What’s Behind Gen Z’s “Silent Protest” at the Ballot Box

PAULA NEWTON: So, what is Washington getting wrong about GenZ? That’s the central question of a new group of essays published by NOTUS Perspectives, investigating the growing division between the U.S. government and the country’s young people. Now, crucially, the project only accepted pieces from those with a personal connection to this issue, American college students. NOTUS Perspectives editor Richard Just and two student contributors joined Michelle Martin to discuss the importance of intergenerational messaging.

 

MICHEL MARTIN: Thanks, Paula. Richard Just, Emma Rowland, Seyi Arogundade, thank you all so much for joining us.

 

EMMA ROWLAND: Thank you. 

 

SEYI AROGUNDADE: Thank you for having us. 

 

MARTIN: Richard, I’m gonna start with you. You lead something called the Perspectives Forum. It’s a, it’s based at a Washington-based newsroom. Just tell me what it is.

 

RICHARD JUST: Sure. We’re the opinion section of a Washington-based publication called NOTUS. We publish essays, we publish long-form narratives, and we publish forums where we ask a bunch of different writers to weigh in on one pointed question.

 

MARTIN: And you had the idea of, instead of reporting on young people, you asked 22 student journalists from across the country to write about what Washington gets wrong about them. How did you come up with that idea?

 

JUST: Yeah. Well, we were interested in the topic of hearing from, of trying to figure out where the disconnect was between Washington and young people across the country. And I feel like there’s this DC or New York media instinct where when you want to know what a group of people think about something, you send a reporter to find out. And we wanted to do something different here. Instead, we wanted to hear directly from those voices. And we thought this was a great opportunity to do that because the country is full of amazing college journalists who are the experts on this topic and who we thought would have really interesting arguments to make. And so we reached out to a ton of college journalism professors and we asked them to recommend some of their best students. And they did. And we ended up with 22 great writers.

 

MARTIN: Yeah. And the essays were really interesting. Emma, I’m gonna start with you. You’re a senior at the University of Oklahoma. 

 

ROWLAND: Yes. 

 

MARTIN: In your essay you wrote that, “Gen Z is used to things moving fast. Washington’s pace is unbearably slow.” I cosign that. And you also say, “From my generation, a constant adrenaline fueled need for speed isn’t a preference, it’s the norm. Groceries arrive in 30 minutes, breaking news alerts vibrate in our pockets the moment something happens. Our world moves fast, our attention even faster. Washington is the opposite. And it’s been built to operate on a rhythm from a different era. Something that from mine — used to instant gratification — is hard to grasp or accept.” 

 

I just thought that was such a fascinating observation and you know, when I read it, I thought, yeah, that sounds right. How did you come to that conclusion? What did you see that sparked that?

 

ROWLAND: Well, this past summer I was actually able to be in D.C. from May to August through a program from OU. And being up there, I feel like I kind of got more of an insider look on what other people from my generation see. And so, while, yes, there is a substance part of why people from my generation are upset, whether that be policies or other things in Washington, what I also saw is that there is this disconnect between the understanding of why issues that have gone on for decades are not able to be — not completely fixed even, but maybe just partially resolved or even done without any type of gridlock. 

 

I was able to be there for, of course, there was the, the Big Beautiful Bill that was passed and just big instances like that where I was able to hear people, the people from my generation respond to things like that. We were born into a generation where we’re used to politics almost being a pop-culture element rather than more of a procedural, formal element in our life. And, and the more that I thought about it, the more that it made sense. Well, I’m so used to things happening so quickly and I’m getting text alerts while bills are being passed while floor, like, while everything’s happening that I, my brain is wired to really question why are things so difficult to get through in Washington? And why are things so almost gridlocked all the time?

 

MARTIN: Seyi, you are a senior at the University of Idaho. Congratulations to you both, by the way. 

 

In your essay, Seyi, you write that, “young people aren’t disappearing from public life. We’re just waiting for a political system worth showing up for.” You. Go on to say that, “while some leaders may see low voter turnout or low party registration and equate it with apathy, they’re misreading the moment. This break from the status quo is a silent protest against the system. An absence from a political game that young people see as rigged.” From what you see on campus and among your peers — I’m, it was really the same question I was asking Emma — which is, how does that silent protest kind of show up in real life? How did that insight come to you?

 

AROGUNDADE: It really stemmed from, you know, the 2020 and the 2024 election. A lot of what I was seeing on social media and a lot of what my peers were seeing on social media is we have to vote for this person because they’re the “lesser evil” than the other candidate. And that just didn’t really resonate with me at the time, and I know it didn’t resonate with a lot of my fellow friends and fellow students as well. And so I think this idea that we have to vote for someone because they’re slightly better than someone else is just not working for a lot of young Americans. And they can’t just keep on giving us the same old, same old, you know, line or script of, well, X, Y, Z is our enemy and we have to defeat them, or we need to do everything in our power to defeat this candidate because it’ll be worse in the long run. Okay. But then what after that? 

 

And so when I see a lot of politicians, you know, using that as their anchor of, We need to beat this candidate because, you know, it’s necessary instead of talking about actual policies or how, you know, they’re going to make young Americans lives better. I don’t know. It’s just, it’s a real disconnect for me and I think a lot of young people. And so yeah, I think that silent protest is us just demanding more of our politicians and expecting more of them.

 

MARTIN: Richard, did you see a through line in the essays? Did you see a common theme among all of them?

 

JUST: Yeah, I think part of it was just that young people are engaged in politics. There’s a, there’s an ugly stereotype out there among folks who are middle-aged and older that young people are disconnected that they’re not interested, that they’ve given up on politics. And certainly our group was self-selecting. I mean, we went to college journalists who maybe are a little bit more predisposed to be interested in politics than the average population. But collectively they made a very convincing case that this is a generation that is engaged, that does expect more from their politicians and that wants the country and the world to be a better place. But to the points that have been made, this generation is frustrated by what it takes to make that happen and frustrated by the ways that politicians are carrying that out. So I would just say that the overall through line with there is engagement, there is idealism, there is a desire for things to be better. And that doesn’t always come through in what we stereotype young people.

 

MARTIN: One of the things that you, that you pointed out too is that the tone matters that, like, Washington doesn’t always get the tone right with young people from messaging to social media. And in fact, you know, some of the ways that they see politicians trying to connect with them is, like, cringe. Can you just give an example of that? 

 

JUST: Yeah, I mean, the chief example probably and the one that was at the forefront of probably many of our minds, and then somebody wrote a really good piece about it was about “6-7.” That by the time politicians as they have started invoking “6-7” in their social media posts and in their speeches it was already past the point where young people wanted to hear that. And it was already, it had already become a little cringe. 

 

And I think the larger point is just that young people don’t want to be condescended to, they don’t wanna be talked down to, and that there’s an, when politicians are saying “6-7” or trying to appeal to young people in that kind of superficial way, it feels condescending and it feels empty.

 

MARTIN: And Seyi, you also talked about this idea of being told that you have to choose the lesser of two evils. Can you just sort of say more about that? I mean, just, I, I am in Washington. I have been covering politics for a long time. And you know, the conventional wisdom is that the reason that negative campaigning persists is that it works, is that people respond to it. 

 

AROGUNDADE: Well, I think it’s such a turnoff because, you know, there’s no real policy basis behind lesser of two evils, if that makes sense. And as students, and as Emma pointed out, we are dealing with so many things, whether that’s the growing climate crisis, student loans, whether we can afford to buy a house in this lifetime. And so when these are real tangible issues that are on the forefront of our minds, when politicians are telling us that we have to vote for them because they are the best choice, but they’re not showing us why they’re the best choice, I think that just falls on deaf ears. 

 

And I noticed a lot within, you know, 2024 election, especially, when a lot of young people were wanting to vote third party, or not even vote at all, because there was no candidate there to really represent young issues. Now, there were candidates that were pandering to our social media, to memes, to pop culture and events, but not really talking to us like we are informed people who want to live as best as lives as we can. And so when we see that constantly in the news, I think as young people and as talking to my peers, we just need something different. And we need candidates who are actually treating us like we’re adults. Like, we understand these issues, like these issues affect us in real time because they do.

 

MARTIN: So Richard, I’m gonna bring some data in here. According to a Gallup report published in January, 56% of Gen Z identify as politically independent. But we also keep hearing that young people are shifting right, or at least they were. Can both those things be true or is one of them off the mark? How do you see this based on the reporting that you’ve done with this group that you’ve had?

 

JUST: Yeah, I mean, one of the through lines of the pieces was that there’s a complexity to the way young people are thinking about politics that defies kind of our old ideas about the left-right spectrum. So we had someone argue, I think correctly, that young people are turned off by centrist politics and in fact find themselves gravitating towards the further left or towards the further right. I think that could be part of the explanation. Somebody else argued that young people don’t really care about party labels. They’re not as interested in the old kind of partisan, you know, calling themselves Republicans, calling themselves Democrats. What they’re interested in is particular issues. And those issues can, don’t necessarily neatly align with the classic definitions of where the Republican or Democratic parties are. So I just think that there is a complexity to the way young people are thinking about politics that may defy some of the old ideas we have about left and right.

 

MARTIN: So both of you live in parts of the country that people identify as conservative. Tell me about this shift right thing. Does that, does that resonate? 

 

AROGUNDADE: I think that as the Republican party moves further right so does the Democratic party. And so I think it’s really difficult for a lot of young Americans who might be more moderate, might be less further right or further left to identify with either party because there’s just, there are two extremes at the end of the day. Particularly when I think of politics and really effective politicians, I think of Mayor Mamdani in New York, and I think what made him really effective is yes, he utilized social media. Yes, he utilized his resources, and yes, he had a good campaign strategy, but he was meeting people where they were at, whether that be going to local boroughs, whether that be going to grocery stores, whether that be going to restaurants and talking to people, whether that be having real tangible policies that will make and improve New York City. 

 

MARTIN: Yeah. Free buses. Trying to make childcare free up to a certain sort of age. You know, grocery stores that run by the city to create an affordable option.

 

AROGUNDADE: I think that really resonated with a lot of my peers. And I think whether you were a 23-year-old living in New York City or a 20-year-old in Idaho, seeing his win and seeing how he campaigned and seeing the policies that he stood up for and seeing how they’re, you know, slowly but surely coming to fruition, I think that’s really inspiring for a lot of, us young people. And I think the more that politicians adopt that strategy, the more they’ll see young people wanting to fight for them and root for them and be in their corner. Because we all want someone that’s worth fighting for. And I think that if politicians want our vote, they really have to earn it.

 

MARTIN: Emma, what about you? What, this idea, on the one hand we see that young people are more likely to want to be identified as politically independent. On the other hand, we keep hearing that there’s a shift to the right. What makes sense to you?

 

ROWLAND: I think that what I’ve noticed is there, there seems to be a frustration with almost a blame game. And especially on social media. We see a lot of Gen Z specifically in the comments and responding, you know, yes, we understand that there’s always gonna be two sides to political issues, but at the same time, when is it gonna be the case where one side’s not blaming the other and there has to be some type of middle. 

 

And so, while I feel like Gen Z as a group thinks independently, I do think that there is a shift towards those individuals that we resonate with and who really do show up for what we want, what the community needs, for really those personal issues that can, can really be seen. And there’s a difference in it, rather than just standing there and blaming the other side. Because I think that’s a very common thing that we see. When it comes to politics, I feel like we’re all taught that there has to be some type of middle and especially with this generation, I think there’s a yearning for seeing some type of compromise.

 

MARTIN: According to the Harvard Institute of Politics, fall 2025 youth poll. You know, Harvard does this youth poll every year. Only 13% of young Americans say the country is headed in the right direction. Does that sound right to both of you? Emma, Seyi, does that, does that figure sound right to you?

 

ROWLAND: It Does.

 

MARTIN: It does?

 

ROWLAND: Yes. I would say that it does sound right to me.

 

MARTIN: And does that sound, how does that make you feel when you hear that? 

 

ROWLAND: There, there seems to be almost a feeling of that is just the way it is. But I do think that while there is almost like, okay, does everyone feel like this when they first get into understanding politics when they’re 20? You know, when they start getting outta college and a lot of the stuff actually does start applying to you and in the real world, to, okay, is there really there, is there really a concern to where a lot of this doesn’t seem right to us. And, and a lot of this does seem like there’s a lot of heavy blockage almost, when it comes to Washington working together and getting a lot of this stuff done to where we can feel, we can feel assured that, you know, it’s heading in the right direction.

 

MARTIN: Well, you mentioned hopefulness. Seyi what about you? Is there anything giving you hope right now other than the graduation is in your sight? <Laugh>

 

AROGUNDADE: Yeah. I think, like Emma said, I think that our generation is very, very powerful. And maybe that’s with the rise of social media, but the ability for us to organize and come together as communities is, and as a nation is, is just really, really beautiful to see. And I really think back to when my local community was doing a protest and, you know, the University of Idaho was, you know, the center. And young people organized it and put out signs and all these things and we’re marching around campus and around the city. And that was just a really beautiful thing to see that, you know, yes, there’s maybe some apathy from some folks, but you know, as a generation, we want our nation to be better. And as a generation, we are going to continue to fight for peace and equality and justice and all of these things. And so it just, it makes me feel like a huge sense of pride knowing that, you know, a lot of these things that we’re seeing that are changing, a lot of positive changes are coming out because we demanded for them. I think that as we grow. And as we continue to get older you know, I hope and pray that our zeal and our fight doesn’t leave us. But even if it does, that we’ll have the next generation to kind of pick that back up for us.

 

MARTIN: I’ll tell you what gave me hope is that there were 22 awesome student journalists all around the country doing this amazing work. So Richard Just, Emma Rowland, Seyi Arogundade, thank you so much for talking with us today.

 

AROGUNDADE: Thank you. 

 

ROWLAND: Thank you.