Conservative Generation Z Is Breaking The Trend Toward The Left
Conservative Generation Z Is Breaking The Trend Toward The Left. New data from Pew shows that while Generations Z does hold many similar views to millennials they have reversed the trend in some areas that goes back several generations.Typically as time goes on society skews liberal but for the first time in 5 generations we can see some areas have flipped toward conservatism and the right.While the millennial generation may be very much so far left, feminist, and social justice activists, generation Z is moving the other direction in some areas and further left in others.Its hard to know for now if Gen Z will end up overwhelmingly conservative as they age but that tends to be the trend. Typically groups become more conservative with age, if this is true than Gen Z is set to be even more right wing in the coming years
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There's been a lot of talk over the past year or longer about Generation Z becoming more conservative.
People have said the Democrats need to be careful because when Gen Z enters the voting age, they're going to vote for Donald Trump.
But new data from Pew shows that Generation Z is actually very similar to millennials.
Many news outlets are taking this and saying, see, Gen Z's actually liberal.
But they're missing one big, important bit of context.
The data shows that Generation Z is starting to skew back towards conservatism.
Though they do have more woke views than many other generations, the trend is actually towards the right.
So today, let's take a look at the latest data.
And I want to make one other point.
I think Generation Z might actually bring about the end of the culture war.
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From Pew Research, Generation Z looks a lot like Millennials on key social and political issues.
Among Republicans, Gen Z stands out in views on race, climate, and the role of government.
No longer the new kids on the block, Millennials have moved firmly into their 20s and 30s, and a new generation is coming into focus.
Generation Z, diverse and on track to be the most well-educated generation yet, is moving toward adulthood with a liberal set of attitudes and an openness to emerging social trends.
On a range of issues from Donald Trump's presidency to the role of government to racial equality and climate change, the views of Gen Z, those ages 13 to 21 in 2018, mirror those of millennials.
In each of these realms, the two younger generations hold views that differ significantly from those of their older counterparts.
In most cases, members of the Silent Generation are at the opposite end, and Baby Boomers and Gen Xers fall in between.
I think it's really interesting how Pew framed their data, because they could have chosen to frame it any way they want.
They've chosen to say that Gen Z and Millennials are very, very similar.
Well, of course they are.
Because society tends to trend in a more progressive direction.
That's a fact.
And right now, it's not surprising to anybody that Gen Z holds very similar views to Millennials.
But the important thing here is that on key points, they're trending in the opposite direction.
People often talk about how society tends to become more liberal, more progressive over time.
And this might be the first time I've seen data, at least, that a generation has kind of inverted.
Not surprisingly, CNN is trying to take the Pew narrative and run with it, even though in their own story, it doesn't actually make sense.
In response to the data, CNN published this.
Gen Z is as liberal as millennials, if not more.
But this is actually not true.
Based on the data in their own story, I have no idea why they used this headline.
Most of them aren't old enough to vote yet, but Generation Z shows signs of being as liberal as millennials on a number of political and social topics.
And they're more liberal when it comes to their belief about the role of government, According to a new report from Pew.
The first bit of data.
Approve of President Trump's job performance.
Millennials at 29 and Gen Z at 30.
The first stat shows that Gen Z actually support Trump more than Millennials do.
Then we have believe increasing racial and ethnic diversity is good for society.
Generation Z is more willing to believe that racial and ethnic diversity is a good thing by one point.
But we will come back to this.
Believe the Earth is getting warmer due to human activity?
Gen Z is less likely to believe in man-made climate change than millennials.
Approve of NFL players kneeling during the national anthem to protest racial injustice?
Gen Z is less likely to approve.
It's ever so slightly.
Believe same-sex marriage is either a good thing or doesn't make a difference?
Equal at 84%.
There's only one bit of data they've presented that shows Gen Z is more progressive than Millennials.
So I really don't see how CNN decided to say, if not more, no, if not less.
They are as liberal in many ways, but they're trending in the other direction.
And now we can easily address this one data point that actually supports CNN's point of view, and I can say this is actually wrong as well.
In the Pew article, it says, As a recent Pew Research Center report highlighted, Gen Z is the most racially and ethnically diverse generation we have seen.
But this isn't all that's driving the attitudes of this generation when it comes to issues surrounding race and diversity.
There are significant, if more modest, generational differences on these issues even among Hispanic whites.
While they point out it isn't the only driving factor, they do mention that this does play a role.
Why is it that Gen Z is more willing to believe that racial and ethnic diversity is a good thing?
Because they're the most racially and ethnically diverse generation we've seen.
So of course they support themselves.
And in my opinion, I'll just say this is awesome.
This is a good thing.
I think that's fantastic.
But let's move on, because there's more data points that show Generation Z is trending conservative, although they are very similar to millennials.
They're moving to the right.
One issue that I find fascinating is that Gen Z is more familiar with gender-neutral pronouns.
35% say they personally know someone who prefers that others refer to them using gender-neutral pronouns.
This graph shows a very obvious generational trend.
The silent generation, for the most part, doesn't really see this.
Boomers don't, Gen X doesn't, Millennials only a quarter of Millennials do, and a third of Gen Z does.
We can see this trend is moving forward.
However, just because you are familiar with gender-neutral pronouns, or know someone who prefers it, doesn't mean that they necessarily agree with it, and also it doesn't necessarily mean they're going to be regressive and authoritarian.
It just means there's a societal trend that they understand.
And with different laws emerging on the books across the country, this is not surprising at all.
Gen Z Republicans more likely than other Republicans to say blacks aren't treated fairly.
This shows that Gen Z is actually a bit more woke than the Millennial generation Republicans, where Millennial and Gen Z are actually comparable.
So this is another area we can see that Gen Z actually does skew a little bit more towards the liberal side.
And this brings me to my point about ending the culture war, which I'll get to in just a minute.
The next data point presented by Pew shows that Generation Z and Millennials see a bigger role for the government.
But this is a common trope.
As people get older, they become more conservative for very obvious reasons.
Gen Z is less likely to have a high-paying job or a job at all, and so they're not really paying taxes as much.
Millennials are the same.
As you get older, they become more conservative, and one of the reasons is that once you have a family and start paying taxes, you start to realize a big portion of your money is disappearing, and people tend to become more conservative as time goes on.
Not only that, though, but the idea of what is conservative changes as well, as society becomes more progressive.
Going back up to the earlier data point, Republican, Gen Z, is more likely to believe that blacks aren't being treated fairly.
In the next generation, they will claim they're conservative, and these views, which still somewhat lean more left, will be adopted by more individuals calling themselves conservatives.
And thus, in the future, conservatives will be more liberal than they were today.
But let's move on to another really important data point.
Gen Z millennials most likely to link human activity to climate change.
However, There's a generational shift.
While you'd expect society to become more progressive, Silent, Boomer, Gen X, and Millennial, the trend inverts with Gen Z by two points for the first time in all of the current available generations.
This shows that, once again, we can see Gen Z actually skews a little bit more conservative.
It may be rebounding.
And another example of this is in the idea that the U.S.
is better than everyone else.
When it comes to the silent generation, they love America.
Boomers sort of do.
Gen X kind of doesn't.
Millennials definitely don't.
Gen Z doesn't either, but they do skew back towards the right.
14% of Gen Z says the U.S.
is better than all other countries in the world, compared to only 13% of Millennials.
The same trend appears in most of their data.
When you look at approving of the NFL protests, Gen Z is more likely to disapprove than millennials are.
And this says that we are seeing a trend reversal back towards conservatism.
Does it mean the generation after Gen Z will be more conservative?
It doesn't.
We don't know what's going to happen.
But we are seeing something really interesting compared to all other generations.
This might be the most shocking thing to me.
Large gender gaps across most generations on whether more women running for office is a good thing.
Now take a look at this.
The dark green bar is men, the light green is women.
This is the percentage saying more women running for political office is a good thing for society.
Generation Z men, by one percentage point, think it's not as good.
So millennial men are more likely to think women running for office is a good thing, However, Gen Z women are more likely to think women running for office is a good thing, so there is a split on this data point.
6 in 10 Gen Zers say forms should offer other gender options, so the idea of gender non-binary is really coming out in Generation Z by 9 points more than Millennials.
And this is another point in favor of Gen Z being more woke.
There's a lot of interesting trend reversals in this data, but what I think we see is that Generation Z is taking some ideas from both factions of the culture war and bringing them together.
But there's one more important reason why I think that they might actually end the culture war, and it's their propensity to avoid certain social networks that propagate fake news.
And this is why I think they may be more conservative.
Millennials didn't always have the internet, but these big news outlets like Splinter or the Gizmodo Media Network, Huffington Post, Vox, etc.
They were born the same as the Millennials, and they pander to them.
They push out viral rage bait that's going to get them to click and share, and thus, Millennials tend to be regressive, outraged leftists to a certain degree.
We know that rage makes people share more than anything, so many of these companies capitalized on the algorithms of Facebook to manipulate people into sharing their videos, and thus, they generated a generation of the perpetually offended.
But, according to Business Insider last May, Generation Z is already moving away from Facebook, and eight more industries could be next.
Only 9% of teens say Facebook is their preferred social media platform, a survey from Piper Jeffery found last year.
Gen Z prefers Snapchat and Instagram, while older millennials are the biggest chunk of Facebook users.
And just from a few days ago, baby boomers share nearly seven times as many fake news articles on Facebook as adults under 30 new study finds.
What this says to me, the older generation is much more likely to be on Facebook.
The Facebook algorithm propagates fake news and rage bait.
Many of these companies, like NowThis News, which has admitted to working with anti-Trump activists at the highest level, they pump out hyper-partisan rage bait videos for the left to make you angry about racism and social justice and things of this nature.
And look at how the Young Turks behave.
They'll go crazy all day and night about a story about a white cop or a white person shooting a black person, and then when it turns out their narrative is wrong, what happens?
They scrub the videos, they private them, they edit them.
You can see the same thing with Sean King.
He promotes information that will push this narrative, even if it's disproportional and doesn't make sense.
This is what happens for the older generation on Facebook.
But let me know what you think in the comments below.
We'll keep the conversation going.
What we can say now is that the trend is switching.
They're still very similar.
What does this mean?
Do you think Generation Z will become more conservative?
Do you think this could end the culture war?
Do you think the culture war is going to get worse?
Comment below, we'll keep the conversation going.
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