You know, those bipedal mysteries who are bopping around with a simultaneous look of disdain and indifference. They’re listening to music with wired headphones and seem to levitate underneath the baggy, acid washed jeans and windbreakers of the late nineties. There’s probably bubble tea involved. 

In 2028, these kids are voting. In two years, these nine million 16 and17 year olds, zits and all, may be all that stand between us and a failed state.

The ramifications of the 2028 election are looming monumental on the horizon. 

Rally, organize, vote. This is the mantra champions for democracy are pushing. But they’re not pushing it to the kids — and boy, should they.

In its Human Rights Watch warns of an “authoritarian wave” that has come into power across the globe, including in the United States. “Authoritarian leaders have exploited public mistrust and anger to win elections and then dismantled the very institutions that brought them to power,” the report states. 

Throughout history authoritarian playbooks have hinged on capturing the hearts and minds of young people. The idea is simple: You capture the youth early enough and you capture the future. 

This was a key pillar in the Soviet strategy to flip eastern Europe after World War II: simultaneously cripple the education system and funnel to a swath of vulnerable teens eager to form a collective identity. 

The far right in America has internalized this playbook and are committed to realizing it. What does the targeting of these young people look like?

It’s the ‘manosphere’. It’s the podcasters and YouTubers and influencers who are modeling a misogynist and toxic ‘masculine’ grind that appeals to looking for inclusion and identity in a world working to deprioritize the patriarchy. The content and community is the bait, the white noise of far right ideologies consumed through osmosis is the hook.

The manosphere is beginning to tap into the cohort of young Latinos, a marginalized bloc desperate to assimilate and be seen as American. They don’t want to accept they’re latching onto a movement intent on their further disenfranchisement. 

This scheme transcends class and gender. It’s the likes of Erika Kirk, Nick Fuentes, and leaders within Turning Point USA who are flooding teen spaces and media to eloquently rail against a diversifying America and progressive and empathetic principals in ways that are overtly racist and laced with nationalistic rhetoric. 

This prong of the movement doesn’t rely solely on social media; it’s in schools, too. In the last year, the number of in US schools — Turning Point’s high school program — has doubled to 3,000. 

Lawmakers are entwined with these groups, receiving and funneling money toward . They also appear in podcasts and rub shoulders with influencers because they need them to convert young, future voters. 

Why? Because they are desperate to maintain and squash opportunities for America to become a democracy that is representative and elected of its population and their ideals, that is: a youthful generation of progressive people of color.  

As America grows ever more diverse, these power brokers are fervent to recruit a new generation that will maintain their minority rule.

The problem is that it’s working.

The other problem is that champions of democracy aren’t doing the same thing to cultivate the next generation of civically engaged young people who might be able to thwart this movement.

It’s difficult to understand why pro-democratic movements haven’t leaned into cultivating the democratic agency of the 16- and 17-year-old population prior to the voting age. They just don’t.

There is obvious ageism toward young people, and a failure to get behind the science of adolescent development. I also believe it is playing out at scale –- a manifestation of our country’s unwillingness to accept the future is racially and ethnically diverse, multilingual and much better informed than ever before.  

Even when there are attempts to organize around teens, it’s done poorly and with little effect because these young people harbor a growing level of disdain for the priorities and ideologies of both political parties and organizers. They see a civic system that doesn’t look like them, doesn’t have the same priorities of them, and has not to have their best interest in mind. 

In a collaborative study led by the Center for Interdisciplinary Research, Collaboration, Learning, and Engagement, 60% of young people agree the political system doesn’t work. Black and Brown youth are . Why should they?

Most chilling, respondents in the study said they do not “buy into the value of democracy”, and are sympathetic to authoritarian governments. This population is expected to account for over . 

So, what can be done? A lot in just two years. 

One of the first priorities is to  protect and reinvigorate — particularly those serving the most diverse and historically marginalized populations. It is here the pipeline for future voters is restored. It’s not just teaching how a bill becomes a law, it’s teaching kids how to build democratic power. Amid systematic attacks on public education, basic and sound civic education is no longer a guarantee, and local leaders must be held accountable to ensure access to strong curricula. 

The education system can’t do all the heavy lifting. Out-of-school time civic education and participatory engagement programs need to be designed and run all over the country. That’s particularly important for two distinct communities: those whose voting rights have been systematically targeted throughout history and those of privilege and access who’ve never felt a need to show up to the polls. 

Beyond programs and education, conversations about why this matters should be taking place at the dinner table, on the courts, on the streets, on line, in the cafeterias and community events. Young people need to rally around the idea of representative democracy. The refrain should be simple: kids are voting in 2028 — are they prepared?

It’s important to remember that our nation is not preparing young people for politics or partisanship: We are preparing them for democracy. 

Voting is not partisan, it is democratic. Civic engagement is not political, it is democratic. It’s not a matter of pushing issues or candidates. . It’s a matter of  preparing them to engage and trusting in their and . They’ve to always land on the .

I’ve said before, the entire youth civic ecosystem must be reformed — a project that is decades of work in the making. Still, I believe one well-prepared generation could radically alter the civic landscape and discourse, and be the catalyst to creating a pipeline of young voters that will lead increased turnout, local level engagement, more representative candidates, increased accountability, and a new age in which majority and representative rule is the status quo and not a pipe dream.  

In the meantime, remember democracy is under threat. There is a movement looking to overturn our republic, and it hinges on capturing the hearts/minds of young people. Young people could have an incredible role to play over the coming years. Where anti-democratic movements recognize the power of youth, the collective good must too — and that collective must rally around young people before it’s too late.

In recent years, and have made clear that they are . They’re protesting the collective status quo of partisanship, perpetual plutocracy and the unchecked disconnect of our gerontocratic leaders. As they come of age in a moment of extraordinary tension, their patience for traditional civic engagement is coming to an end.

To avoid this we must welcome young people into the socio-political fray by lowering voting ages, redesigning civic education to combat misinformation and radical politics, and extending opportunities for youth to authentically engage at the municipal level.  

It is a fallacy to believe civic consciousness starts at age 18. Regardless of how they communicate it, 14- to 17-year-olds are capable of contributing to elections, as well as to the design of policy and practice. This is particularly true of marginalized youth who offer a unique vantage point on some of our most prominent social issues.

The perspectives of these young people – – are incredibly valuable, particularly at a time when they’re grappling with an onslaught of threats to their , futures – each of which carry tangible ramifications. 

It’s these perspectives that must be nurtured to ensure the longevity of our civic system, and secure the future of equitable and empathetic social progress. And there’s plenty of evidence that proves we’d be right to trust the younger generation’s voices.

In in Iowa. YPAR trains young people to use research methods to inform and influence local policy). In Des Moines, in the midst of a national racial reckoning, a cohort of students saw an opportunity to leverage the that school resource officers (SROs) are more likely to charge students of color with crimes, and threaten their well-being and academic performance. The cohort successfully recommended the school board remove SROs from schools and reallocate those monies to fund counselors. The following year, in the number of students of color referred to the juvenile justice system. 

Along with other across the state, some making it to the House floor, this participatory audit in Iowa displayed the penchant young people have for social analysis and policy, and how their perspectives can be used to effectively influence local policies.

Don’t mistake these Iowan kids as exceptions. What the YPAR audit captured was the capacity and civic agency of the typical “kid.” It reflects the developmental science that tells us to develop social and ethical perspectives that can solve societal issues within ethical and moral parameters. 

It’s the science, research, and results from similar and that have inspired and bolstered my trust in young people — and why I believe we must redefine civics education and develop opportunities for civic participation for young people beginning at age 14. It is also why I am a strong proponent of lowering the voting age for municipal elections to 16 () – which is on voter turnout, engagement and sustained civic involvement.

This is why the election and climate protests on campuses in recent years have felt different. It’s this shift in tone that signals that our .

If this is the case, a great deal is at risk. Without legitimate outlets for civic engagement that are , authentically practiced with , or validated through like YPAR, young people may well resort to and alternatives for affecting change. With our democracy already in a fragile state, it is a necessity to reconsider what civic engagement looks like, and who has access to it.

As this young demographic quickly becomes , it seems accepting them into the civic discourse is the only recourse we have left.  

Redesigning civic education, developing participatory programs, and lowering voting ages is particularly complicated in the current political climate. 

We must avoid dumping kids into a pool of supercharged partisan rhetoric and vitriol. We need to teach pragmatism and civility. We need safe conditions for kids to consider hard data that reflects lived truths and promotes the taking of accountability and responsibility. We need discourse and dialogue. But, above all, we, the adults, must simply hear them. 

Large cultural shifts don’t take place in the vacuum of policy houses or nonprofits. They take place in the collective consciousness, and it requires humility, empathy, acceptance and courage from us all. Let’s trust the kids to help get us there. 

In a video posted to YouTube, 24-year-old school shooting survivor David Hogg points to a whiteboard and outlines a five-step plan to reshape America. 

Ever since Hogg survived the 2018 Valentine’s Day shooting at his Parkland, Florida, high school, which killed 17 of his classmates and educators, he’s become a national leader in the push for gun control and a formidable up-and-comer in Democratic politics. His latest effort is , a political action committee formed in 2023 that has raised nearly $8.5 million in the past year to elect Gen Z and millennial progressives to state and national office. 

The PAC aims to find young Democrats running for office, flood their campaigns with cash, offer strategic advice, provide a team of volunteers and work with the candidates to build a winning platform.

The strategy, Hogg explains in the YouTube advertisement designed to attract donors, has already met with success in Texas: “We just did this, electing the youngest person to the Texas state Senate, Molly Cook,” the state’s first openly LGBTQ+ senator. Leading up to the May election, Hogg’s PAC bolstered Cook’s campaign with $300,000 in financial backing, money used to blanket her district with mailings and digital ads.  

“With Molly, we found in our poll that she was behind by 2%, so we came in and we found that she was ahead by 5 after we informed voters about her background,” Hogg says, adding that his team knocked on the doors of more than 1,000 potential voters. “We got her on MSNBC as well and worked with her on her messaging and the result is that she ended up winning by 62 votes.” 

As Hogg works to “elect a ton more Mollys around the country,” an analysis by ����Ӱ�� of Federal Election Commission filings and the PAC’s digital ads offers insight into how he has leveraged the trauma and lessons learned from surviving one of America’s deadliest school shootings to build out a well-connected, generously funded operation to influence elections. 

The urgency of his key issue remains unabated: were killed and at least nine others injured Wednesday in a shooting at a Georgia high school. During a presidential campaign stop Wednesday afternoon in New Hampshire, Vice President Kamala Harris called the shooting outside Atlanta “a senseless tragedy, on top of so many senseless tragedies.”

“It’s just outrageous that everyday in our country — in the United States of America — that parents have to send their children to school worried about whether or not their child will come home alive. It’s senseless,” Harris said. “We’ve got to stop it.”

Leaders We Deserve has pumped millions of dollars — and resources from Democratic power players — into the campaigns of young candidates who support progressive causes like gun control, reproductive rights and protecting public school funding. Its efforts going into November will almost certainly be strengthened by Harris’s presence atop the ticket, an event that has .

Joining forces with Hogg, a recent Harvard graduate, is Kevin Lata, the former campaign manager of U.S. Rep. Maxwell Frost, a Democrat from Florida who, at 27, is the first member of Gen Z to serve in Congress. Hogg and Lata didn’t respond to interview requests.

“As a generation, we’ve collectively been told to run, hide and fight over and over during active shooting drills, and our generation has learned that along with our ABCs,” Hogg says in one ad. “I think it’s time that we repurpose the meaning of that. We need to start running for office. We need to stop hiding from the responsibility that we have to protect future generations.”

Cook has received the largest share of direct campaign cash from Leaders We Deserve, according to the PAC’s most recent federal financial disclosures, which cover the period from June 2023 to the end of July 2024. In that time, the group has helped finance the campaigns of 16 candidates, primarily at the state level, including in Pennsylvania, Alabama, Florida and Ohio. 

Funding has gone to the Georgia House race of a seventh-grade math teacher in Atlanta, a former Miss Texas vying for a state House seat on a gun control platform, a 28-year-old in Pennsylvania whose run for the state House is centered on , and a 28-year-old mother running for a House seat in Tennessee after the state .

‘Pain into purpose’

Though young candidates are underrepresented in public office across the country, and they tend to face steeper financial barriers than those from older generations, FEC data — and Hogg’s five-step plan — show the PAC offers more than money to its endorsed candidates. It has ties to some of the major players in Democratic campaign operations. 

Its 59-person advisory board encompasses education leaders, gun control proponents, youth activists and two former law enforcement officers — — who defended the U.S. Capitol during the January 6, 2021, attack by a mob of Donald Trump supporters. Democratic politicians, half of them 35 or younger, make up the largest share of advisors. 

Among the more seasoned advisors is Arne Duncan, the former education secretary for President Barack Obama. Duncan now has his own group — Chicago CRED — which provides job training and other resources in a bid to stem gun violence in his hometown. 

Duncan told ����Ӱ�� that he and Hogg communicate regularly to discuss their shared goal of thwarting gun violence. Duncan said that his “generation has failed” to confront the issue in a meaningful way, leaving young people — including the ones Hogg is working to elect — to devise solutions. 

“I hate the leadership that David has had to provide on this issue. I hate the trauma that he and his classmates and his school and his community have been through,” Duncan said. “But I so appreciate him turning that pain into purpose and really fighting to change things.” 

Hogg— who co-founded the gun control group in the Parkland shooting’s immediate aftermath and has campaigned in previous elections for candidates who support new gun laws— has garnered financial support for his political committee from marquee donors. The bulk of donations — more than $4.3 million — come from undisclosed individuals contributing less than $200, but the largest single contribution of $300,000 is from Ron Conway. The Silicon Valley venture capitalist and gun control proponent served on the advisory board of , which has sought to reduce campus gun violence in the wake of the 2012 mass shooting at the Newtown, Connecticut, elementary school. 

Other prominent donors include reproductive rights activist Phoebe Gates, the daughter of Microsoft founder and philanthropist Bill Gates, who gave $75,000, and actress Kate Capshaw and her husband, the director Steven Spielberg, who donated a combined $25,000. 

That support, federal election data shows, has translated into significant spending, with nearly $3 million going to advertising via text messaging, digital ads and campaign mailers. Nearly $1 million — the PAC’s second-largest expense — was used to purchase lists with the contact information of potential voters. 

The PAC’s expenditures also reflect the web of influential players working behind the scenes. Leaders We Deserve paid nearly $130,000 in legal fees to the Elias Law Group, the firm of Democratic election lawyer Marc Elias, who and is now assisting with the party’s vote recount strategy for November. Other top payments were to prominent political fundraisers and strategists, including The Hooligans Agency, with using Hollywood tactics to make viral political ads.

PACs like Leaders We Deserve have faced criticism for injecting smaller races with big money from interest groups and out-of-state donors. Leaders We Deserve has found its greatest success raising money from donors in California, Maryland, Massachusetts and New York, federal data shows. The group hasn’t contributed to candidates in any of those states. 

Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers and a Leaders We Deserve advisory board member, said the PAC offers Hogg a strategic advantage.

“He did this in a way so that he wasn’t constrained by party,” Weingarten said. “He understands and knits together policy and politics.” 

‘A big barrier’

Even with its list of established connections, Leaders We Deserve faces headwinds in driving change. 

Young people are “vastly underrepresented on the ballot” and run for public office at much lower rates than older adults, according to from the Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning Engagement, or CIRCLE,  a nonpartisan youth-focused research organization at Tufts University.

As of 2021, millennials — those born between 1981 and 1996 — made up a quarter of the voting population yet  of lawmakers in Congress. Researchers found that financial insecurity and structural inequities — not apathy — were behind the divide. 

While more than 20% of young adults 18 to 25 said they would consider seeking public office — and an increasing number of them have followed through in the past decade — the encouragement they receive varies widely by race and gender. Younger candidates are more diverse than those from older generations, but while Black and Latino youth are more likely than their white counterparts to consider an election bid, they are less likely to actually run. 

The data drives home why groups like Leaders We Deserve are critical to improving civic engagement among young people, said Sara Suzuki, a senior researcher at CIRCLE.

“That gap between interest and actually running can be filled by organizations like Leaders We Deserve and other organizations across the spectrum because financial support is a big barrier,” Suzuki said, adding that the PAC’s explicit encouragement of young candidates could lead more of them to enter politics. 

Getting the necessary votes is another story. Suzuki said it’s plausible that a candidate’s age is one of the factors that young people consider at the ballot box, but that they are primarily driven by specific issues rather than individual candidates or parties. 

“They really vote as a way to make change happen on issues that they care about,” she said, “and those issues tend to be economic issues like cost of living, climate change is a big youth issue, gun violence and abortion.” 

‘Leaders for 2050’

The PAC’s went to the congressional campaign of Sarah McBride, a Democratic state senator in Delaware since 2021 who has been on transgender rights. If elected, the 34-year-old would be the first openly transgender member of Congress. 

“Everyone deserves to feel safe in their community, whether you are walking alone at night or going to school during the day,” McBride notes on her campaign website. “The truth is, when it comes to guns, our country has lost its common sense.” 

The PAC’s  “first elected candidate,” according to Hogg, was Nadarius Clark, the youngest member of the Virginia House of Delegates. Clark got $100,000 in support and beat his Republican opponent by 800 votes in 2023. Leaders We Deserve and the ideologically aligned nonprofit were Clark’s top campaign contributors, show.

The PAC stands to see another victory, where Bryce Berry — the 22-year-old Atlanta middle school math teacher — faces an incumbent from Democrat to Republican last year in order to support private school vouchers. The heavily Democratic district has never elected a Republican to the state House. 

Leaders We Deserve has also been handed defeats, including its failure last fall to help elect a 26-year-old transgender woman to the Alabama House of Representatives. The PAC spent $124,325 on the race, one that Hogg acknowledged would be tough. 

But the group is looking well beyond 2024’s high-stakes election cycle, a strategy that Duncan, the former education secretary, said is critical to the Democratic Party’s future. The state lawmakers elected today, he said, are one step closer to becoming the national leaders of tomorrow. 

“That’s what David’s play is about,” Duncan said. “It’s not about, ‘We’re going to change the entire world tomorrow,’ but it’s, ‘Can we plant a whole bunch of amazing seeds, nurture them, develop them, support them and see what happens.’” 

It’s a political mindset that the group hopes will propel progressive leaders beyond their Republican rivals.

“While MAGA plans for 2025,” one of the PACs ads states in reference to Trump’s ties to the to remake the federal government, “we’re building leaders for 2050.”

So Cormack, who teaches at Stevens Institute of Technology and just on civic engagement, was surprised when they expressed excitement. They were “all on board” — with Kamala Harris, Biden’s vice president, who had yet to become Trump’s direct challenger.

No matter. They thought the VP was, in a word, hilarious — and worth their attention.

Harris’ 2023 “” video had already gone viral. In it, she recounts her mother giving her sister and her “a hard time sometimes,” saying, “‘I don’t know what’s wrong with you young people. You think you just fell out of a coconut tree?’” Harris cracks up, then continues with her mother’s lesson: “‘You exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you.’” 

Cormack’s students not only knew the video — they could recite it from memory. She thought to herself, “O.K., there’s .”

What Cormack witnessed was the ascension of Harris in the minds and social media feeds of young people. It was the prequel to a new phenomenon: the candidate-as-meme, at a time when both candidates desperately need young people to pay attention to them. Whether it translates into votes from this stubborn demographic in November remains an open question.

At the moment, it seems to be working for Harris, 59, whose social media effort is driven by an army of volunteers creating a firehose of memes on her behalf.

By the time Biden dropped out of the race on July 21, Harris had actually been young people’s feeds for weeks. Fans posted cleverly cut treatments of her speeches, her , (in and out ), even her love of .

As early as , one X user posted, “I’m ready to fall outta the coconut tree for you, girl. Stop playin.”

‘It’s hard not to love her’

For one fan, the attraction began much earlier.

Ryan Long, 22, a senior at the University of Delaware, discovered Harris in November 2016, when she won her Senate seat. She popped up on his cultural radar in earnest four years later, when she became Biden’s vice president. Her appearances often took on a life of their own, he recalled: She’d say “a lot of silly and amusing things” in official settings. “I’ve always found her so, so funny.”

Harris’ self-professed geek tendencies soon prompted him and his housemates to decorate a whiteboard with the saying, “I love Venn diagrams.” It stayed up for about a year. The hilarity of the “Coconut Tree” video made it “really popular on ” about a year and a half before it hit the mainstream, he said.

Long admitted to not typically following politics. But by the beginning of July, when a poll in his X feed suggested that Harris had a better chance of beating Trump than Biden did, he got excited.

“It was a silly, unrealistic excitement,” he said. But that night, he spent about three hours cutting together his favorite bits of Harris footage.

why did I stay up till 3am making a von dutch brat coconut tree edit featuring kamala harris and why can’t I stop watching it on repeat

— ryan (@ryanlong03)

���DzԲ�’s of Harris speaking, laughing and dancing has garnered about 4.3 million views on X and helped create a template for the genre. “She is a fresh face at a time that there [is] so much disillusionment in politics, especially among young people,” he said. 

Now that she’s the Democratic nominee, she offers the potential to bring a lot of young people along for the ride, Long said. 

In that sense, she is much like Trump, who “has this huge cult of personality. He’s able to make riffs, say things off the cuff, make people laugh, make people excited, make people sad, make people just feel their emotions. And I think Kamala Harris does that for a whole other subsection of voters.”

By comparison, Biden’s push to reach young voters via social media and all but non-existent to many.

For his part, Trump has benefited from the efforts his own devoted fans, who have reveled in his ties to and his after the attempt on his life last month. The campaign has also gotten a boost from a small on the right who have become a “shadow online ad agency” for his campaign, spending the past year producing similar content for the GOP nominee. The group, which calls itself , operates anonymously, its memes “riddled with racist stereotypes, demeaning tropes about L.G.B.T.Q. people and broad scatological humor,” The New York Times last December.

‘Authentic and true’ narratives attract Gen Z

To be sure, the reaction to Harris on social media has been unprecedented. Jessica Siles, a spokesperson for the Gen-Z-led advocacy group , said she had stopped counting how many conversations she has had with people about what it means to be “brat.”

That adjective comes compliments of British singer Charli XCX, who on July 21 , “kamala IS brat,” defining the term as “that girl who is a little messy and likes to party and maybe says some like dumb things sometimes.” She’s honest, blunt — and a bit volatile.

It all adds up to a kind of authenticity “that young people really resonate with,” said Siles. 

Even U.S. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona tried to get in on the act, posting on X in the lime green color of the moment that “Defending public education is part of the essence of brat summer.” To some, it appeared, as the kids say, a little cringe. One critic, invoking the iconic scene from “30 Rock,” , “How do you do, fellow kids?”

Defending public education is part of the essence of brat summer.

— Secretary Miguel Cardona (@SecCardona)

Most Gen-Zers were indeed kids the last time a meme-worthy candidate ran for president. Siles, 24, was just 8 years old when Barack Obama ran his first presidential campaign. She said seeing a candidate talk about who they are unapologetically while boasting impressive career accomplishments “is just super refreshing to young voters.” 

Gen Z grew up with these. “So I think we’re kind of uniquely qualified to be able to tell who’s posting something authentically or not,” she said. Young people don’t take the time to create, edit, post and share videos of “people they’re not truly excited about.”

Harris began resonating with Siles after she watched a video of the vice president talking about her mother’s cancer. Siles remembered that it “showed a different side that we don’t always see of elected officials and politicians that I thought was really powerful.”

In the three days after Harris announced her candidacy, Siles’ organization got more applications to join and start new chapters than in the prior two months.

The group, whose chief of staff is all of 16, earlier this year by making mischief in the race: It scooped up unused Web domain names for groups such as GenZforTrump.org and guided viewers to that targets young voters in battleground states. It also launched a digital ad campaign on Instagram and Snapchat.

David Paleologos, director of the in Boston, said there’s no question that social media has trained young people’s attention on Harris, who needs the votes: Exit polls from 2020 suggest that Biden beat Trump by 24 percentage points among voters ages 18-29. Harris hasn’t quite reached those margins among potential young voters in the recent polling, he said, but she’s close — up by about 20 points. 

In order to reach 2020 levels in the next three months, she’ll need a social media strategy of “messaging memeology,” Paleologos said, which strings together “a seemingly haphazard sequence of posts that paint a picture, much like the colorful stones in a mosaic.”

However, he said, one risk of that is staying power: “It only lasts until the next meme about someone else captures that young person’s short attention span.” Research also shows that young voters are the least participatory in elections.

Just like clockwork, since she announced Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate on Aug. 6, the have .

‘I hate how I can feel the propaganda’

To be sure, not all young people are totally sold on the coconut memes or the high energy. In , a 19-year-old user from southwestern Missouri who goes by the username “Meatball” looks into the camera and confesses, “I hate how I can feel the propaganda of the Kamala campaign working on me.” 

In the video, posted July 24, she continues, “Part of me is like, ‘Yass queen, purr! Brat Summer! Kamala Harris!’ And then I’m like, ‘Oh my God, that’s a politician, actually. That’s the vice president of the United States.’ Like, I’m still going to vote for her, but I don’t like feeling like I want to vote for her.”

In an interview via text messages, Meatball, who asked to withhold her name for safety reasons, said she posted the video after getting “countless” Harris-related videos on her “For You” page — a few from Harris’ official account. “I wanted to see if anyone else was experiencing this disconnect between wanting to participate in something fun and not trusting politicians,” she said.

It’s safe to say they do: In three weeks, her video garnered 1.8 million views and more than 289,000 “likes.” 

But Meatball said she wishes older generations understood that Gen Z’s opinions “aren’t less thought out just because we share them in unconventional ways” like TikToks. “Meme culture is complex and has been developing since the creation of the internet chat room. Just because an older person doesn’t understand what we’re saying doesn’t mean we aren’t saying anything at all.”

Long, the Delaware student who posted the X video of Harris, predicted the memes and videos will have a big effect. 

He has worked in e-commerce marketing and has seen the power of social media to convert views into sales. “I think the same principle applies for elections: It’s going to turn people out. It’s going to get them excited.”

As thoughtful observers , that notion is — statistically and philosophically — a red herring. Young people ages 18 to 30 appear likely, at least in terms of numbers and passion about issues, to play a larger role in the 2024 election than has been true in elections over the last several decades.

There is a much more urgent issue to tackle this year than voting participation by young people. The next generation (who, by the way, the “Gen Z” label) does believe that its vote matters. For young people overall, according to from the Institute for Citizens & Scholars, at least 68% of them think their vote counts, but over half (57%) are dubious about democracy itself.

Today’s youngest voters have never experienced democracy and its political process as the opportunity to voice ideas, be heard, learn from different perspectives, and take part in compromise. For their entire lifetimes, they have seen two corporate parties engaged in polarized gridlock, vicious contention, and social media manipulation, all ruled by a four-year cycle that plays out on a Super Bowl-like stage with unreliable outcomes and even, on Jan. 6, physical violence.

No wonder they’re inclined not to trust democracy, or at least not to believe those of us in older generations who keep telling them it is a great thing and they should participate. Meanwhile, those of us who are older, who have privilege and influence and who experience the world as working for us, cannot understand the perspective of young people growing up in a world that does not reliably support them. Especially for women, young people of color, and those raised in poverty, it is difficult to imagine that government could ever truly work for them. It is no surprise, then, that from Supermajority found that more than 90% of young women do not believe the government and political system work effectively. For these disenfranchised populations, it is tempting to tap out.

This generation does not want to be told about the power of democracy so much as shown. They need to be able to kick the tires. They need to see it work for them, and they need to be able to engage. Where democracy is concerned, that means giving young people more opportunities, and more preparation, to take part in conversation—to come to the table, express opinions, field arguments and find solutions.

To be sure, that kind of democratic participation, the participation of voice, requires not just the occasion to speak and listen, but also the skills to do so. Events on college campuses over the past decade — certainly over the past 10 months, since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war — have made it clear that we have a ways to go in helping them learn and practice those skills. Precisely because they have grown up with a hyperpolarized, dysfunctional political environment and an omnipresent social media culture, they have learned a great deal more about how not to engage, from shouting down speakers to creating no-win situations for institutional leaders to bullying and canceling on their social feeds.

Some of us who grew up in the aftermath of the Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War may romanticize college as the time to learn to speak out, debate and engage. But as these recent experiences show, college is now too late for young people to learn these skills.

Instead, we need to begin in middle school to create an environment where young people learn to speak and listen. They will not naturally develop these skills online, where algorithms enable — even encourage — them to filter out a range of perspectives. They will not learn them in classrooms where teachers and students alike are afraid to speak up for fear of being canceled or governing speech on controversial issues. And they will not learn as long as they are allowed to think that disagreement with their opinions, especially heated disagreement, is equivalent to physical and mental harm that must be avoided at all costs.

Schools and out-of-school-time programs need new emphases on civic conversation, media literacy and discussion across differences, including both safe spaces and brave spaces in which to experiment. For that matter, the local venues where deliberation starts — town councils, school boards, even homeowners associations and church councils — should create seats at the table for young people to observe and take part. This is especially critical in communities where underrepresentation has been a systemic, historic issue. But, in truth, young people raised in any community where their voices don’t matter will be all the more likely to opt out of participation.

Before we even begin to worry about whether or not young people are voting, we need to double down on whether young people feel heard, whether they know how to make themselves heard in productive ways and whether we know how to listen and respond. Making sure that the next generation knows how the system works, and sees that it can work for them in a very local, personal way, is the best means of getting them to use democracy, rely on it and expect the best from it.

New Hampshire public and private high schools will soon be required to give voting information to students, under a law signed by Gov. Chris Sununu this month.

requires that civics instruction “include information on the laws governing election and voting” in New Hampshire. That information would supplement what is to be taught in schools for history and civics, including the structures of the New Hampshire Constitution and U.S. Constitution, and the role and function of government.

Currently, the State Board of Education to distribute copies of the state constitution and state voting laws to middle schools and high schools for civics instruction. But HB 1014 would directly mandate that schools use that information to bolster “the role, opportunities, and responsibilities of a citizen to engage in civic activity.”

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The bill comes as part of an effort by some to increase participation in elections among young people. Voting rights advocates have noted that only 15 percent of 18-year-olds in the state were registered to vote in the 2022 midterm elections.

Rep. Mark Paige, an Exeter Democrat, noted that students with disabilities who have individualized education plans already receive information about registering to vote.

“This then just expands that to every student in the state,” he said in a May 7 Senate hearing.

But some voting advocates have criticized the bill for not going far enough in requiring that high school students be directly taught how to register to vote. Originally, the bill required high schools to “adopt policies to promote student voter registration”; the House amended that to mandate that students are instructed in the laws instead.

In an unrelated section added by the Senate, the bill requires that any public school district, town, or city use the official name for state holidays – effectively barring those entities from calling “Columbus Day” “Indigenous Peoples’ Day.” The bill takes effect Sept. 12.

HB 1014 was one of a handful of voting-related bills signed by Sununu July 12. The governor also signed , which allows town clerks, assistant clerks, and clerks pro tem to deliver absentee ballots to nursing homes and other elder care facilities.

And Sununu signed , which requires that town and city election officials allow the public to observe the use of any voting tabulators as they are used on election night, and directs those officials to post the printout of the machine’s tabulated results within 60 minutes of running the machines.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. New Hampshire Bulletin maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Dana Wormald for questions: info@newhampshirebulletin.com. Follow New Hampshire Bulletin on and .