Gen Z has a big problem: we are divided.
Everyone knows we get passionate about politics, which can lead to disagreements, but what many don’t realize is that Gen Z, the group from 1997 to 2012, has a huge gender divide that other generations haven’t dealt with.
We are so different that it starts to matter how we see each other.
In the United States, 40% of young women identify as liberal, compared to just 25% of men their age, while 29% of young men identify as conservative, compared to 21% of women their age.
Gen Z differences affect how we interact with each other
The widening ideological gender gap is a much deeper issue than whether team red or team blue wins. The real impact of this ideological discrepancy is reflected in the fact that Gen Z men and women are beginning to face a more difficult road in building relationships and friendships.
According to the poll, over 70% of Democratic college students said they would not date a Republican, compared to only 31% who disagree. 37% of young Democrats would not even be friends with a Republican. Women are much more likely to take this stance, with 59% of women from both parties saying they would not date someone who voted for the opposite party to them.
This environment, where societal pressures are hostile to diversity of thought, is antithetical to what our generation should be seeking at this point in our lives: an environment where we can be exposed to a wide range of ideas without fear of social retribution.
My generation will choose the president.Gen Z has the opportunity to make a decision in 2024, but Biden and Trump make us want to sit on the sidelines.
In addition to the direct effects of political differences on relationships, social pressures can also discourage interaction between political parties. I experienced firsthand the impact this division has on society when I was an outspoken conservative on campus during my college years.
My friends were shunned by certain peers, people in groups I was associated with were labeled as “bigoted,” and my girlfriend at the time was pressured to be kicked out of her sorority — all on top of the direct harassment I experienced personally.
Instead of talking down to me or simply ignoring me, people who don’t even know what I personally believe have taken it upon themselves to exert social pressure on those close to me as retribution that I deserve.
Why is Gen Z so divided?
The big question is, why is this happening? Surely other generations have experienced times of political hardship comparable to our country’s current state. So what is going on?
Women have long supported the Republican Party at lower rates than men, but it is not until my generation that we see such a wide gap, with young women leading the way in supporting left-wing politics.
Young women have been at the forefront of social media activism since the #MeToo movement, a momentum that has continued through the tumultuous administration of President Donald Trump and the overturning of Roe v. Wade.
At the same time, men are responding to all of this in a somewhat reactionary way, with faux-masculine influencers like Andrew Tate becoming popular among young men and tilting our support even further towards Trump.
Student Loan Forgiveness:Gen Z wants student loan forgiveness without accountability. But it’s not going to work that way.
The reason is widespread resentment over how changing attitudes about gender have affected their lives: Nearly half of men ages 18 to 29 now say they experience discrimination against them in American society, a double-digit increase from 2019. And 53% of single men say they hesitate to approach women for fear of being seen as “creepy.”
Rightly or not, men are shying away from dating for fear of being caught up in the endless stories women tell of their unpleasant interactions with men. The more politically and socially divided we become, the more young men will latch onto harmful ideologies, further diminishing their understanding of how to interact with women.
Men need to better understand why our generation of women has changed, but they don’t know how to do it without being criticized.
It’s up to us to find a way to fix this difference and get along.
While some authors argue that the cracks in this voting pattern have not yet appeared, I would argue that they are beginning to appear.
“If young men and women are truly politically disconnected, we should see evidence of it on Election Day,” Rose Horowitch wrote in The Atlantic earlier this year. “This is where the theory begins to crack.”
Horowitch correctly points out that Gen Z men and women have voted equally in recent years: Women ages 18-29 were the most likely age group to vote for President Joe Biden in 2020, just shy of 70%, while Gen Z men were the second most likely, by just 2 percentage points.
Conservatives shouldn’t ignore universities:Young conservatives like me are being told not to go to college. That’s shortsighted.
But when we look to the 2022 elections after Roe is overturned, the rifts widen: In each House election, 71% of young women voted Democrat, compared with just 53% of men, and 42% of young men voted Republican, compared with just 26% of women.
Even if the expected gender gap doesn’t show up at the ballot box in 2024 or future elections, the concern remains. Such disparities call into question the future of both platonic and romantic relationships for Gen Z. The ballot box is one thing, but it’s left to political parties to harness it. The much harder problem is a cultural one, and it’s up to us to solve it.
Men and women of my generation must change their mindset to recognize that the issues we face are issues we face as a group. Even though certain issues, like the abortion debate, specifically affect women, it affects us all. It affects our compatibility, the scope of our relationships, and the future families we want to build.
My only advice to people my age is to listen more and judge less. Most people aren’t against you because they’re bad people, they’re against you because they see the world differently.
It’s okay to think someone is terribly wrong about abortion or other political issues, and it’s okay to not want to date someone who has the exact opposite opinion to you on the things and topics that are important to you, but the best way to form a social network is to listen, debate if necessary, and find common ground. You’ll be happier and maybe even change your mind about something.
Dais Potas is a USA Today Opinion Fellow. He holds a degree in Political Science from DePaul University and is president of The Lone Conservative, the nation’s largest conservative student publication.
