, if the climate crisis becomes more immediate, or if there’s economic fallout, in the future and blame for that is laid on democratic policies, then that would shape people’s identities.”
As more people get vaccinated and the Biden administration attempts to deal with social issues, Gen Z’s attitudes may change. Until then, they just have to make it through 2021.
