What's the difference between millenial and Gen Z politics?

[H. Ross Peron]

It could just be because Gen Z is still pretty young, but there hasn't been much organizing from them (us, but for the sake of consistency them) yet. Millennials made up a lot of the energy behind the anti-Iraq War protests, Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, the Sanders campaign, the DSA, and the alt-right. We don't see the same organizing from Gen Z (yet? But the oldest is 25). Anecdotally, as a consequence of the Bush years, many more Millennials belong to center-left progressive/democratic socialist/social democratic politics after having been further left as kids. Gen Z seems to be a fairly split between alt-right-influenced and center-left-influenced. They're not a conservative generation as the right hopes, but probably to the right of Millennials.

I would place the cut-off date for Millennials after 1996. It's pretty clear to me that besides a small far-right element which is probably smaller than the share of say Millennial Republicans a decade ago, most Zoomers are just as left if not more so than than their Millennial elders. After all, Zoomers were politicized from a far earlier date due to the hyper politicization accompanying Trump's election which was only reinforced by the March for our Lives movement, the George Floyd protests etc. Aside from some "Globe Twitter" weirdos on Twitter, I've seen no evidence that Zoomers were any less likely to support Bernie Sanders for President in the 2020 primaries compared to Millennials.

One thing I've noticed for Zoomers is that they are much more likely to not draw a distinction between politics and their personal lives. Millennials might have had their own political opinions and engage in activism but still were friends with conservatives or often took a "live and let live" approach especially during high school. However, Zoomers seem far more concerned with not just condemning racism or sexism in the abstract but using social media to personally denounce supposed bigotry. For example, at my old high school a student who had been posting redpill/MRA type content on social media was reported by other teenagers to the school. I think something like that would have been much less likely to occur when I was in school. I suspect Zoomers are much less likely to countenance friendships with those who have problematic opinions.

[H. Ross Peron]

I'm a little puzzled at the "Zoomers care about politics while millennials don't takes". I'm old enough to remember the same takes being written with millennials as the enthusiasts and Gen X as the apathetic ones.

Same. Remember when Millennials were all out protesting the Iraq War and mobilizing opposition to Bush on social media?

I don't think those claims are contradictory, since you can make a case that *at the same age* Zoomers are more political than Millennials who in turn were more political than Gen Xers. This is reflected in voter turnout data when elections between 1976 and 2000 were lower than those that came before or after. Moreover, compared to previous or subsequent decades the 1980s and 1990s were known for relative quiescence in campus activism. Obviously these are all relative numbers-there were plenty of Xers involved in political activism (oftentimes conservative but things like anti-globalization movements too) and most Millennials and Zoomers are not particularly political.