Charlie Kirk Lost His Life Trying to Save My Generation

By Eva Terry

Thursday, September 10, 2026

 

Looking out at 3,000 Utahns, Charlie Kirk was shot and killed a year ago today.

 

He was debating a young man about gun violence and transgenderism. I stood on the lawn near the front, covering the event as a reporter for the Deseret News. I have watched the scene on the backs of my eyelids a thousand times. The bullet hits him; he closes his eyes; my co-worker and I drop to the ground and pray. Gathering myself, I brace for bullets as we run over dots of blood on the concrete.

 

I see it differently now.

 

12:23 p.m. was the moment Charlie Kirk lost his life in the battle for the soul of Gen Z. He was speaking to us that day, and a member of his target audience rejected his message in the most violent and forceful way possible.

 

As his widow, Erika, eulogized, Charlie’s mission was to “save the lost boys of the West.” My generation has been, in many subversive ways, manipulated by digital and political interests since we were kids. We are isolated, overly indoctrinated, and largely ignorant of reality.

 

This realization hit me during a drive from Wyoming to Idaho last month, when the aux cord in my little white Hyundai gave up the ghost. Its death left me with one option: radio. For some context, I’m 24. I’ve had Spotify since middle school. The radio, I say at risk of dismay from readers, is a beast I’d never had to wrangle.

 

Amid vast yellowing fields, I began sifting through channels. From my half-hour immersion, the only options I found were week-old political news, Christian pastors preaching salvation, and what sounded like AI-generated country music. I didn’t realize people listened to this stuff; I didn’t even realize it existed.

 

I opted to sit in silence.

 

Gen Z has never known an uncurated world. We live under an illusion that our beliefs and preferences are overwhelmingly held by the majority. Even if we logically understand that other people have different feeds than our own, we do not — and largely cannot — genuinely understand what others are constantly being fed. We are unaware of each other.

 

Evidence of such isolation is everywhere, but it was extremely apparent after Charlie Kirk was murdered. After blasting high-definition videos of his fatal wound to millions of phones, our feeds did what they’ve always done: provide news tinted in whatever political hue we like. If the overlord bots thought you didn’t like Charlie, it fed manmade clips that portrayed him as evil. If they pegged you as a fan, your feed likely sang his praises.

 

The correlation between social media and physical damage to Gen Z is well documented.

 

In the early 2010s, hospital admissions for self-harm tripled for girls my age. Emergency room visits for suicidal attempts and ideation essentially doubled for kids and teenagers, and self-poisonings for ten-to-twelve-year-old girls quadrupled.

 

I lived this statistical swell. I remember sitting on my bedroom floor in Lincoln, Neb., as a high schooler, finding out from Snapchat that a friend of mine had committed suicide. It was sunny out, the beginning of fall. We were so young and exposed to so much. It happened again a year later; following Covid-19 lockdowns, another friend of mine gone.

 

And while Snapchats disappear, we are trapped by the permanence of everything else online. I still have the texts and photos my childhood best friend sent me of her arms bleeding. I can relive with exactness, nothing lost to the forgiveness of time, how my early teenage self handled it. Nothing fades. It’s all still there, sitting idly in blue bubbles.

 

I am a year older than Charlie’s alleged killer, Tyler Robinson. During his preliminary hearing, in which he was accused of six felony charges, including aggravated murder, witness tampering, and obstruction of justice, prosecutors published photos of engraved bullets coated in Tyler’s DNA.

 

The bullet engravings were quintessentially Gen Z. In poor Dremel-inscribed handwriting, the metallic scars referenced furry culture, Helldivers 2 (a shooter video game), and anti-fascism; one said, “If you read this, you are gay lmao.”

 

If there is something more sinister and damning to my generation than this — internet memes inscribed onto a murder — I would like to hear it. We are tortured, confused, and segregated from one another. Whether directly from teachers or indirectly from perverted sections of the internet, many of us learned to accept perverted views of ourselves, our country, love, and truth. The fruits of such foundations are beginning to show.

 

I have followed the aftermath of the gunshot that killed Charlie Kirk in court, in interviews, and throughout the culture; I have found that what unifies many involved is sorrow. Sorrow is not simply the absence of joy. Those who have lost people they love understand that absence is palpable. It sits on your chest, your shoulders; it seeps in you and comes out again.

 

Words cannot convey the sorrow Charlie’s murder inflicted on his family and the family of his killer. But, as I recently read in the Book of John, there is a light that shines in darkness, which darkness cannot comprehend. That light is the same that commanded us to love our enemies and to do good to those who use and persecute us.

 

In my broken-aux-cord-induced silence last month, I wracked my brain as to how Gen Z might heal. The answer, I believe, is so simple: Love God and love thy neighbor as thyself.

 

Charlie Kirk regularly spoke of Jesus Christ in his closing remarks, so I will leave you as Charlie would have.

 

The Savior says, “I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you.” He says, “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.”