Understanding Gen Z with Jon Stewart and John Della Volpe

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Mark Daily Show. My guest tonight as the director of Pulling at Harvard's Kennedy School's Institute of Politics, and he's the author of Fight How gen Z is channeling their fear and passion to save America. Please write on the program, John Delavo, by John, come back, come in.

Thank you for joining us, Thank you for having me.

You have spoken to gen Z, many of them here tonight, By the way, I don't know if you spoke to them. How many of you spoke to John for the Okay? Can you get to That's crazy to turn this into a focus group? Maybe this is a focus group? Is that how you do it? Is it are these? How do you get to gen Z? I have two of them in my house and I don't know what they think about anything.

They want to be listened to. It's actually quite quite quite easy. You can bring a group of young people together and I asked a couple of simple questions.

Do you feel understood? No?

What do people like me? What do you think people like me don't understand about you? And then there we go for two hours. It's actually quite easy.

Can I tell you something that is the plot of the breakfast club? How so is this mostly focus groups? Are these checklists and surveys that you pass out? How is this done? What we do?

And we've been doing this for twenty almost twenty five years now at Harvard right because young people twenty five years ago were interested in understanding their generation. And to do that well, you need to go beyond traditional polling and asking people what they think right track, wrong track. You need to spend time immerse yourself in these communities.

We spent a.

Long weekend in Michigan with a twenty five students or so just a few months ago to begin to understand.

Now they are these people? Do they do you put up a flyer? Uh? Or do you put that on?

Well?

Sometimes we literally go into coffee shops. Sometimes we'll hang up we'll hang up posters asking people if they want to participate in a town hall. Sometimes will will recruit people based upon certain demographic groups, will pay them for a couple of hours.

To worry that the sample size is skewed to people who visit coffee shops, like, how do you adjust for we want?

That's just one phase, right, that's the quality. And then we learn from those kinds of questions, right, And we conduct very large scale surveys of a relatively small population. So whereas most polls across the country might have a thousand Americans, maybe a couple thousand Americans, right, we do a couple thousand young people between the ages of eighteen to twenty nine who are representative of that generation across

Times a year.

And what then do you do with that? How is that is that then sent to the media and they use it in a reductionist way that doesn't understand anything that you're talking about, to make it seem as though on college campuses all across America, all they talk about is Israel Gaza, because I've been on those campuses. All they talk about is getting laid in classes.

It depends upon listen, It depends.

Upon what media outlet we're talking about, right, There are some media outlets who take these headlines and they run them around the world as propaganda to say this generation reductionist.

Man.

Yeah, to say this generation of Americans are anti America, and you'll see that around the world, so you can use pulling us propaganda. This project started because not enough young people were participating in politics back in nineteen ninety six. Like when we were young voters, only a third of us voted in the presidential election.

Thank you so much for calling me a young voter in nineteen ninety six, when I believe I was old enough to have been president. What would you like this to be used for? What is useful in this in your mind? Because it's it's very difficult to take a snapshot of something and say this is the picture of this generation.

This is not being this is What's so important is that I think the goal of this or the goal of any public opinion research is to give voice to a generation, to give voice to the vulnerable.

But isn't that TikTok, isn't that what social like? I've never had a more heard generation. I can't get them off my phone.

Yeah, and if you take a moment off of their phone, know what they're going to tell you. They're going to tell you that several days, last couple weeks, they were depressed.

They're going to tell you.

Some serious, serious concerns they have about their own mental health, and it gets pretty dark.

In some cases.

They're going to tell you that they're not confident that they'll ever be able to do what we did in terms of own a house. They'll tell you that they're concerned about literally being homeless. It's there's virtually every focus group I do, whether it's virtual or otherwise. Last night, two members of a focus group of young people had already been homeless for an extended period of time in their heart.

How quick, that's what we're trying to reveal, these sorts of things.

Within fifteen twenty minutes, there was a woman in tears when I simply said, see, this is the difference between kind of what the polling is that you might see that we duction's pulling versus true public opinion research. Right, the way I get to this is. I asked three questions. Okay, the first question is your name, where you are from. What's the best part of your life today? Next question, what keeps you up at night? What are your streutsers?

Right?

And then very very quickly they hit to the point that they open up. And this is something I think unique about this cohort of younger people of gen zers, that they feel so disconnected from older generations because older generations, through the media and otherwise consider them snowflakes.

Right, But no generation ever feels connected to the young generation, never feel connected to the older generation. That's the whole point. They're here to replace us. There, we're we're our job is to breed, swim upstream, and then.

Die on right. But this general what this generation is.

They're upfront telling us about these concerns, and I argue that these concerns are more real and versal than maybe our concerns.

I don't think, what would you like our political system or our media system to do with this, other than to come out and go, hey, these guys are worried because what we ultimately end up getting. I'll watch the news and just see the Harvard School of Politics and Institute did a survey and the number one concern is inflation, and number fifteen is Israel Gaza and fourteen is emo music like it's and it'll just give you this list and there's no illumination there, it's just the list.

What I want elected officials to do, and they are doing, is to understand these concerns so they can speak to these concerns, because if they speak to these concerns.

Young people will be more likely to vote.

Not only can they speak to these concerns, but if they could show the track record and the progress that we have made, because John, this is a different and better country because young people vote in twenty twenty and record numbers. We don't have KBJ on the Supreme Court, we don't have the.

Large they find record numbers in the last one and record numbers. What was the percentage of young people that vote.

We look at eighteen to twenty nine year olds. It's the first time in history that more than half voted, fifty one to fifty two percent.

Really on college Vietnam, the young people didn't vote on college.

This is higher than any time on record.

Wow.

On college campuses it was over sixty percent, which is essenti of the same rate as all Americans. And what's interesting about this is not only what do we have the highest turnout ever, but also it was the youth vote, specifically in those five battle ground states Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona, and Georgia, who by twenty points voted for Biden. Donald

And if you were young people today and you did that and you overcame that, what has been done for you other than some of you, you know in terms of like loan forgiveness or something along those lines. But do you think that the politicians did honor that vote?

I think so because let's start with doing debt one hundred and fifty billion dollars of student debt relief right in the last three years for over four million, soon to be ten million Americans.

That doesn't happen.

We don't have, in my opinion, the first biparison gun Violence Prevention Act in two generations.

So that's you feel like that information just has to be delineated to them or they're not feeling those effects yet or did they? Are they disappointed? Is this survey different for young people? Do they feel do they feel that they were heard?

No?

I think that's the challenge, right, because what I care most about is participation, okay, And what drives participation is whether they can see a tangible difference in politics and government and their vote. And despite what I believe has been the most pro youth agenda in several generations from the Biden administration, despite that, few young people appreciate that, right.

Few young people.

Know the climate, the gun violence and studentifts as examples.

Right, Right? Are they thinking about things more immediate to their lives? Is that why they're feeling differently?

I don't think they're watching the news as closely.

It's hard to get some of this information on the news so much what's in the news. That's a negative part one.

But the other thing is compared to what the policy preferences are for seniors, Like you can feel two thousand dollars prescription drug cap, you know that that's immediate, right. You can see in your four one K right the record, the kind of the record performance. You can feel that these things may take a generation to actually feel with the exception of that.

Really, so I wonder if.

It made more sense if instead of if the idea is to make it useful in for for people that can be actionable, is the idea maybe to think of this more as a customer survey, the way that a corporation might to say, what is your satisfaction with the United States government or the government or your government or your life, and how would what would improve it?

Exactly?

Do they do that?

We essentially do that. We essentially like a customer survey. It is essentially a customer survey, and I will tell you it was pretty tricky, very difficult twenty five years ago when we started. We have been honored inside the RNC, the DNC. Our students have brief the administration, the Obama adminstration, of the Trumpe adminstration, and the.

Biden demonstration directly.

So we are honored because of the work of the young people who craft the questions here that we do have the ears and.

You think there's an understanding now of this. Are you finding the kind of polarization that we see on social media? And is the algorithm driving their opinions in a way that wasn't happening to five years ago.

Absolutely, And of course there's no equal side to the algorithm, right, it's it's it's it's.

Is it radicalizing this generation?

I think there's an element of it, for sure. I certainly think there's an element of those people who feel like the kind of the the kind of the backlash right, who who don't feel connected.

The thing about this generation is essentially.

Two thirds of this generation share a relatively common set of values in terms of what's important for government.

To focus on it to fight for right.

So if you're a part of that one third who feels disconnected, there is that opportunity. I do think with these algorithms to go into some pretty dark places.

Where's the disconnect. Is the disconnect from the media, from how the politicians utilize that information, from their own misunderstanding of how the world should listen to them, you know.

Where where is then the disconnect? I think it's I think it's all of the above. I do think that young people, you know, they used information quickly, right, They're used to you know, asking for some in receiving it you know, in an instant or being delivered to them, right, So there does need to be I think some greater appreciation for the system and the process Part one. But like governments in specifically the government and political parties need to understand that elections are won and lost.

Based upon what young people think.

These days, forty percent, forty percent of the electorate are going to be gen Z or millennials forty percent and this coming election, this selection come election, gen.

Z and millennials. Okay, they have a shared set.

Of values and you and you're right in there that their passion will save this country.

I do think so.

I do think so because as I talked about the severe kind of anxiety and depression that they have.

But in many cases other generations.

Okay, who feel that way, it's normal to actually, you know, flee, okay, and to run away. But this generation is decided to use all the tools, as David Hogg, the Parkland activist, talks about, in their civic toolbox, to fix problems and to stand up for the vulnerable, whether it's voting, whether it's protesting.

Do you really think they're different than past young generations. I mean, that kind of idealism and that kind of actimism has always been a part of that. And then everybody gets jobs and says.

It well, listen.

Generally, I mean that's that's my experience. I mean, that's the whole you know what happened the hippies, and the hippies turned into the uppies and they all went down to Wall Street, and you know it's I feel like we keep getting trapped in this cycle of like the children of the future, and you're like, yeah, they've been saying that forever, and the cycle keeps repeating as though we didn't also have the potential to do it. But we didn't and they.

I think so. Two things. One is.

This generation of younger voters voted it at twice the level as millennials. That's leg you can do, but still twice right when we were their age. When we were their age, fourteen, fifty teen percent of us voted okay.

Now why we were building a society. We were out in the streets, bricks and more to building a society.

And how to come right, not well right, for how to come So that's part that.

That is part one.

But I am telling you that they are committed, they are committed to dealing with these issues because I'll tell you why.

We're just the ones you talked to. That's only my curiosity. I have two left. Everybody, you don't talk to me, you didn't talk to my kids, you'd come on here tonight and go. They just like watching Netflix. They really It's it's do you understand what I'm saying. I think we tend to want to look at it and make sweeping judgments about who these kids are, and we tend to then simplify it into a monolith. And that is the first step in misunderstanding and misrepresenting what they actually do.

I think so.

But in each generation does have kind of a central identity. So for example, Gen xers, okay, we were in terms of politics and ideology split relatively same as many as conservatives, as liberals, probably as Democrats, whereas this generation is different.

The reason that this generation is different, this.

Is important that no generation, no generation since the Greatest Generation, has dealt with more chaos, more trauma, more quickly than jen z.

All of this at their at their footsteps before the age of twenty five. Listen to me, Listen to.

This is completely true. When I was growing up, Martin Luther King was killed, John F. Kennedy was killed, Robert Kennedy was killed, The Vietnam War was on, and then there was water and.

We put someone on the moon. We came together for that. This generation, this generation.

But did the gate all the other shit? It did not. It did not.

And every generation has their trauma. This generation hasn't seen America at our best.

No, no, no, no, no.

When was the last time.

When was the last time your kids felt good about being American and connected to everybody this morning?

Really? Yeah? Again, this is the kind of generalization that I think I take issue with that idea that like, this generation has had challenges in a way that no one else has. I just think that's putting upon them a sense of a victimhood that is not necessarily and I think can can ultimately have them play into that identity, as opposed to saying, yeah, man, your perspective is this is the worst the world has ever been. But I'm

I didn't say more than all of the generations.

What I said since the greatest generation.

And the difference though, is without seeing America united. The difference between a millennial, in my view, in a gen zer is a millennial. Remember September eleventh and September twelfth and thirteenth, for that period of time, when we came together, a red county in a blue county hung the flag.

We came together.

It's today.

It was a short pair of fact.

But this this generation doesn't understand that, and it's been division after division, and it would be easy for them, in my opinion, to not engage in politics, not try to work with other people, to try to much of that.

Is a fiction. How much of that is imposed upon them through the algorithm and through the media that somebody, you know, we were just talking about this. A young woman in the audience said, how do you remain hopeful, And I said, the way I remain hopeful is to separate the world that you read about and hear about on the news and in the algorithm from the world that you experience as a human being every day. And aren't we by creating these data points of the horror

But there's nothing.

Seeing children slaughtered in schools we didn't see a nuclear war is not mythology.

But we were seeing in Vietnam. We were seeing I mean.

Right, no, we are and we are seeing that. But what I'm telling you is, I listen the elements of this. I agree, and we collectively should be putting this into context for people.

It does stress them out. I agree with that. Yeah, okay, I agree with that.

But what I'm saying is that we just we don't have to agree that. But We just have to understand the way that they feel and where they're coming from and help them, help themselves and help us.

That's all. That's my message.

And in these issues are real because we could work a summer job as an intern or cutting grass and afford a four year I mean one year tuition a public of private university.

We could do that in the fifties, sixties, seventies, and eighties. Young people can't do that today.

Okay, young you could work a one job and afford a house.

These are the rights.

Not only are is this generation losing reproductive healthcare from the Supreme Court, but this is a generation who feels like they're losing other rights. The rights to attend a college without going broke if you work hard, right, the rights to own a home or a piece of property.

Right.

Those are the rights.

And isn't that a different conversation. Isn't that that's it?

I don't think so.

It's about an It's not. Listen, young people live in the same economy that we all live in. And you know, I would look at it like sometimes we'll think like I happen to be in an unbelievably fortunate situation, But I look at the crunch that people feel, you know, just as they get into middle age after having worked for so long, and they just get to that college age where they're putting their kids through college, their parents start to need help and you're in that crazy squeeze.

There is clearly economic stress around all Americans right now, right right listen, before we did the survey, do we.

Really need to talk to the gen z anymore before that? Don't we know enough already? I watch the TikTok it's everywhere are they? Do they? Do you think social media has hurt them?

Unquestionably it's hurt them, really, yeah, it's hurt them.

What would you do to ameliorate this feeling that gen Z is having? And and two? Or has it helped them organize? And so you wouldn't lose it because it's a double edge.

There's it's certainly some pro storysm I mean, there are folks who feel vulnerable who can find community on that space where they can find in their own in their own community, and that's good, right, they can organize from it. But the degree to which fear is instilled in their lives.

The economic fears about what. Yeah, like in terms of the algorithms.

Right, Oh, it just feeds them carfe.

Car crashes to them, It feeds car crashes.

How the does that even start?

That's just one of That's just that's kind of one example.

Can I tell you? All I get is that one girl going on two days into college and on three leg shows behind, and then it's just a thousand people dancing to that.

That's your's that's you, that's your algorithm. Right, that's uh, they find you.

I'm doing it wrong. Thank you very much for coming by. Harvard's John Delabobe.

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