What Washington doesn’t get about young Americans — according to 22 college students and recent grads.

For 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, and our attention even faster.

Washington is the opposite. It has been built to operate on a rhythm from a different era, something that, for minds used to instant gratification, is hard to grasp or accept. Even as lawmakers embrace social media and speak in tweets and sound bites, the structure underneath often feels slow and procedural.

My generation understands that not everything can be solved instantly. But what feels foreign, even disorienting, is watching problems linger for decades without visible progress. The disconnect is not simply ideological; it is temporal. Washington measures time in terms, sessions and administrations. My generation measures it in notifications, updates and immediate feedback. It is not that we expect democracy to function like Amazon Prime, but we wonder: In a nation that can act in seconds, why does progress sometimes feel like sitting in traffic?

Emma Rowland is a student at the University of Oklahoma who reports for Gaylord News.

As politicians attempt to draw younger voters to the polls, their usage of internet trends and memes is a very noticeable sore spot for many of us.

Take the use of “6-7” by politicians. Across the political spectrum, this joke has been invoked a number of times to lackluster effect. Former Vice President Kamala Harris’s team used it when relaunching her old campaign account. U.S. House Rep. Blake Moore and Connecticut state Rep. Bill Buckbee both referenced it in November 2025. These jokes weren’t timely or funny, and they just fell flat.

When someone from an older generation tries to make a joke like this, it just doesn’t have the same sincerity as when you make the joke with your friends. In addition, these memes and trends come and go so quickly that, often, by the time they are referenced by a politician, there’s already been two or three new trends that the politician has missed out on. Including these memes as little nods in speeches does nothing but come across as pandering.

That doesn’t mean politicians should ignore social media, which is an incredible tool to reach a wide audience and connect with a generation that has been raised on their screens. In 2020, when Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez played the (at the time) massively popular “Among Us” with several just as popular Twitch streamers, she was doing exactly the right thing: meeting us on our level. She may have still been trying to reach out to voters ahead of the 2020 election, but it felt way more natural and less forced. By contrast, when these ideas are co-opted by those who do not fully understand them, it can backfire and make a politician look out of touch. If internet trends are going to be used by politicians, they need to be done correctly.

Samuel Valencia is a student at Cal State LA and editor-in-chief of the University Times.

Washington misunderstands how thoroughly younger generations have moved away from the 20th-century model of stable salaried employment. Federal policy continues to cater to a traditional 9-to-5 job featuring steady income and hours, benefits and tax incentives. But for many young workers, that model is no longer the default.

Instead, they kickstart their careers through short-term gigs, freelance contracts, platform-based work and content creation on apps like TikTok and Instagram. This stream of income offers flexibility and autonomy while making space for work that builds a portfolio, but has tradeoffs resulting in long-term uncertainty. It’s not that young Americans are rejecting work; they’re redefining it.

Federal policy, however, fails to fully support this path. Stable jobs allow workers to build retirement funds. While freelancers can technically open retirement accounts like a 401(k), setting up and funding these accounts is not as straightforward as in salaried jobs. Similarly, tax withholding assumes predictable pay, which works well for salaried employees but not for contract workers. Freelancers’ quarterly estimated taxes mimic withholding but are often difficult to calculate consistently. And health insurance is still typically tied to employer sponsorship.

In Washington, where policymakers readily define “jobs” as full-time payroll positions, reforms that simplify retirement savings, tax processes and insurance access for independent workers could help bridge these gaps. Until policymakers recognize that short-term work is transforming the traditional employment model and becoming a critical feature of the modern economy, federal policy will fail to match the lived experience of the next generation.

Jade Tran is a freelance writer and 2025 graduate of the University of Maryland.

Washington seems to think that pronouns matter more to us than peace does. For years, legacy politicians — especially Democrats — have cloaked institutional violence with an agenda of “inclusivity.” They seem to think that young people will forget about the mass shootings and federal agents in their streets the second the White House hangs a Pride flag from its balcony. This is called pinkwashing, and we’re not buying it.

Young Americans aren’t unintelligent. We’re not looking for a military with diverse representation; we’re looking for an end to the seemingly never-ending, state-sponsored warfare that tears apart the lives of millions at home and abroad. We’re not hoping for a female president as much as we’re hoping for any president who shows real solidarity with working-class Americans and their legitimate fears. We don’t need our law enforcement undergoing training to be more respectful of their coworkers’ identities; we need them to stop shooting us.

As a queer journalist, speech matters a great deal to me. Of course I appreciate legislative efforts that seek, in good faith, to correct histories of verbal and systemic injustice. But inclusive rhetoric overlaid on imperialism is no more than a Band-Aid on a bullet wound.

Madelyn Rowley is a student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a managing editor at The Daily Tar Heel.

American politics revolves around labels. Many politicians in Washington focus on categories like Democrat, Republican, liberal and conservative, as if those labels should define how people think. However, Washington does not seem to understand that these labels increasingly feel irrelevant to young Americans.

Gen Z is less attached to partisan labels than previous generations. A January survey from Gallup found that Gen Z is more likely than any other age group to identify as independent.

Washington still has not caught up with this reality, and so it continues to operate as if party loyalty is the driving force in politics. Campaign strategies and messaging are built around mobilizing partisan bases instead of persuading voters who think about individual issues. The result is that many young Americans end up feeling alienated from politics.

Ashton Pack is a student at Marshall University and a copy editor at The Parthenon.

Young Americans aren’t disengaged from politics; they’re disengaged from the sensory cues Washington relies on. Young people are highly attentive to policy, but they consume political communication the way they consume all media: by whether the tone feels authentic, the visuals feel real and the messenger feels emotionally credible.

Washington believes information alone creates engagement. Yet youth-directed political messaging is routinely tone deaf, audibly and visually. The cadence is flat, the staging overlit, the camera angles stiff and the delivery drenched in preachy energy that makes everything feel like a mandatory assembly. When a politician pairs a straight-to-camera phone clip with a binder-reading tone, the disconnect is immediate; the mismatch arrives before the message does.

The result is a misdiagnosis: What Washington calls apathy is often just boredom, a lack of interest created by how politics is delivered. Young Americans expect communication to meet them where they already are — digitally, emotionally and through audio and visual cues. They’re not indifferent to politics; they’re indifferent to monotony dressed up as outreach that ignores how they actually engage.

Monte E. White is a student at Norfolk State University studying media and mass communication.

Leaders in Washington misunderstand — or perhaps are too distracted to focus on — the impact the chaotic collegiate sports landscape has on young people and the universities they attend. Although President Trump has promised action and hosted a roundtable, collegiate athletics remains in a state of anarchy, changing course as litigation and class-action settlements drive policy. National leaders miss the effect this mayhem has on athletes, students, fans and state budgets (many states’ highest-paid employees are college coaches). In an era of uncertainty for higher education, when university governing bodies like the Syracuse University Senate must devote time and oversight action to athletics, sports-first conversations take away from other pressing academic-specific issues. Such focus on athletics means a school like SU — which, among other things, is navigating a pause to liberal arts majors and a shrinking pool of international students — sees the search for a new director of athletics garner as much attention as the search for a new chancellor, if not more. The lack of federal direction foists ever-changing guidelines upon universities scrambling to keep up, which distracts academic leaders from their educational missions. Washington misunderstands how much its inaction impacts young people and higher education as a whole.

Griffin Uribe Brown is a student at Syracuse University and digital managing editor at The Daily Orange.

In the run-up to the 2026 midterm elections, Democrats have sought to distance themselves from the so-called “culture wars,” opting instead for a message of economic populism. This shift is, in part, a response to young men swinging rightward in 2024. By moving their focus away from cultural issues — gender, sexuality and reproductive rights among them — Democrats hope to recoup young men and bridge Gen Z’s political gender divide.

Affordability is appealing to young men and women alike. That said, Democrats should take care not to dismiss gender-based concerns as frivolous culture-war issues. Gender is central to the architecture of the Trump administration. It feels almost perfunctory to mention Donald Trump’s misogyny — namely, the numerous allegations of sexual misconduct against him and his friendship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. In just over a year, his administration has taken steps to dramatically limit women’s access to abortion and reproductive care. Sexual abuse and abortion access are economic issues as much as they are cultural ones: They determine whether women have the ability to fully participate in the workforce and in public life more broadly. If Democrats sideline gender-based issues, they risk alienating young women.

Yasmeen Khan is a student at Harvard College and a former editor-in-chief of Fifteen Minutes.

Washington fails to recognize that young voters are drifting from the political center because they see it as a defender of the status quo, not an agent of change. In a time when wealth inequality is sky-high, the cost of living continues to rise and the future is uncertain, my generation wants politicians who promise to urgently address these issues rather than settle for incremental reform.

In 2024, Donald Trump ran an aggressive populist campaign where he promised massive structural change. He saw a large boost in younger voter support, specifically among young men. In 2025, Zohran Mamdani defied the odds and became New York City’s first democratic socialist mayor, with broad support from young voters.

Both of these men shocked the political world, but they shouldn’t have. Candidates who gain the most traction with my generation are populist and anti-establishment. For us, centrism isn’t the answer in a time when major crises have been left unfixed.

If political parties fail to recognize this shift, they will not just lose elections; they risk losing an entire generation of voters.

Jack Salaki is a student at The College of New Jersey and a correspondent for The Signal.

Politicians who dismiss health care as a concern of the old or the sick are misreading the room entirely. Young people are a lot more concerned about health care than politicians may realize because it affects our lives directly.

There has been an uptick in colorectal cancer rates, and more young people are dying from heart-related concerns in recent years. We understand how important it is to get early screenings.

Young people who enter the workforce after high school must make early, important decisions about their future — insurance or not. For most college graduates, the window between finishing school and aging off their parents’ insurance at 26 is shorter than it feels. The bloated costs of health care and insurance make independent living far less attainable than it was for previous generations and naturally incentivizes abandoning coverage altogether. To fix this situation, it is important that our government facilitates a health care industry that is accessible and functional for all generations.

Cooper Gant is a student at the University of Arkansas and editor of The Arkansas Traveler.

There is an all too common assumption made by older generations that Gen Z doesn’t care about politics. But that is based on a misunderstanding of how Gen Z advocates for change.

Gen Z doesn’t need to rely on sit-ins, boycotts and marches to protest the government or push for political reform. Every tool we need is at our fingertips; our advocacy reaches millions in an instant.

One click leads to endless engagement with today’s politics — conflict in Iran, debates on climate change and discussions of democracy. Different corners of the country align to form opinions and challenge norms. This coming-together generates a quiet momentum and allows members of Gen Z to actively engage in a not-too-distant vision shared by millions.

Yet it goes unnoticed. Older generations point at screen time and assume fruitlessness. But the discourse taking place on social media equips Gen Z to create the world we want to see, one that will allow us the privilege of experiencing the American dream that was promised to us by older generations.

Erica Stavnem is a student at Western Washington University studying visual journalism.

Young people do not care about identity politics in the manner Washington seems to think they do. Gen Z neither loves nor hates identity politics. Instead, our main concern is that we are staring at a future in which people are poorer and basic necessities are increasingly unaffordable.

A common 2024 takeaway by many liberal elected officials and commentators was that Democrats had played too much into identity politics. For their part, conservatives may have concluded that they won the election by mocking identity politics. But the 2024 election was not about identity for us one way or the other. Rather, many Gen Z voters moved to the right simply because they trusted President Trump on the economy more than former Vice President Harris. A sense of urgency and despair pertaining to Gen Z’s future prospects underlined their votes.

Zohran Mamdani brought out young voters in New York not because of his race or religion, but because he showed direct awareness of declining material conditions and put forward a plan of action for a more prosperous future. He showed energy and inspired hope. In the same way, young Trump voters didn’t reject Harris because she was a “DEI hire,” but because they long for candidates who show their futures are truly valued.

Sean Scholz is a student at Moraine Valley Community College and managing editor of Velocity.

Much of Washington sees the birthright citizenship debate as a narrow legal fight. A question of whether the 14th Amendment mistakenly grants citizenship to children of undocumented or temporary residents. A supposed loophole, blamed for things like “birth tourism.” As a young journalist and first-generation American, I see something different: I understand this debate as a reshaping of what citizenship has traditionally meant.

I’m the son of immigrants from Liberia, a nation intertwined with America’s history of slavery and colonization. I’m also an African American whose ancestors’ citizenship was once denied. As a result, I see how easily this debate could place a whole generation of U.S.-born children under suspicion and how dangerous it is to let anyone’s belonging hinge on contested notions of “allegiance.” I see the risks. The possibility of creating a stateless underclass in the U.S.; of making citizenship conditional; of forcing American-born kids to prove an “allegiance” their birth should already guarantee. Too many people in Washington say the amendment created a loophole; I argue it was written to close one.

If the 14th Amendment stands for anything, it’s this: If you’re born in the U.S., you’re an American. Anything less risks repeating the very injustice that amendment was written to end. Young people who are the children of immigrants understand this situation well, even if many in Washington do not.

Denzel Massaley is a student at Pennsylvania State University studying telecommunications and media industries.

A common misconception in Washington and throughout the country is that young Americans are disengaged. Disengaged from the workforce, from family life and especially from politics.

While some leaders may see low voter turnout or low party registration and equate it with apathy, they are 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. Young Americans aren’t sitting out because they don’t care. On issues like student debt relief, human rights, climate policy and economic equity, they want systemic change, not symbolic gestures or partisan posturing.

In reality, these young people are redefining what it means to be an active participant in democracy. They use social media to organize and to call out institutions. They vote based on principles, not party lines, and when no candidate meets the threshold, they are willing to withhold their votes entirely. They are no longer rewarding mediocrity with their support.

Washington’s failure to grasp this distinction is a dangerous blind spot. If leaders continue to mistake a shift in strategy for a lack of interest, they risk alienating an entire generation of voters. Young people aren’t disappearing from public life. They’re waiting for a political system worth showing up for. Policymakers who recognize this shift and act on it won’t just win an election cycle; they will have the power to shape what American politics looks like for years to come.

Seyi Arogundade is a student at the University of Idaho who has written for Blot Magazine.

For many young Americans, it feels like neoliberal economic assumptions — be it faith in deregulation or market-led solutions — have produced the crises that shape our lives. We came of age amid the Great Recession, an era of escalating student debt, a worsening housing crisis and the visible failures of market-driven responses to health care and climate change.

Washington, however, often interprets youth dissatisfaction as temporary frustration rather than a structural rejection of the governing consensus that has dominated both the Democratic and Republican parties for decades. Policymakers have attempted to appease their younger constituents with marginal reforms like loan tweaks or tax credits, while maintaining the same underlying neoliberal framework.

What young Americans want isn’t a communist takeover, but the chance to live a comfortable life and be afforded the same access to the American dream that their grandparents had. But that can’t happen when the rules of the game have been shifting over the last 50 years.

Until Washington recognizes that this skepticism toward neoliberalism is foundational rather than fleeting, it will continue to be out of step with the needs of the American people.

Fox Perez is a student at Oregon State University and news editor of The Daily Barometer.

From the vantage point of policymakers and other Washington decision-makers, it probably appears that, in the era of AI, students pursuing humanities degrees are wasting their time. But while AI has inevitably collided with my education and very well threatens to replace millions of jobs, humanities degrees still deeply matter because the economy will always need critical- and creative-thinking skills.

True, an overwhelming majority of students use chatbots for creation purposes. Yet in a job market where companies increasingly seek out authenticity, storytellers and creative thinkers, humanities students actually have the upper hand. By choosing to pursue authentic creativity in an age of manufactured bot content, humanities students can make themselves indispensable to potential employers.

Humanities students are preserving, even advancing, a fundamental level of creativity that AI cannot replicate, no matter how rapidly it develops. On behalf of humanities students, I can confidently say: Creativity is the finest currency. It cannot be engineered.

Emma Souza is a student at Colorado State University and opinion editor of The Rocky Mountain Collegian.

Artificial intelligence is everywhere, and it is increasingly affecting people in the United States at what feels like an exponential rate. From children’s toys to college classrooms to government agencies, AI is now a part of most industries, with major impacts on Gen Z and Gen Alpha.

One under-appreciated part of the AI boom that the government needs to focus on more is that it’s going to make essential computer components far more expensive. This is a negative thing for many people at every level of society. But it is especially detrimental to young people, who generally have fewer resources yet still need to be able to afford various devices to go about their lives. As someone who was an older college student, I can appreciate how this issue seems likely to follow young people from their teen years, when they play video games all night with friends, well into their adulthood, when cars and other essential appliances may no longer be attainable due to the rise in cost of computer components.

Matthew Ali is op-ed editor of the Los Angeles Collegian and a 2024 graduate of San Francisco State University.

Washington’s biggest misunderstanding about young people is about our relationship to “wokeness.” Washington understands wokeness in two ways. First, wokeness is performance: saying the right thing to avoid being canceled. Do you remember the summer of 2020? Second, wokeness is inappropriate: something to be thrown out. Do you see the anti-woke boards, legislation and policies reshaping workplaces and universities?

But young people understand wokeness as existing and resisting. For many of us, it is simply part of our identity. We learned it from Black culture. Woke comes from the phrase “stay woke,” which means to be open-eyed to danger, to injustice.

The phrase was co-opted and misunderstood by white America, the same part of America responsible for creating the conditions that required Black Americans to “stay woke” in the first place.

Washington, wokeness is really about our survival. If you only know how to perform wokeness or throw it away, what does that mean about our survival?

Geneva Cunningham is a student at Quinnipiac University studying journalism.

People in Washington wrongly think my generation is disengaging from politics. Surveys show that younger Americans are deeply dissatisfied with how the political system works and their overall trust in democratic institutions is eroding; but taking that data at face value is reductive. What we’ve seen recently at The Daily Pennsylvanian tells a different story: Students are engaging in political discussions when the impact on them is clear.

Over the last two years, Penn’s campus has been subjected to unprecedented political scrutiny and witnessed levels of activism not seen since the Vietnam War. During that time, we’ve experienced higher-than-ever traffic — not necessarily on high-level national stories, but on pieces about policy changes that have tangible and immediate impacts on students’ day-to-day lives. Young people want to know how national issues affect them and their communities. The stories they’re tuning out are the ones from an unrelenting news cycle that don’t answer those questions.

It is wrong for politicians to assume that young people are uniformly disengaged. Instead, it is more likely they have failed to show why their message matters.

Ethan Young is a student at the University of Pennsylvania and editor-in-chief of The Daily Pennsylvanian.

Washington doesn’t understand that much of the younger generation dislikes the traditional two-party system — which is increasingly dominated by extremes among both Republicans and Democrats. Young voters reject the intense political polarization that has grown over the last two decades. Instead, many identify as independent or remain intentionally politically ambiguous.

Politicians in Washington often view the younger generation through a partisan lens. Both parties are vying for the youth vote, but the younger generation feels disenfranchised by “the D.C. swamp” and rejects extreme politicians, polarizing media campaigns and political jargon.

Young people want to see honest candidates who are truthful and who provide hard solutions to policy issues like rising costs, job security and affordable housing. Youth will align with policymakers who deliver on these promises.

Nicole Huyer is a senior research associate in The Heritage Foundation’s Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies and a 2024 graduate of The Catholic University of America.

Too often, older generations judge young people as being unmotivated or unprofessional in the workplace. Those judgments are bound to inform how the D.C. establishment views Gen Z as well.

The reality, however, is that Gen Z’s relationship to labor is shaped by economic pressure. Meeting basic needs comes at the cost of cutting life’s small joys including time spent with loved ones, participating in the local community, civic responsibilities and the ability to invest in economic mobility. We often have no choice but to embrace gig work or to hold multiple jobs. All of this stress can lead to abnormal decision-making and risky activities like gambling. When young workers see low returns for increased productivity while profits for companies make headlines, it leads to a lack of faith in institutions.

Despite what older generations think, Gen Z is highly motivated and creative. Yet reality frequently prevents this motivation and creativity from materializing in the real world.

Faith Ballard is a student at Wayne State University and news editor of The South End.

Young people around my age — late teens to early 20s — are largely disengaged from the news. At my popular and prestigious journalism and communications school, most of my peers are marketing, communications and sports-concentrated students. Unless my generation’s attitude toward the news changes, traditional, objective reporting could have the final nail driven into its coffin. Washington — and specifically the city’s journalists — may not appreciate just how dire this situation is.

Much of my generation has internalized the “fake news” mindset and believes that journalists are skilled deceivers who don’t fact check. Gallup found that, as of 2025, only 28% of Americans ages 18-29 trusted the media to report the news “fully, accurately and fairly.”

Just about everyone in the U.S. has a broken relationship with news, and young people are no exception. (The numbers are just as bad or worse for other age cohorts under 65.) To address this problem specifically with young people, I believe that instead of trying to edge into the attention economy of social media news consumption, we need to focus on the root causes of this crisis: improving news literacy and setting up young people to be well-informed citizens. We can meet young people where they are on social media, but what Washington doesn’t seem to understand is that if we can’t convince them of the importance of “old-timey” journalism, they won’t engage with high-quality reporting on social media, either.

AJ Whited is a student at the University of Kansas who regularly contributes to The University Daily Kansan opinion section.