Kei Kawashima-Ginsberg: Gen Z sort of always bounces back. They continue to participate. They’re participating at higher levels despite everything that’s going on. But I always get a little bit scared that we’ll reach the point – how many times can we ask them to bounce back, how many times can they be told no, have a door closed in their face by a politician before they get burnt out and give up? That’s something that haunts me at night, because when you’re so amazed by someone’s resilience, you always think about when that resilience might end.

Alex Lovit: Welcome to The Context, a podcast about the past, present, and future of democracy from the Charles F. Kettering Foundation. I’m your host, Alex Lovit.

Both of my guests today are from the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement, or CIRCLE, which is based at Tufts University’s Jonathan M. Tisch College of Civic Life. CIRCLE is an independent nonpartisan research organization focused on youth civic engagement.

My guests are Kei Kawashima-Ginsberg, who is the Director of CIRCLE and also serves on the Boards of March for our Lives and Rhizome, and Ruby Belle Booth, who is a Researcher at CIRCLE, and is also a former Fellow of the Brenden Center for Justice.

CIRCLE is one of the leading research organizations in the United States studying political behavior among younger Americans. They’ve been at it so long, since 2001, that the young voters they studied in their early years are now middled-aged, and as you’ll hear, Kawashimi-Ginsberg and Booth both have an intimate understanding of Gen Z’s political challenges, motivation, and behavior.

We often tend to think of politics in simplistic terms: polls and elections, red vs. blue. But what I’ve learned from this conversation is that political behavior is more complex than that. It’s about identity and social connections, whether people feel they have a place they belong and that their voices are valued, which means politics is also ultimately about self-worth and mental health.

That’s true for all of us, but looking specifically at Gen Z can bring these connections into focus. Political parties and community associations have long played major roles in getting citizens engaged and helping them develop political identities. But the traditional methods of these organizations, the local party committees, the neighborhood meetings, are less prevalent and less effective than they were for previous generations.

And we also haven’t done a great job as a nation making sure all K-12 students receive comprehensive civic education, including building skills for democratic citizenship. In many cases, colleges and universities help fill this gap, but not everyone goes to college. And increases in higher education cost and student debt are also among the reasons Gen Z has found it harder than previous generations to realize the economic aspects of the American dream. Many young people have been forced to delay home ownership, marriage, and having children.

That hasn’t stopped Gen Z from being politically active. You’re going to hear plenty of good news in this conversation about how America’s youngest voters are taking the responsibilities of citizenship seriously. But CIRCLE’s research demonstrates some real problems about how a lack of civic infrastructure, a mental health crisis, and barriers to voter registration are affecting Gen Z’s political engagement. Democracy can only endure if its values are passed on from generation to generation, so it’s important to pay attention to these problems.

The conversation you’re about to hear opens with a discussion of Gen Z’s demographic diversity, and I wanted to provide just a few numbers for this. According to research from PRRI, just over half of Gen Z identifies as white, and about a quarter are Latino. Generation Alpha, who are today children younger than 12, is the first majority-minority generation in this country’s history.

Gen Z also stands out from previous generations in terms of LGBTQ+ identity. Overall 90 percent of American adults identify as heterosexual or straight, but 28 percent of Gen Z adults identify as LGBTQ+.

The Kettering Foundation’s mission is to advance inclusive democracy. Generational differences of demographics and identity are meaningful for us because we are working to help the United States and other nations throughout the world embrace both diversity and democracy. If older Americans balk at passing the torch of democracy to younger citizens who look and think differently than them, that torch will go.

How Gen Z engages in politics is going to make a lot of difference for this year’s elections and for American democracy for many years to come. And Kei Kawashimi-Ginsberg and Ruby Belle Booth can help us understand this story.

Alex Lovit: Kei Kawashima-Ginsberg, welcome to The Context.

Kei Kawashima-Ginsberg: Thank you, it’s nice to be here.

Alex Lovit: And Ruby Belle Booth, welcome to the show.

Ruby Belle Booth: Thank you so much, I’m excited to talk to you.

Alex Lovit: So, we’re going to be talking today about how young people approach politics. So we’re thinking here about Gen Z, which roughly includes people who are just becoming teenagers through people in their late 20s, but it’s tricky to talk about large groups. We’re inevitably going to start summarizing how Gen Z thinks about politics, but we’re actually talking about 70 million people here, about a fifth of the US population. And of course, in any group that size, not everyone looks alike, not everyone thinks alike. Even though it’s useful sometimes to talk in generational terms, it’s important to keep that diversity in mind.

And in fact, diversity is something that really distinguishes Gen Z from previous generations, so maybe that’s a good place to start. Kei, let’s start with you. What does Gen Z look like demographically, and how is that different from previous generations?

Kei Kawashima-Ginsberg: Sure. So Gen Z is the most diverse generation that this society of the United States has had so far in terms of racial backgrounds, the way they express themselves with gender identities, sexual orientations, and of course they’re the most economically diverse population in recent era as well.

And in that sense, young people really hold different issues at heart as one of the most important things that affects their communities, and that really changes how young people engage in politics and elections as well.

Alex Lovit: That’s a starting place to think about the demographics of America’s youngest generation. So how about their politics? I mean, this is something that CIRCLE has done a lot of research on through polling, focus groups, other methods of studying public opinion. Ruby Belle, what can you tell me about the politics of Gen Z? In the big picture, how are young people voting, what issues are most important to them, and how is that similar or different from older Americans?

Ruby Belle Booth: Young people across the board are really motivated by the issues that matter to them. In the fall of last year when we last asked, their top issue was the economy, and that’s been the case for several years. And that looks different for different young people—for some it’s inflation, others cost of living, others jobs that pay a living wage. And that’s really been a main thing that young people are concerned about, and what they’re thinking about when they’re evaluating politics. That isn’t to say that other issues like gun violence and climate change, which have been important issues for young people for a long time, aren’t still top of mind—they’re the second and third highest ranked issues for young people—but the economy really is coming out on top.

And obviously caring about issues isn’t unique to young people, but it does show a bit of a change in how young people are participating in politics. Young people are deciding if they’re going to vote and who they’re going to vote for based on where candidates stand on the issues that matter to them. And this approach is somewhat of a departure from older generations and a movement away from political parties as the primary way to approach voting and evaluate candidates.

An example of this is that young people’s participation in social and political movements have tripled since 2016. Gen Z is really getting engaged around the issues that matter to them. But they’re looking for political homes and new ways to do democracy that is outside of our party system, which makes a lot of sense when you look at the pretty high levels of distrust young people have in our political parties, and also the tendency that started with Millennials and has continued through Gen Z of young people identifying as independents and not identifying as Democrats or Republicans.

Alex Lovit: Could you talk a little bit about the particular experiences, economic experiences of young people, and young people have a different attitude about economic concerns than maybe older Americans.

Kei Kawashima-Ginsberg: So, we generally see young people less concerned about issues like national debt, which is another huge economic issue for the general population, whereas young people tend to really lean into the concerns they have about whether they can just afford living a normal life.

So a lot of times it’s really deeply developmentally related—can they have a job that pays a living wage, can they have paid leave when they get sick or want to start a family, or can they have rent subsidy so they can continue to live in the community they grew up in. Those are the issues we hear more and more.

The student debt, while it is a really big profile issue, is actually not as common as one might think. People might think it’s experienced and it’s a top issue for like 50 percent of young people. It’s usually in single digit, and that’s because not everyone has student debt even if they graduate, but when they have really large debt, like over $50,000, it really impacts how they can move forward after they finish their school.

Ruby Belle Booth: Something else that I think is important to add when talking about the importance of economic issues for young people is that we found these issues are even more important for young people who aren’t voting. So we looked at young people who didn’t vote in 2020 and were unlikely to vote in 2024, and obviously cost of living and jobs were the top two issues for all youth, but for these 2020 and 2024 non-voters they were 12 points more likely to choose jobs that pay a living wage as one of their two main issues.

And we actually find that those young people are more economically disadvantaged and are less likely to have college experience, which is unsurprising given the inequities that exist in turnout by young people’s educational experience.

But the other thing that’s interesting is this group is far more undecided than their peers who do vote. 71 percent of them said if they were going to vote in 2024, they weren’t sure who they were going to vote for, compared to 25 percent of other youth. And what I think this highlights is the fact there’s so much opportunity to use economic issues as an onramp for the young people who aren’t voting the most.

The thing is, those young people are hard to access. You’re not going to be able to go to a college campus and find them. Certainly you’re going to go to a college campus and find young people who are really concerned about the economy, but at least for these non-voters, it’s going to be a lot harder to target and reach them. It’s going to take more investment and more work. But if we want to actually diversify our electorate and make our country truly representative, I think doing that hard and reaching out to these non-voters and connecting them to opportunities to participate by using the economy as an onramp is a really big opportunity that I think right now it’s clear that either party could take that opportunity.

Those young people are undecided, anybody could do it, because yeah, I think the economy is an onramp for a lot of young people who right now are unlikely to be voting this election.

Alex Lovit: Earlier Ruby Belle referenced the poll CIRCLE conducted at the end of last year of more than 2,000 respondents of young people answering questions about their political beliefs and voting intentions in 2024. In that poll, 37 percent of respondents supported the Democratic Party, and 25 percent supported the Republican Party, so that would indicate a little bit of Democratic lean among the younger generation.

But then there’s also a huge contingent of people that aren’t supporting either party, 7 percent supporting Independent or third-party candidates, 31 percent still undecide. How do you understand what’s going on here? Is this young people still developing partisan identities and they’ll develop those over time, or is this a long-term alienation from the two major political parties?

Kei Kawashima-Ginsberg: Alex, I think young people’s so-called departure from political parties isn’t just because of the issue priorities young people place and how they are picking candidates and a stance toward a particular party. It’s also related to the overall erosion of associational life in the United States. Young people are looking for political homes, and we find that exceedingly few young people actually have access toa  place that we call political home for and by and with young people, which means young people really finding inclusion, their voice, representation, and doing collective problem-solving around an issue they care about in their community.

That used to include political parties. That was local, county, or community local parties, or high school or colleges offered active student-led or young people-led associational life, or they included young people fully as a pipeline for political party membership.

Those experiences are becoming less and less accessible to young people, and if they don’t have an opportunity to think about how they think about particular issues from a party lens, for example, starting from a young age, and they’re living more and more in a virtual association life that’s based on an affinity or identities, they have less experience that unifies them as a member of a party.

So that I think combines with how young people really energized and animated by the issues they see, and have much more opportunities to engage with in recent years.

Alex Lovit: Why aren’t political parties reaching out more to young people? What has changed that there is less of an institutional framework for young Republicans, young Democrats, getting people involved in politics through a partisan lens?

Kei Kawashima-Ginsberg: I think the national parties actually do reach out to young people, especially in Presidential elections. We find over half of young people do end up hearing from political parties, at least one of the parties, Republicans or Democrats, by the time November election happens—a little bit less in midterms.

What seems to be changing is the infrastructure in local communities. Many young people, sometimes 60 percent of them in rural communities, don’t have really meaningful access to any local community institutions that can show them different models of decision-making or participation or mentorship around civic and political life. That’s one of the reasons why we coined the term civic desert, and we have been doing quite a bit of work in civic desert communities to understand both some of the great assets these communities have that we might miss in our national research, as well as trying to understand how we can improve opportunities in partnership with local community stakeholders.

So I think it’s a national trend. It’s not that parties aren’t trying, but they now do so through national influencers, or they come to the national conventions to make sure the young people are seeing political parties, but in very different ways than they may have 30, 40 years ago, which is onscreen or on their phone as opposed to maybe a community meeting where they’re invited over a little spaghetti dinner. So the format of meeting and growing political identity may be really different today.

Ruby Belle Booth: And on top of that, when parties are doing outreach to young people, it’s not equitable who’s receiving that contact from parties or even from organizations that are doing similar work. There’s going to be a lot of young people—and we see trends based on identities and other experiences and backgrounds—who aren’t hearing from campaigns as often. And those are often the young people who are already least likely to vote. Which means that often the effort that’s being done by political parties is not going to have an ultimate effect of expanding and growing the youth electorate, but leaning into the young people who are already likely to vote.

An example of this that goes back to the civic desert example that Kei gave is that even in battleground states, young people who live in civic deserts are less likely to see political ads. There’s so much money getting pumped into these battleground states, but if you’re in a civic desert, you may not even see all that money that’s apparently being used to turnout your vote.

And I think this really highlights a problem that there is in the current approach to mobilizing young voters, which is that often it’s focused almost entirely on the young people who’ve already voted or who are most likely to vote, and isn’t really seeking to expand the opportunity or diversify the electorate, which is really important especially with an increasingly diverse generation that’s aging into the electorate who needs more support than maybe prior generations did.

Alex Lovit: This is something that I hear from people trying to engage young people politically, but also people trying to engage other populations politically who are maybe a little bit lower-propensity voters, is that the parties in a rational way—if they’re trying to figure out who to spend their resources on, of course they’re going to do their outreach to the people that they think are most likely to show up at the polling place. So the parties aren’t a fully functional system for reaching out to people that aren’t already engaged.

Can we paint a little bit of a picture of the patterns here, of what types of communities are more likely to be civic deserts, what types of voters are less likely to receive political information?

Ruby Belle Booth: As Kei mentioned, we see that there is a high prevalence of civic deserts in rural communities, with 60 percent of rural youth living in a civic desert and around 30 percent of their urban and suburban peers living in a civic desert. That’s one big divide we see in terms of access. And another one that comes up a lot is race and ethnicity. There’s a lot of differences in access to opportunities, whether it’s K-12 education or in your personal network, to opportunities to learn about civic engagement and elections and voting. And often it’s youth of color who aren’t receiving that access as much.

And the last—I think there’s so many gaps we could list, but another one of the really big ones we see is based on educational experience. College students and young people who have a college degree are a lot more likely to be seeing these opportunities than young people who haven’t graduated high school or have only graduated high school and then went right into the work force.

And across all the ones I’ve just listed—whether it’s rurality, race and ethnicity, or education—we see how this pays off at the ballot box, where there’s been consistent inequities in voter turnout among these groups. And we really emphasize that it’s not because some young people don’t care as much. It’s because of these differences in access and in opportunity, and it just really shows when it comes to the ballot box and young people being able to turn out to vote.

Alex Lovit: So what can we do about this? If political parties aren’t a full answer to the problem, colleges are doing some political engagement for their students but not everyone goes to college, what institutions could do more, what institutions should do more?

Kei Kawashima-Ginsberg: I think when we say college students are engaged, I think it’s actually speaking to a larger trend that contributes to the disparity, which is that if you are part of any institution, whether it’s a high school, work place that’s highly engaging, or college, you’re already a little bit engaged than those who are totally isolated, whether they’re living in rural communities without access to institutions or you’re out of school youth who are not enrolled in any school or employed.

So it really has to do with what experiences young people can encounter to make sure they feel invited to be part of the decision-making as an electorate and a voter, and what kind of information they can access, and how critically and competently they can process and produce information that comes their way.

So when I think about what are some people and institutions that can do those things if they tried harder, and are doing in some cases, it can be pretty expansive. Of course K-12 schools are really important, and they can start very early on, as early as elementary school and kindergarten even to start to talk about what is decision-making, or ask the big civic questions like, what should we do, and try to have familiarity with the idea of participation early on.

But there are other organizations that are doing great collaborative work, like libraries as an association have made a huge impact in local communities to create places where people can understand issues in a form of a community forum, create a voter registration table, and make sure there’s a volunteer that can invite and guide the people that are coming to use the library for a variety of reasons with an understanding that the library is now one of the last standing brick-and-mortar institutions that’s widely trusted by community members.

I’ve seen after-school programs, work force development programs, and of course institutions of faith doing a lot of great work making sure their constituencies understand this is their right and responsibilities. Sometimes it was hard-earned for particular communities, and they understand they need to exercise that.

So that educational work and socialization that creates especially for young people an expectation that they should be voting when they’re eligible to vote is critically important. And that’s why we often see huge disparity at like age 18 already in how young people feel they’re qualified to participate in politics.

So all the stuff that young people can experience or don’t get to up to age 18 has a huge impact on a young person’s lifelong patterns of engagement. So we can’t just start when young people turn 18 to say now you’re a citizen and you need to learn to vote and do all the other things people do to improve community life as citizens. It needs to be much more developmental and broad-based than that.

Alex Lovit: You’re talking there about social and cultural factors that make young people—well, make everybody, but in this case young people –feel included, invited, that civic participation is an expectation. There’s also procedural factors—voter registration and ballot access policies vary pretty widely from state to state. How much do you see this as a factor in voter turnout rates for young people?

Ruby Belle Booth: It’s a really big factor. When we look at 2022, there was really wide variation by state and voter turnout. Michigan had turnout at 37 percent, which was the highest in the country. They have a lot of the policies that we see as best practices when it comes to helping facilitate young people’s participation, which includes same-day registration, automatic voter registration, online voter registration, preregistration, and having pathways to voting, like absentee voting or mail-in voting.

Then you look at a state like Tennessee, which had the lowest turnout with 13 percent, and they have very few of these policies in place. And obviously there’s a spectrum with all the other states in the middle that have different combinations of this facilitative election policy cocktail that puts them at different turnouts. But I think those policies really have a big impact.

We found that in starts where automatic voter registration, online voter registration, and same-day registration were in place, young people were less likely to say that missing the deadline is why they didn’t register to vote. And so that shows pretty concretely that some of the procedural barriers young people are running up against are fixed by or at least improved by having these policies in place that make it easier to register and easier to vote.

That being said, just having the policy isn’t enough. There’s really wide variety in implementation across the states in how these individual policies get implemented at the state or county level, and also, if information of these policies existing is out there for young people. Same-day voter registration is great if you miss the deadline, but it’s not great if nobody tells you that same-day voter registration exists. And so it’s really important to be coupling not only policy and implementation, but also information to make sure these really great election policies that exist can have their full impact.

Alex Lovit: This might be kind of a silly question, but why do we want to increase political participation for young people? Why do we want voter turnout rates to be higher? And obviously one reason is if I’m the Democratic Party and I’m looking at that partisan split we talked about earlier, I might think wouldn’t it be great if more young people voted? That’d be great for my party. And if I’m the Republican Party, maybe I’m thinking it’s worse for me the more young people, and that might have something to do with some of these different policies about voter registration and elections policies in different states.

But from a nonpartisan perspective, why is it good for democracy to have more young people engaged in voting and elections?

Kei Kawashima-Ginsberg: So we have at our nation’s founding made a commitment for representative self-government. And I think when we think about the rates of young people increasing and participating at a higher rate, they’ve never been fully represented in our decision-making, meaning the turnout of young people have always been far lower than that of older people, though young people are still part of our nation and the people that are often impacted by the policies that’s made today the longest.

So the climate change policies or gun violence policies or how we structure race relationship and equality structure, all those policies are going to impact them the most.

I really think at the philosophical level, fundamentally if we don’t make sure young people are equitably prepared to fully participate in democracy as early as possible, including elections, but even other means of participation that can start before they’re 18, we’re really not meeting what we promised all those years ago, only less than 250 years ago so far.

Alex Lovit: I do think it’s important to point out here as you were mentioning, Ruby Belle, earlier you were listing the voter turnout rates for younger generations, and at the high end I believe it was 37 percent, so that sounds pretty low—but Kei, as you said, younger voters have always turned out at lower rates throughout American history. Do you have a sense of how much it is increasing in recent election cycles, of how much youth voter turnout has increased in recent years?

Kei Kawashima-Ginsberg: Yeah, so generally speaking young people had a moment of high turnout for three cycles in a row—so midterm, Presidential, and midterm again so far. That supports they’re pretty galvanized as an engaged population, as a cohort.

That said, young people’s turnout has never really exceeded 50 percent. That’s been the plateau, and we don’t think that’s high enough. But Gen Z’s turnout, just to give you an example, as young people, 18-24 cohort, has been at least as high as that of Boomers’ turnout when they were about the same age. So it is a precocious generation in that they’re not waiting to participate until they’re 30 or until they have a home, or something that people may have done when in previous generations they were waiting for their life to settle and then start participating in community life. Today’s young people have had to delay those life landmarks as well as not wait to participate, because the issues are so urgent to them, as Ruby Belle said. And so it’s really different patterns and probably motivations for participating in civic life than again the Boomers and Gen Xers did.

Alex Lovit: And the three election cycles you’re talking about there, is that ‘18, ‘20, and ‘22?

Kei Kawashima-Ginsberg: Correct.

Alex Lovit: Okay. Well, we’ll see how turnout rates look after this year’s election. I want to ask about where young people as they’re developing political identities, where they’re getting information, what’s informing their decisions? We’ve already talked a little bit about civic education as a part of this, and I want to get back to that, but what other sources are young people turning to? Where are they getting their news, what people in their lives are informing their decisions?

Ruby Belle Booth: When it comes to information about voting in elections or civic and political issues, young people trust their family and friends the most. And they hear information from their family and friends. They’re the biggest source, above social media, above the news, it’s family and friends.

That said, over half of young people are getting information from national and local media. Social media isn’t as big as I think some people think—about 20 percent or less of young people reported getting information about social and political issues on each platforms. So Facebook was a little over 20 percent, Instagram was a little under 20 percent. But even online, friends and family are the most helpful kind of account for young people to interact with, which I think just underscores the importance of trusted sources of information and also the relational nature of young people’s civic development.

Often there’s a lot of young people who get engaged for the first time because of a family member or friend who brings them along to a meeting of an organization or takes them to the polls. This relational element is so important for young people as they’re finding their footing in politics and in their communities, and that’s also what we see when it comes to the information that they’re getting about issues and about elections.

Kei Kawashima-Ginsberg: Yeah, and I want to add one thing to what Ruby Belle said. Essentially, social media as a mass media wave communicating with young people gives young people flow of information, but it seems that having somebody they know directly communicate the information really overrides the impact of something like social media messages that might be going to everybody.

The other thing we found was that if young people have access to associational membership, like being an active member of a community club or political parties or what have you, that also drives voting by a lot.

Alex Lovit: Let’s talk a little bit about schools. Americans of all ages are informed by media sources or informed by people in their lives, but of course young people have a lot more experience with schools than older folks. CIRCLE’s done a lot of research in this area to evaluate what young people are learning about citizenship and also suggesting some educational reforms that might improve civic education. But let’s start with where we are today. Are there overall patterns about what young people are learning from schools about citizenship, what’s working well and what isn’t working well?

Kei Kawashima-Ginsberg: So civic education has gone through ebbs and flows, especially related to No Child Left Behind policies. In the ‘90s and early 2000s, young people were actually getting less civic education. Today when you ask young people, have you ever had anything called Civics or American Government, 85-90 percent of young people across different surveys would say yes.

But when we peel back that yes answer and understand what was happening in young people’s memory and perception, throughout their schooling there’s an enormous amount of diversity and frankly disparities in the quality of education. What we typically find is that young people who have less access to rich educational opportunities generally—so young people living in lower-income communities, young people growing up in families where parents do not have college education, those who qualify for National Free Lunch Program—those young people tend to have much fewer opportunities for essentially practice of democratic citizenship, as well as deeper learning about the foundational institutions of government and community and civil society institutions, and the way that people relate and interact with those institutions.

So what I’m saying is that young people can get a printout about the three branches of government, and that may be an extent of what they learn in one classroom about our important foundational knowledge. In another school, young people may start that education in elementary school where they’re learning how they divide decision-making roles in the classroom, come back again in a middle school to learn deeply about those three different institutions of power, and then go back in high school and do a mock Congress or mock court to try hands-on ways of understanding how those institutions work and what are some of the opportunities and challenges in today’s society those institutions might face when real-world situations encounter them. That kind of deep and iterative learning is what we find is really important.

Alex Lovit: One thing I’m hearing in that answer is a distinction between on the one hand there’s knowledge that is useful to have as a citizen—how a bill becomes a law, what the three branches of government do, or what’s done at the various levels of government—but then there’s also experience and attitudes that are helpful for citizens to have, skills, developing habits of thought like critically evaluating information, respect for different experiences and perspectives. What does an ideal civic education look like that provides some of those skills and not just the knowledge base?

Kei Kawashima-Ginsberg: If you ask me what that ideal education looks like, it would happen across multiple grades, throughout K-12 education, and actually happen across discipline. It’s not locked up in social studies classrooms, but it can happen as the way the English teacher might talk about current issues in connection to the historical fiction they’re reading in the classroom. Or a science teacher can talk about climate change as a matter of science topic, but talk about what are some of the opportunities and challenges in citizen participation, so young people are starting to understand that social studies isn’t content, but it is content and practice of democratic citizenship, and it’s actually everywhere. But many schools haven’t gotten to that place, whether because they don’t think it’s possible, or because they think teaching democracy is only for social studies teachers, which I don’t believe in personally.

Alex Lovit: Each generation is shaped by shared experiences, so let’s talk a little bit about what younger people have experienced in the last few years. This includes in the Trump era, all Americans have experienced changes in norms of political behavior, some realignment in support basis for the two major parties, but for older Americans who have some memory of politics in the past, we experience that as a change. For younger people, that might be the only form of politics that they’ve known.

Similarly, we all experienced the COVID pandemic to some degree, but the experience could look pretty different for older people that had established careers, social relationships, than for younger people trying to navigate that through being in school, and also younger people who were less at risk of that disease.

Kei, no offense to you, I’m sure you get carded more than I do when buying alcohol, but Ruby Belle, you’re a genuine young person. Do you have any comments on how young people have experienced the momentous events of the last decade or so, and how that’s shaped political experiences for young people today?

Ruby Belle Booth: It’s hard to speak for the whole generation, and I wouldn’t assume that I am, but I do think that as you said, every generation has these moments that really shape the way they participate in politics and in democracy and in their communities. And I think Gen Z has had a lot of those in their lifetime, starting with many of their first memories being around the 2008 financial crisis, and then continuing on through the Obama era, and the way politics was happening at that time, and the energy around the 2008 election for a lot of people, and then as you said into the Trump era and the pandemic.

And I think that’s all shaped the way that young people are showing up and understanding politics, sometimes for better and sometimes for worse. I think parallel to all these big political movements are a few realities that are really shaping young people’s ability to participate and how they participate. One is the mental health crisis that a lot of young people are experiencing. That’s something we’ve heard a lot from our partners in rural areas and youth-led organizations, is that mental health is a challenge that is deeply connected to young people’s civic engagement. It can be a barrier to young people’s civic engagement. It can be worsened by civic engagement, but there’s also ways of participating that can protect young people’s mental health.

For example, we find that when young people are engaged in a political home and have connections and are doing civic work in community with others, it can have a more preservative effect on their mental health and help to sustain them.

I think the other really big factor that is hard to ignore when you’re thinking about Gen Z and also Millennials is the internet, and the way social media has intersected with each of these moments—the way it helped young people find community during the pandemic and helped them stay informed and education; the way it has shaped the Presidential elections in 2016 and 2020, and how there’s been misinformation about every single candidate, and misinformation about elections and different kinds of events; but also a lot of opportunity to organize and get energized around politics.

Alex Lovit: So, you mentioned the mental health crisis there, and that’s something that comes through in a lot of CIRCLE’s work, that younger generations are reporting in surveys higher degrees of anxiety, mental health struggles, than older generations. What do we understand about the causes of this, what’s going on here, why would young people be struggling more than older Americans right now?

Kei Kawashima-Ginsberg: So one of the things that we’ve seen, not by our own study, that associates with the mental health issues among young people is actually anxiety related to the economic distress. So you talked about the pandemic early. Young people may not have been as vulnerable to the disease itself, but they were the most vulnerable to lose economic means of living. They were first to be let go in the workplace, they were often the people that were working in service industry or so-called gig economy that made them unstable footing economically. So they lost a lot of ground in making sure they could afford anything they wanted to do. This is true to healthcare, housing, of course student debt.

So that kind of stress seems to be highly correlated to the actual experience of anxiety. That must be one of the big factors driving mental health crisis.

There’s other studies that talk about this generation has really been under much more stress than any other generation, and some studies suggest that the gaze they receive through social media interaction is another driving factor for mental health issues in adolescence that continue into adulthood.

We are in fact seeing some decline in mental health challenge prevalence among young people according to a more recent, but we continue to see 30-40 percent of young people still naming anxiety and depression as something that can sometimes hold back their participation. But we actually have some mixed findings on that. In some cases, some people found their voice through their struggle during pandemic, so sometimes we find that if young people have mental health challenges but have the opportunity to engage in civic life, that can actually remedy some of the challenges. Research on things like loneliness and social connections of course suggest that if you can find your community, sense of belonging, and that your voice matters, all those things should contribute positive to mental health.

So it’s a really complicated relationship between mental health and civic life, which is why we continue to study that in order to try to understand it a little bit better.

Ruby Belle Booth: And I’ll add that this mental health crisis is again not something all young people are experiencing equally. We find, and other studies have found, that certain groups of young people are more likely to be dealing with severe mental health issues, are also going to have different levels of access to mental health care.

So for instance, in our own research, queer and trans youth had higher rates of mental health challenges they faced. So of course, just like with anything, there’s going to be for different kinds of young people different ways mental health is impact them and then impacting their participation.

Alex Lovit: So we’ve been talking in this conversation about the challenge of getting younger people involved in civic life, and Kei as you’re mentioning there might be some mental health benefits to that and not just civic benefits, so there’s multiple reasons to want that. One challenge to that is of course the age of politicians right now. Our President is 81 years old, one of the two major candidates for that office in this year’s election, Trump, is 78, Harris is 59 which looks youthful in comparison but she’s still eligible to join AARP, the average age in House of Representatives is 57, in the Senate is 64. And those are average ages, so there’s obviously a lot of people on the upper end of that spectrum.

Is this a problem for politically engaging young people, getting younger folks turned out to vote? Is there anything we can do about this?

Ruby Belle Booth: I think that young people do see this gerontocracy, and the reality that a lot of older people dominate political offices and those running for office, and I think it does impact them. I think it’s important both for the vibes and how they’re talking to young people and connecting to young people, but also obviously for the priorities and policies being represented in the halls of our government.

And what’s really exciting I think is the opportunity for young people to run for office, and to change this themselves. And we saw a big jump in 2020 with a lot more 18-34 year olds running for office, which is obviously really fabulous. And one reason it’s fabulous is because the young people who are running, unsurprisingly given they’re the most diverse generation, are making our government more diverse, and they’re offering more diverse candidates in terms of race and ethnicity, income, employment status, education, all kinds of different identities, which is really exciting.

That being said, there are systemic barriers that make it hard for young people to run for office that if we want to help to welcome more young people into participating we’re going to have to deal with in order to really feel the benefits of young people running for office.

While 21 percent of young people are interested in running for office or have run for office already, there’s groups more likely to be interested. There’s also groups more likely to be encouraged, and there’s groups more likely to feel qualified. And we find that young people who are encouraged to run for office feel more qualified to run for office, which makes a lot of sense—if someone’s telling you that you should run for office, especially if it’s someone you trust and respect, odds are you’re going to feel a little bit more qualified to do that.

But if we want to make this a more equitable opportunity, we need to make sure that more young people and all kinds of young people are being encouraged to step into the political arena.

On top of that, a big concern and barrier that young people are facing is loss of income and employment when they run for office. Right now, public service isn’t really a viable career option for a lot of young people, or they don’t see it as such, especially when you think about the reality that young people are going to start locally, where sometimes positions are volunteer positions or they don’t pay very well. And so there’s a lot of challenges economically, and I think that’s probably why we see so many older people running for office, is that it’s so much more accessible to them.

Alex Lovit: Well, I’m glad you’re bringing up the low pay and sometimes volunteer nature of positions, especially at the local level. Raising politicians’ pay is a pretty unpopular idea, but it really is a barrier preventing people from engaging in public office. You’re mentioning there the benefits of engagement through running for office. I think some of your research, CIRCLE’s research, has also indicated there’s benefits for young folks who are getting involved in social media creation, so not necessarily in running for office but in participating in political discourse, trying to persuade others. What does it look like for young people, and what are some of the benefits of that engagement?

Ruby Belle Booth: Young people who are creating content on social media about social and political issues report feeling more confident in participation in politics. They feel more qualified, more informed, and I think that speaks to two things. One, the power of being able to use your voice, which is something we’ve come back to often, how important it is that young people are seeing opportunities to have their voice be heard. And that can be really empowering, and we see that with social media.

The other thing I think that reality shows, and the benefits of content creation for young people shows, is the fact that young people are looking to trusted sources for information about politics. And I think as they start to create more content, they start to create a culture where youth voice on issues matters, and where it’s not only normal but also cool to be talking about these issues. And I think that as that culture develops, it helps more young people to feel the power their generation can have, and that they can have as an individual. I think the benefits we see to social media creation are really important to bring up, especially in the context of the reality that social media and young people have a complicated relationship. We’ve talked about the mental health crisis, we’ve talked about misinformation. It’s not always straightforward on the internet, but we do see so many benefits to young people being able to use their voice online and create media about the issues that matter to them.

Kei Kawashima-Ginsberg: Yeah, and I also want to add, social media is one of those civic engagement pathways that is actually open across economic and racial spectrums to amplify different voices and help diverse young people who are often marginalized in their own ecosystem to find their community online. So I think there’s an equalizing power to social media as an infrastructure for civic life. Whereas we used to have just brick-and-mortar, now we have social media as another institution so young people of all types and from all communities, as long as they have the internet, can access.

We still have a lot to go on internet access itself, but as far as they have that power of broadband, they can do a whole lot regardless of where they’re living, which is quite different from previous years.

Alex Lovit: And that broadband access is part of the reason that the civic deserts tend to be in rural areas, that lack broadband access. We were talking earlier about Congress, which is maybe an unsuccessful organization at trying to have trans-generational leadership. Kei, I wanted to ask you about, you serve on the Board of March for our Lives, which was an anti-gun violence organization founded by survivors of the Parkland school shooting in 2018. It’s kind of an interesting organization—among its leaders are people who were in high school in 2018, and also more advanced professionals like yourself. You work with other youth organizations, Rhizome, and of CIRCLE itself has a range of ages.

Can you talk to the challenge, and how you try to build institutions that really can draw from the wisdom of older folks but also really give younger generations a voice in those organizations?

Kei Kawashima-Ginsberg: So, we do try to live by the value of youth as expertise, which is one of the major values we hold at CIRCLE. Our own Advisory Board has several members who are under 25. Rhizome is majority young people, decision-making is completely shared with organizations who are teenagers to early 20s who are in the community and very few staff members who facilitate the decision-making. March for our Lives of course are mobilizing a lot of young people in a variety of ways. And at the Board-level, we’re about half young people and half older people.

All those look different actually in terms of how the decisions are made or what kind of agreements and disagreements we have. But I think the major point is that if we don’t have these leadership and power shared at the highest level of the organizations, we don’t really deserve the trust of young people to engage in the research we produce or the practices that these organizations and I support are sharing with young people in the communities.

So I think it’s really important that there’s a matter of principle, like I said about the value we hold at CIRCLE, and then there’s the matter of quality of decisions we make as a decision-making body that needs young people’s experience and expertise.

And I would just lastly note, we need more than a few. As a result of this generation being diverse and coming from a large swath of communities, their experiences even with gun violence itself varies significantly. So we need actually a very large number of young people to be represented in the decision-making body rather than having an input from a young person that may be highly tokenizing for that young person, not just disrespectful. It’s important to remember that, I think.

Alex Lovit: There’s a lot of concern in America right now about the long-term future of American democracy. Some of that concern is perhaps justified, but of course in the long-term democracy is always passed on from generation to generation. As Whitney Houston reminds us, children are the future.

You guys have spent a lot of time thinking about both democracy and about young people. What do you worry about in the coming years as we’re passing the torch to the coming generation, and what gives you hope that the next generation will be able to sustain America’s experiment with democracy?

Ruby Belle Booth: I think what Kei was just talking about is one of the things that worries me and also brings me hope. The reality is that finding intergenerational solutions is not easy, ands it takes a lot of hard work. And the reality is that young people see our democracy right now and they often critique it. They still participate. In fact, the ones who are critiquing it are more likely to participate. But young people aren’t taking the problems they see with our democracy sitting down. They’re trying to find new solutions and new ways to participate—what we talked about with political parties is a great example of that. They’re trying to create new infrastructure to do democracy.

And that’s what gives me hope, is that young people are not just seeing problems, they’re finding solutions. And that’s really exciting. But it does worry me that if the powers that be aren’t welcoming of that, and don’t continue to adapt and welcome young people into our democracy and welcome their voices, that young people might start to become less engaged.

If there’s anything Gen Z has shown us, it’s that they and we are incredibly resilient. We listed so many things that young people have gone through during their civic development, and Gen Z sort of always bounces back. They continue to participate, they’re participating at higher levels despite everything that’s going. But I always get a little bit scared that we’ll reach the point—how many times can we ask them to bounce back, how many times can they be told no, have a door closed in their face by a politician before they sort of get burnt out and give up? That’s something that sort of haunts me at night, because when you’re so amazed by someone’s resilience, you always think about when that resilience might end.

And so I hope that our democracy and older adults will continue to step up and provide young people with the support they need and work towards a more intergenerational, multi-racial democracy that works for everyone. And not just the people who vote often, but everybody, whether they’re voting or not, and also welcomes them obviously to participate.

Kei Kawashima-Ginsberg: How do you follow that, right? I think I’ll take maybe a slightly different entry point to this. I worry, and it actually keeps me up at night, that the institutions that uphold base-building for multi-racial democracy is under attack broadly. It can be K-12 classroom, it could be book ban, it could be student newspapers in higher ed and K-12 schools, it could be teachers and school administrators. And also just breakdown of democratic norms across our institutions that young people see as models to learn from, whether it’s a Congress or court or even community organizations, depending on what they have access to.

There’s a broad attack against the base-building of young people or the democracy that includes and welcomes young people. One example may be a practice in civic education, so-called action civics, where young people really practice what they learn about institution decision-making and policy-making through a social studies pedagogy to work on a real public issue to solve or remedy that challenge.

That pedagogy in itself is not at all partisan in any way. Sometimes young people do reach out to City Council to improve policies, perhaps using young people’s experiences, expertise, and research. But it’s banned in multiple states, right-out banned.

And so we live in a world where limiting what young people can access in terms of experiential civic learning is so different depending on which zip code you’re born in. I think we’re going to have a real challenge in solving this equity challenge in civic participation and leadership. And then, broader attack on making sure everybody is informed when they’re participating in political discourse and voting and doing other things that are important to political life.

What does give me hope, though, is there are some pushbacks that are starting to really be noticeable. I was talking to somebody that is one of the leaders for the National Student Board Member Association, which is a great student organization that supports high school student representation in school boards, and this person was telling me how much more interest in students running for these office positions. And so, not just up in a Congress and even city government, students and young people are seeing they need to weigh in, and that really gives me hope because I know they’ll do a great job.

Alex Lovit: Kei Kawashima-Ginsberg and Ruby Belle Booth, thank you for joining me on The Context.

Kei Kawashima-Ginsberg: Thanks.

Ruby Belle Booth: Yeah, thank you, Alex.

Alex Lovit: The Context is a production of the Charles F. Kettering Foundation. I’m Alex Lovit. I’m a Senior Program Officer and Historian with the Foundation.

Melinda Gilmore is our Director of Communications. George Drake, Jr., is the episode producer of this show.

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