“Where the f*** is Gen Z?” asked TikTok creator @djangita in a video, which has at the time of reporting been viewed 2.3 million times, filmed at a protest in April.
Since the reelection of President Donald Trump, thousands of people have turned out at protests across the country, including the “Not My Presidents Day” demonstrations in February, “Hands Off!” protests in April and “May Day” protests last month.
And while protest movements have historically been driven by young people, the crowds at these protests seem noticeably older.
So, where is Gen Z? Has the generation committed to a life of tradwives and the manosphere, leaving activism behind? Are they simply disenfranchised? Or has activism taken on a new meaning for a generation raised on tech? Newsweek spoke with experts to find out more.
Where Is Gen Z, politically?
Looking at the perceived absence of Gen Z from the protest scene, the easy conclusion to make is they’re not protesting Trump because they support him.
The reality is a bit more complicated. As with much of American politics, where Gen Z sits politically is in a state of sharp polarization.
Trump has had a significant amount of support from young men, having secured 55 percent of the vote from men aged 18 to 29 in 2024. There is, though, a wide gender gap in this age group, with 61 percent of women from the same demographic having voted for Vice President Kamala Harris.
As of late April 2025, though, polling found that Trump’s support among Gen Z had tailed off since the election, with 37 percent approving of him and 58 percent disapproving.
Shifting Protest Culture
It’s not that young people are completely absent from political protests.
“Young people’s participation in major protests on issues like gun violence after the Parkland school shooting in 2018, racial justice after the George Floyd murder in 2020 and the Israel-Palestine conflict in the past two years have been a major feature of this generation’s political engagement,” Alberto Medina, communications team lead at the Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE), told Newsweek via email.
But there’s been a recent shift, and the image of an angry young person at a protest could now be relegated to the historical archives.
“At the hands-off rally, there was a very clear demographic representation that excluded younger people,” Dana Fisher, director of the Center for Environment, Community & Equity and a professor at America University, told Newsweek, adding that young people are “just not turning up at these mainstream protest events.”
As for why, Fisher said: “Young people are feeling really frustrated with the political process. They’re feeling really frustrated with the two-party system in America, and they have lost confidence in the notion that democracy in America can work for them.”
She recounted an interaction with a young student in her research team who put it bluntly, telling her: “Young people have given up on democracy in America.”
And young people’s relationship with activism is changing, too. Newsweek spoke with Amanda Litman, co-founder and president of Run for Something, about this.
“We have to consider that over the last year and a half, or last two years, when Gen Z has showed up to protest at college campuses in the last year in particular around what’s happening in Gaza, they have been harangued, harassed, kicked out of school,” Litman said. “They have faced incredible consequences.
“I think the culture of protest, even in the last two years, has changed drastically.”
The current conflict between Israel and Hamas began on October 7, 2023, when Hamas launched an attack on Israel in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 taken hostage. Israel retaliated and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to eradicate Hamas. The Gaza Health Ministry reports that at least 54,677 Palestinians have been killed since the conflict began, and there is a widespread humanitarian crisis in Gaza, with nearly all of the population having been displaced, according to the U.N.
Students at universities across America have protested the conflict, with Columbia University becoming the epicenter of pro-Palestinian protests last spring. Protests have led to arrests, unrest and concerns have been raised about antisemitism.
Commitment To Other Causes
But just because Gen Z isn’t out on the streets protesting Trump doesn’t mean they’re not out on the streets protesting.
“A lot of young people who were engaged in all sorts of activism [are] shifting their focus to Gaza in the past year, year and a half since the violence broke out,” Fisher told Newsweek.
Newsweek spoke with Hatem Abudayyeh, national chair of the U.S. Palestinian Community Network (USPCN) about Gen Z presence at pro-Palestine protests.
“We’re still organizing protests every single week, and we still have a lot of college students, and even high-school-age students, Gen Z kids, who are coming to those,” he said.
“College-age young people and campus organizers and activists have been a part of all the social justice movements in the United States for decades.”
Pointing to the encampments and college protests, he said: “That clearly was something that not only the Palestine Support Movement had not seen in the United States before, but none of the social justice movements had seen [it] in the U.S. before since probably the Vietnam War era,” and described Israel vs. Palestinians as “the Vietnam War issue of this era.”
New Era Of Activism
It seems that activism, and political engagement itself, is changing significantly for young people.
“It’s evolving,” Litman said. “Not all activism is flashy. It doesn’t always make for a compelling video or photo. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t work.”
“In the first Trump administration, protesting was one of the primary ways that people showed their anger at Trump. And that was good for that moment. But we also saw the limits of that as a tactic. Gen Z is thinking about different ways that they can make their voice heard.
“We’re seeing young people be really intentional about the ways in which they can move the needle,” Litman added, pointing to consumer activism and social media activism and highlighting that Trump cares about the latter.
Medina told Newsweek:”Engagement online can serve as an entry point for youth to learn about and find opportunities to engage in issue advocacy or other forms of political participation. The key is ensuring that those opportunities are available and accessible to young people, that the structures and support systems are in place for youth to get involved and find political homes.
“Young people are looking for opportunities to learn, to be heard and to have an impact on issues they care about. That process can begin with a post on social media but requires more sustained support that can empower youth to do more than be passive consumers of political ads or information.”
And beyond the discourse online or on the streets protesting, Litman highlighted one thing young people are clearly thinking about: running for office, she said.
“Run for Something has had nearly 50,000 young people raise their hands to say they want to run for office in the last seven months,” she said. “We’ve had more people raise their hands since the election than we did in the first three years of Trump’s first term.”
