The Moral and Factual Bankruptcy of Generation Z

By John R. Puri

Sunday, July 27, 2025

 

There is an odd thing that many older liberals tend to say about America’s youth. As a member of Generation Z, which currently comprises those aged 13 to 28, I have often heard a similar refrain: “It’s you young people who are going to save this country.” “If only my generation listened more to you guys.” “We need you young folks to take over things, already!”

 

Some older liberals say such things because they seem to truly believe that young Americans are an especially enlightened demographic. That we, purely by dint of our youth, have a better understanding of the world than does everyone else, so older generations should give extra weight to our ideas on how to change it. That our political beliefs are inherently superior simply because we haven’t been around as long. That young people are, as Jonah Goldberg puts it, “repositories of moral insight, authority, or dispensation.”

 

Sometimes, this assumption is translated into policy. The United Kingdom recently announced that it will lower the minimum voting age from 18 to 16 to give British democracy what it desperately needs: the opinions of more teenagers. Never mind that those kids haven’t figured out their lives yet, let alone graduated high school or moved out of their parents’ house. That inexperience, some claim, means that their inclusion in elections will have a purifying effect. Why not listen more to those whose inner goodness has not yet been sullied by the trials and tribulations of adult life?

 

Just one small problem. Generation Z — the youngest generation that’s politically active — does not have some superior moral authority. We do not understand the world better than everyone else. Our political beliefs are not especially enlightened. Quite the opposite, in fact. We are, by and large, morally and factually bankrupt. And the polling data reflect this.

 

Start with our moral perception of the most recent war between Israel and Hamas, which began when Hamas burst through Gaza’s border with Israel in 2023 with a mission to “kill as many people as possible.” The terrorists gunned down concertgoers who were fleeing for their lives. They repeatedly threw grenades into a bomb shelter filled with unarmed civilians. They raped women, butchered infants, murdered the elderly, set families on fire, and took hundreds of hostages. Tragically, their mission was a success: At least 1,200 people were killed. What does Generation Z have to say about that?

 

In April 2024, Pew Research polled Americans on whether Hamas’s reasons for fighting Israel were “valid.” An overwhelming majority of respondents thought that Hamas’s motivations for butchering Israelis were invalid. Except those aged 18 to 29. Of those Americans, 34 percent said that Hamas’s reasons were “valid,” compared with just 30 percent who thought otherwise. That age group was also the most likely to say that the way Hamas carried out its attack against Israel on October 7 was “acceptable,” at 9 percent — more than double the share of the next-closest group that said the same.

 

A Harvard Harris survey fielded less than a month after the October 7 massacre found similar results. Those 18 to 24 years old were the only age demographic to conclude by a majority, 51 to 49 percent, that Hamas’s massacre “can be justified by the grievances of Palestinians.” Young respondents were the least likely to call what happened on October 7 a “terrorist attack” or to call Hamas a terrorist group. They were also the most likely to “side more” with Hamas over Israel in the conflict, and to deny that Hamas had killed civilians by “shooting them, raping and beheading people including whole families, kids and babies.” Older respondents, meanwhile, were nearly united in rejecting these atrocious views.

 

If young people’s thoughts on Islamist terrorists aren’t disturbing enough, allow me to turn your attention to Luigi Mangione — the 27-year-old man who murdered Brian Thompson, the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, late last year. As Axios reported in January, “A new poll of college students found that half view the suspect in UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson’s recent killing extremely or somewhat favorably, and nearly half believe the crime was justified.” Asked with whom they sympathized more, 45 percent of students said Mangione, the killer. A mere 17 percent chose Brian Thompson, the slain father of two; 48 percent said that they viewed the killing as “totally or somewhat justified.”

 

Generation Z’s stances on other issues are no more reassuring. Nearly a quarter of Americans aged 18 to 29 say they trust Russian president Vladimir Putin over Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, the highest of any age group by far. In fact, younger people in countries around the world tend to view Russia more favorably.

 

According to a survey by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, 52 percent of U.S. college students say it may be acceptable to block other students from attending a speech on campus. An even greater share of students, 68 percent, approve of “shouting down” a speaker they disagree with, and 32 percent say that “using violence” to shut down an event can be a reasonable course of action.

 

Then there’s Generation Z’s beliefs not about moral questions but about historical matters. To its horror, The Economist discovered last year that 1 in 5 Americans aged 18 to 29 believes that “the Holocaust is a myth.” An additional 30 percent of young Americans say they “do not know whether the Holocaust is a myth.” Twenty-eight percent of them said that “Jews wield too much power in America,” more than five times as many as those 65 and older who said the same. Differences in education were not to blame, as the poll found that the “proportion of respondents who believe that the Holocaust is a myth is similar across all levels of education.”

 

The question is not whether America’s youth is morally and factually impoverished. Polling gives us the answer to that in spades. The real question is why. What happened to Generation Z that has left it so severely illiterate?

 

One obvious culprit is young Americans’ reliance on random people on the internet for their news and information. According to Morning Consult, 3 in 5 members of Generation Z use social media at least once a week for news, far more than they use any other medium. Our single most popular source of news is TikTok, the entertainment app that has become the default search engine of millions of young people.

 

On such platforms, whose content mostly comes from independent “creators,” fact and falsehood are almost indistinguishable. Thus, the bulk of Generation Z has grown up with hardly any exposure to editorial standards. Content creators on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube are incentivized by algorithms to spin incendiary stories, not get their facts straight. Conspiracy theories such as Holocaust denial, fabricated political events, and even foreign propaganda tend to flourish on these apps. Sucking at this informational sewer pipe for hours a day may explain why Generation Z is more susceptible than any previous generation to fake news.

 

With regard to our twisted consciences, young people are distinguished by their embrace of moral relativism. Based on research by the Barna Group and the Impact 360 Institute, 63 percent of Generation Z “does not believe in moral absolutes” but thinks that what is “morally right or wrong depends on what an individual believes,” so what is right “changes over time based on society.” Perhaps relatedly, only 34 percent of Generation Z believe that “lying is morally wrong,” significantly less than do members of any other generation.

 

For many young people today, therefore, actions such as butchering women and children, invading a neighboring country, and shooting someone in cold blood are not inherently immoral. It’s all relative. But relative to what?

 

For many young Americans, the answer is this: Your moral standing depends solely on your relative social status and power. The Wall Street Journal noticed this common thread when reporting on anti-Israel activism in 2023. It concluded that “young activists often see the world as split between the oppressed and their oppressors,” in a sharp break from the views of older generations. Their moral conception of the world “frames the suffering of an array of populations, they say, including low-income families being evicted from their homes, Black and brown people who encounter brutal treatment by the police, migrants turned away from safe haven at the border and, in the current conflict, Palestinians struggling to wrest control of territory from the Israelis.” As one activist at the University of Pennsylvania declared, “From 40th and Market to Palestine, this is the same struggle.”

 

That is the essence of Generation Z’s moral compass: All those who are rich and powerful are evil, and all those who are poor and weak are righteous. So, in the case of Israel and Hamas, whose actions are morally justified? Those of the less powerful. With whom do you sympathize more, the dead health insurance executive or the deranged man who shot him? With whoever had less money. Simple as that.

 

When I show my liberal elders who think that “young people will save America” the data on what young people actually believe, they are usually horrified. Fortunately, their basic moral sensibilities are still intact. The sensibilities of most Americans my age, on the other hand, most definitely are not.