Hopemaxxing
with Gen Z Advocate Rachel Janfaza
What do we get wrong about Gen Z?
Rachel Janfaza has devoted her career to listening to young people across the country. College campuses, community centers, focus groups, and conversations with her growing Gen Z community at The Up and Up. What she’s found is far more nuanced than many of the headlines about young people and politics would have us believe.
In this episode of How We Future, Lisa talks with Rachel about what Gen Z is actually thinking, what they want from their leaders and institutions, and why you should simply have a conversation with a young person in your life.
Rachel explains why the viral debate over Gen Z bringing iced coffee to job interviews is a perfect example of how easily older generations can make assumptions about young people without actually asking them what they think.
In this episode, Lisa and Rachel talk about:
Why calling Gen Z “apathetic” misses the ways young people are already engaging in civic life
Rachel’s “Two Gen Zs” framework and how COVID, TikTok, and AI shaped different cohorts
Why trust in institutions and authority has declined among young people
What Gen Z is actually focused on heading into the 2026 midterms
Why economic anxiety is intersecting with young people’s political views
If Gen Z is the future, understanding how they see that future and giving them agency in shaping it is a civic responsibility we all share.
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Rachel Janfaza: Young people are tired of the doom and the gloom, of politicians who seek to divide, of politicians who are so negative all the time. Young people don't want to be pessimistic, and they're ready to move past that. They're looking for politicians who are providing a hopeful vision for the future. They're actually just looking for progress.
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Lisa Kay Solomon: I'm Lisa Kay Solomon, and this is How We Future, where I talk to some of my favorite changemakers about shaping tomorrow starting today.
These days, it's easy to make assumptions about people whose experiences are different from our own. We see a headline, we hear a statistic, and suddenly we think we understand an entire generation. This is especially true for our younger generations. My guest today is Rachel Janfaza, a journalist, researcher, and founder of The Up and Up, a research and media firm focused on Gen Z.
Rachel has built an entire career around talking with young people across the country about how they think about politics, work, technology, and the world as a whole. In today's conversation, Rachel and I talk about the differences between what she calls Gen Z 1.0 and Gen Z 2.0, what young people are most concerned about these days, and why Rachel is worried about Gen Z voter participation in the upcoming midterm elections. Ultimately, if we want to shape a future that works for more people, we have to start by understanding the people who will live in it for generations to come.
Let's get into it with Rachel Janfaza on How We Future.
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Rachel Janfaza, we are so excited to have you on How We Future, Civic Futures Edition, because you are a pioneering researcher with the Gen Z space. You are a journalist. You've been following Gen Z for a long time. You have amazing insights. It turns out that our future is Gen Z. I can't think of a better conversation to have for this season. Thank you for being here.
Rachel: Lisa, thank you so much for having me. I've loved watching your work over the past few years as well, since we were first connected. I'm thrilled to have this conversation.
Lisa: I know we have been connected for a long time, which is neat. It's been great to see your work grow, because I think so much of your focus is not just on Gen Z politically and how they're engaging, but culturally what is going on and what an interesting generation to follow. Your insights, I think, are so helpful in unpacking seemingly misunderstood trends or simplifications of what's happening with this generation. Maybe we'll just start: how did you start researching them and The Up and Up?
Rachel: I started The Up and Up now four years ago, right before the 2022 midterm elections. I had previously been at CNN, mostly covering young voters and youth political culture. I had been obsessed with the way that my generation, Gen Z, was engaging in politics, really since the first election in which Gen Z could vote in 2016, and had been tracking young people's relationship to activism through social media and things like that since I was in college. Really just saw a growing divide in how young people were thinking about politics, and the fact that Gen Z is very tuned in and had been from the start, and that wasn't always manifesting in electoral participation.
I got really curious about better understanding all of the various issues that were intersecting for young people. I left CNN with a mission to cover the ins and outs of the youth vote space. I started The Up and Up and joined a project that was focused on Gen Z voters in the 2022 midterm elections with Murmuration and the Walton Family Foundation. It was really then that I started to do these listening sessions, which is really a form of journalism, but instead of doing a one-on-one interview, it's just a conversation with many young people at the same time.
I traveled to a bunch of different campuses and community centers and spaces that were filled with young people and just started asking them about the issues that were shaping their lives and realized, oh, these listening sessions are really informative. It's essentially a focus group. Since then, I have been writing about the insights for my newsletter, The Up and Up. I write opinion pieces for different publications. Now, The Up and Up has grown into really a research and media firm focused on Gen Z.
I'm not only just writing about insights from the focus groups for the newsletter, but also doing focus groups for clients who want to better understand how young people are thinking and behaving across a variety of industries. Yes, politics, but also the workforce and dating and relationships and their spending and saving habits, and really everything that is intersected for Gen Z today.
Lisa: I think you really have your finger on the pulse. I love that you do these listening sessions because then you really get the voice of Gen Z. You're not just pontificating. I feel like, frankly, so many adults form an opinion and then put that opinion on Gen Z, and we just do it for our own convenience. I feel like you're really tapping into what's going on with, as you said, curiosity, with empathy, with appreciation. I think that's so valuable. As a designer, when I look at how you work, you're just getting proximate to what's happening and really not willing to allow old stereotypes to follow it.
Certainly, I got involved in civic work in 2019 before the 2020 election. I think we had a similar perspective, which was I just saw this pattern of people raising a ton of money to try to get young people to vote. They yelled at them, cajoled them. The more important the election, the more money they raised, the more famous the people they recruited to basically guilt young people into voting. Young people didn't really respond to that. Then afterwards, the media would be like, "They're so apathetic." I was like, "I don't think that's the case. I think it's us, not them. They want to engage." I love that you came at this with real curiosity about what's going on.
Rachel: Totally. Thank you. I agree. I think so much of the narrative about young people in politics just misses the mark because, again, and I shared this at the start, but it's not that young people are apathetic or don't care. It's that they don't see the system as working for them. They're finding other ways to make their voices heard or to take action. That isn't necessarily always electorally. I'm actually really worried about youth voter turnout in the upcoming midterm elections. This was part of this youth vote roadmap that I put out a couple weeks ago.
Economic anxiety is a top issue for young people ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. Because of that economic anxiety, they're focused on going to work and getting good grades and really doing everything that they can just to put themselves in the best possible situation. There's a lot of stress and anxiety that goes along with that. I think when it comes to whether or not they're actually going to vote on Election Day, they're much more focused on going to work and getting their paycheck than going to the polls. That's part of my fear of why young people might just not turn out on Election Day.
Young people technically are more Election Day voters rather than early voters or mail-in voters. In the past two midterm election cycles in which Gen Z has voted, 2018 and 2022, there were these social issues at the core that really motivated young people to turn out being gun safety after Parkland and then reproductive healthcare access in 2022 after the fall of Roe v. Wade. I'm just not so sure that when economic anxiety is the top issue, it's going to have such an impact on turnout in the way that we saw those two issues. I'm a little worried about this election cycle for Gen Z.
Lisa: Rachel, I loved your report because it was so insightful. One of the things we're trying to do in this season is provide resources for people that are listening to this that want to do something different. I think your report, which we'll get into more details, is so informative about how to reach Gen Z in a different way, even with this limited time. Before we get into that, I want to really pause on just an incredible insight that I've gotten from your work about better understanding Gen Z as not one monolith thing, that Gen Z is really quite a big demographic that has pretty distinct differences in them. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about your theory there.
Rachel: Totally. You're referencing the two Gen Zs, which is this framework that I put out after the 2024 election, really early after. It was in November when I first started to talk about this and-- November 2024. I mentioned that I had started doing these listening sessions right when I left CNN in 2022. What was really informative was that I went to both high school campuses and college campuses and also community centers at the time. I quickly started to realize that younger Gen Zers and older Gen Zers were talking about their adolescent experience and their top concerns and priorities really differently.
In thinking about it and then pressing them on why that might be, I realized that depending on how old someone was at the time of the COVID-19 pandemic, and also that was right when TikTok really popped off, our social media environment changed dramatically; there was a different experience in news consumption, in communication style, and the dividing line was really how old they were in 2020, so to speak, when both COVID changed everything, our education, our workplace culture, our social habits, and also when TikTok and short-form media and short-form videos really revolutionized how young people are communicating.
The two Gen Zs, as I call it, Gen Z 1.0 and Gen Z 2.0: Gen Z 1.0 are those who had already graduated high school at the time of the start of the pandemic, so in spring 2020. Gen Z 2.0 was anyone who was still in high school or younger at the time of the start of the pandemic. That could include people who are in high school today. Now we have other factors that are splitting the two Gen Zs, mainly AI and young people's relationship to AI and how old they were when it became a part of their day-to-day. In looking at the split between the two Gen Zs, we can see some really clear differences in how young people are thinking about the world.
I'm on the oldest cusp of Gen Z, so I was born in 1997, and I very clearly remember when I used a landline phone in my house to call friends or neighbors to come and play, or the day I got a phone, which was not an iPhone; it was a flip phone. I remember we had CDs that we would play in my parents' car and DVDs and things like that. There's a different relationship to tech. Certainly, I did not go to high school or even college with not just TikTok but AI.
There also was a different political climate and relationship to politics because while Trump has dominated every election cycle in which Gen Z has been eligible to vote, I still remember going to high school during the Obama days and middle school and what an election looked like before Trump was at the center of it. Whereas for Gen Z 2.0, they literally only know a Trump-dominated world. Then, when it comes to the technology, they only know a world that is digital. They only know smartphones. They only know very few households have landlines anymore, things like that. Certainly, they're going to school, whether it be even middle school, high school, college, with AI.
These are some of the core divides, and then there are implications for it. In 2024, we saw a shift to the right amongst Gen Z. That's not because this cohort suddenly became Republican. It's because they're anti-authority, anti-establishment, and in 2024, Trump ran as the outsider candidate, ironically, despite the fact that he had already been president, but in comparison to the Biden-Kamala Harris ticket, which very much read as status quo because at the time it was the status quo.
Those are just some of the core differences in Gen Z 1.0 and 2.0. I can certainly elaborate on anything there, but it's become more clear over time just how much the pandemic and also our technology has divided how young people see the world.
Lisa: I think it's one of the most fascinating frameworks I've seen, Rachel, and we are going to post links to great articles you've written and some great side-by-sides because it was really enlightening for me. It helped me understand something I felt but didn't really have the words or the framework for. I think, as I've heard you talk about it, this idea that the older Gen Z 1 grew up in the beginning of Trump and the social protests that were en masse, March for Our Lives, and what happened in reaction to the first. The younger generation, following COVID and with TikTok and other social media, they're organizing differently. They're showing up very, very differently. Their expectations are different.
When we put expectations on this younger generation as one group, we really miss what's going on. I think your research brings up something that us nerdy futurists call contextual intelligence, really trying to understand what the experience was like during those formative years of certain age groups. As you said, pre-COVID to be 16 to 20, versus during COVID, totally different experience, whether who they're looking at as their leader, what they're experiencing. I know one thing that you bring up a lot, and I want to ask you about it, is particularly the Gen Z's relationship with institutions and trust.
That really feels like that that's broken down in these last five years, and also really influencing how they're showing up to not just go along with one party or another, but to be truly independent-minded that we often, again, mislabel as apathy. I wonder if you could just talk about some of the things that's come out of this experience for Gen Z 2 living through COVID, living through the last five years of change.
Rachel: Yes, totally. With regard to trust in institutions, Gen Z 2.0 really were guinea pigs in an experiment during COVID that happened in classrooms where there weren't clear guidelines. Certainly everyone wanted to follow the science, but this was, for lack of a better word, an unprecedented situation where no one, even the foremost experts, really knew what to do about school reopenings, masking, social distancing, even vaccines, things like that. Gen Z 2.0, who had just spent basically a year of their lives locked down, living life online, grew very skeptical of authority and saw that there were different protocols happening in different places across the country, and it just didn't make much sense.
I always go back to this one anecdote from a young man I met at Saginaw Valley State University in Michigan who said to me, "It made no sense to me that when I was in high school, I was going to wrestling practice, and I was literally physically on top of my classmates, and I was wearing a mask." It just didn't make any sense. They saw through that. I think while it may seem something silly like that, it's that, over and over again, that really started to break down just trust in authority and authority, equal institutions, et cetera. By the way, there was already a dissolving trust prior to COVID, but it really amplified that distrust.
Then at the same time, you have social media and the fact that you have everyday people who are posting behind the scenes of their lives and really unfiltered, off-the-cuff remarks and just getting way more comfortable with just telling it like it is. You have a government who, at the time and, in large part, still today, isn't really as transparent or isn't as off-the-cuff, and things are more filtered or have many layers of approval prior to being posted. That disconnect has also sown distrust between Gen Z and authority because they see their contemporaries, their peers, and just everyday people just saying it like it is, posting off-the-cuff.
Then anyone who's in a position of authority isn't mirroring that back to them. That has complicated their relationship with authority and institutions as well, and just with, in general, anyone who appears too polished or too professional. I think that now, when you think about young people's relationship to politics and to government, they really just want to see a government that is understanding the needs of the everyday people. I literally just this morning was writing something about that. That's not what they're getting from their government. That also further creates that sense of distrust.
Lisa: Gosh, it's so powerful to bring up these topics and then really opportunity for people that are really tapped into what you're seeing and what you're learning. One is this sort of what I call the audio-video gap: when politicians say, "We care about you, we care about issues," and then what they're doing has nothing to do with that. It looks like that they're just staying in platitudes, or they're not really showing up. There are a few politicians that have learned, "Hey, I got to show what I'm doing that makes sense at the local level or what's really making a noticeable improvement in people's lives."
Again, from a nerdy design perspective, when I've been listening to you talk about your research, it's a real opportunity for people to think about it; we call it as a journey map, like when someone is hearing something or experiencing something, what's going on in the person's life? An opportunity to make sure are we staying consistent in what we're saying and what we're doing, and where are there opportunities to change the way that we're talking about it and to meet people where they are.
One of the things I picked up on your work is how often we talk down to Gen Z. I have to call it because it made me laugh out loud, and I started to share it around. When you picked up on that crazy article, I think it was the New York Times, where they talked about Gen Z is bringing iced coffee to interviews. [laughs]
Rachel: This has been everywhere for the-- I feel like last week, this was everything I saw on social media or even on traditional media. There were so many segments about is Gen Z bringing iced coffee to their job interview and is that okay.
Lisa: Say more about your response.
Rachel: Basically, the discourse was this question of, should Gen Z be bringing iced coffee to a job interview? I was like, "First of all, is this something that people are really doing? Second of all, how are young people feeling about it?" The Up and Up tries to add value. It's like, "We want to make sense of these headlines that are about Gen Z but aren't actually including young people's voices in them, and not just in terms of media coverage, but general sentiment about Gen Z and their habits." We go to the source, and we say, "Hey, how are you really feeling?"
I saw this discourse unfolding of Gen Z bringing iced coffee to a job interview. I went out to our Gen Z community at The Up and Up. We have a community with young people from across the country. We also have ambassadors. I went to our ambassadors specifically, and I said, "What do you guys make of this? Would you bring an iced coffee to a job interview, and what are your thoughts here?" Very few of them said they would bring an iced coffee to a job interview, or they didn't really know if they would because, to them, it didn't really seem like that big of a deal, per se. I think there were two themes that came up the most.
One was that the job market is so, so all-consuming, relentless for Gen Z right now. It's really hard to get a job. They're like, "Really? The thing you're going to be paying attention to is that I'm bringing a coffee?" Then the other piece of it was like the workplace paradigm changed post-COVID. It just is not the same as it ever was before. I had a friend actually say to me, "Who's going to an in-person job interview anymore?" So much of this is happening virtually. So many Gen Zers are either doing higher-view interviews where it's actually not a real human being at first, or they're going through an AI portal, and they never hear back from a human.
They're like, "This doesn't even seem like it's relatable really to the vast majority of young people who might never actually interact with a human being in the first place." Then, of course, it did bring up this generational divide in terms of "What it means to be professional." It's funny because I quoted my mother in the piece that I wrote last week; I'm the oldest of four. I have young siblings at various points of the Gen Z spectrum. I think part of my obsession with our generation is because I'm always comparing myself to my sibling and in our relationships and with the world around us, et cetera.
Anyway, I was telling my mom about this debate, and she was like, "If you or any one of my children ever brought a nice coffee to a job interview, I've done a horrible job." [laughter] I think that while most young people I spoke to said that they wouldn't themselves bring a nice coffee to a job interview, there was a sense of, like, why is this what we're paying attention to? From my perspective, if I was hiring someone and they brought a nice coffee, but they were incredible across every other metric, I would say, "Okay, who cares they have a nice coffee?" It wouldn't matter so much to me.
I do, of course, see this is clearly a shift from what it meant to be "professional" for earlier generations, and I do think we've lost that level of "professionalism" or what that looked like. I do think that that's disappeared a bit, but it's not that it's replaced by a lack of professionalism. It's just a new kind of professionalism, and it looks really different. It's like comparing apples to oranges because we're talking about not-- People aren't all getting dressed up in a suit to go to their in-person job interview. Instead, they are on a virtual conversation like this and so how can you compare the two?
Lisa: Yes. I think the other point that you made, which is so important for I hope anyone who's older than Gen Z pays attention, like the fact that they were labeled, that this thing was called out, that, like, "I'm going to call this unprofessional and have a judgment and a point of view about it," versus being empathetic about it or having a sense of humor about it or looking beyond what that might have suggested from their lens of it being unprofessional. It could have just been a totally incredible candidate. It's like, again, one of these things that are grabbing our attention, and I love that you had some fun with it and used it as a teaching moment.
You were like, "Hey, this is not the point of what's going on." Maybe that's a good segue, Rachel. I really want to get into some of your findings about the midterms and just helping more people understand what is on Gen Z's mind because I think it is so easy to label and to go into past opinions without really getting some of the grounding and again, the gift that you're giving is this insight from your network across the country, not just the coast, not just from one party. I wonder if you could share a little bit some of the findings about what you're seeing about what Gen Z matters.
Rachel: Totally. Thank you. We did nine focus groups about Gen Z's politics over the summer. We spoke to more than 70 young people across the country, as you mentioned, not just in the coast. We heard from people from 28 states and also DC. It really was folks all over the place. Ultimately, the biggest storyline is that this is all about economic anxiety. We are past the culture war. Gen Z is focused squarely on economic issues, which are intersectional with other issues in their lives, and they're quick to point that out. Really, the top concerns are the economy, jobs, inflation, AI, which is related to all the above, and also war and corruption.
At the end of the day, they're looking for their politicians and their political candidates to just understand the needs of the everyday people. That sentence came up over and over again. Gen Z voters are a lot more nuanced and a lot more practical and realistic than people give them credit for. We heard concerns over things like SNAP benefits and social safety nets, far more than we did any of the culture war issues that have dominated our politics for the past many years. With this roadmap that we put out, we really had five core takeaways.
The first was that we're post-culture war and post-gender war. In 2024, there was a massive divide between young men and young women on the issues, especially when it came to issues like reproductive healthcare access, with young women leaning left and young men moving to the right. Gen Z women are still very much leaning Democratic and are liberal. I think on the whole, Gen Z is just really swingy. Right now, instead of being divided on gender lines by a set of different issues, depending on what your gender is, they're rallying around the same core issues, which, as I mentioned, are economic issues, and that's been unifying.
The second takeaway that we had was that there's been a lot of talk about socialism and about Gen Z's flirtationship with socialism. From my point of view, when young people are saying that they like socialism or prefer socialist candidates, it's because the status quo isn't working and they're looking for an alternative. Right now, the status quo is capitalism. It's not necessarily that they're obsessed with socialism or even know how to define it because, in many cases, they don't.
Instead, they're just looking for an alternative, and life feels unaffordable. They want the government to provide a social safety net, and it's really more about social policies than it is about socialism. Things like affordable rent or affordable housing, affordable healthcare, affordable education, a higher minimum wage, just things that would help people be able to really just live their life.
Lisa: Can I just interrupt you really quick-
Rachel: Yes, of course.
Lisa: -because I think that is such an important point because, again, we're seeing so much of the headlines of the rise of socialism, particularly in the Democratic Party. Again, I think older people are like, "Oh, all those young people are so woke, and they're just falling into this sort of trance or this movement." I just really want to underline this incredible insight that you point out: that it's not necessarily about socialism; it's a response to feeling like what is happening isn't working. They just might have a response to someone that's presenting something new.
It may or may not be this ideology of socialism. It's just like, "Do you have a new plan for me where I can see myself in this plan?" Which, by the way, is very much about sharing a new image of the future that we could see ourselves in. Again, maybe paralleling to the iced coffee, it's not about are you a socialist or not. It's about how can I better understand what you need and what you're hoping for from a leader to set conditions for your future? If there's one big headline, I really hope that people pay attention to this really important insight.
Rachel: Thank you. I think it's related to the other issues, too, or the other takeaways that I had, the next one being that what I'm calling hope maxing is trending, which really just means that young people are tired of the doom and the gloom of politicians who seek to divide, of politicians who are so negative all the time. Young people don't want to be pessimistic. They're ready to move past that. They're looking for politicians who are providing a hopeful vision for the future. I think it's really related to this idea of the social policies and this post-culture and post-gender war where they're actually just looking for progress.
Lisa: I don't mean to keep interrupting you, but I love it so much. I'm changing my mind. The headline's going to be "Hope maxing is trending." Yes. Yes, Rachel. I love that. I just think it's so powerful. The doom and gloom hijacks our amygdala, but then we're out. The hope-maxing can keep you engaged over a long period of time. I think for anybody listening to this, there's an opportunity for you to say, "What is my message here? Is it about how bad things are and how they're going to get worse if we just keep going, or is it about putting out a positive vision that people get excited about?"
I think that's certainly what we saw in New York City in the mayoral election last year was just someone who was willing to put out a very different vision that felt hopeful, particularly to young people.
Rachel: Totally. Mayor Mamdani's name comes up over and over again from young people across the country. It's not because he's a socialist, and it's not because some of the more buzzy social media trends that he's tapping into. There was that SNL skit this weekend about how he was communicating around the nor'easter that it's still pretty rainy here in New York, so it seems to still be affecting the city. The thing about Mamdani that I think people get wrong, it's about the fact that he is something new, something different, but he's also showing results.
One of our takeaways as well was this idea of something that he's really popularized, called pothole politics, as he's referring to it, which is really just showing the way that local government can work for you. He's responding to constituents' concerns on social media. Someone will post something or post a complaint saying, like, "We have this," just for example, "This pothole on my street," and then he'll post a video of the city actually addressing the pothole. I think that people sleep on Gen Z's appetite for local politics because, as the national conversation feels so overwhelming and hard to influence, and quite frankly toxic, they're finding ways at the local level to see actual tangible change.
Certainly, Mamdani has been a face of this, but people look to Mamdani and see how it can be replicated in their community, and the candidate doesn't have to be a socialist, and in many cases, won't be. I think when they look at Mamdani, a lot of times there are these big shiny headlines that get the message wrong, when in reality, it's really just how he's communicating with his constituents, and how he's showing up for his constituents.
Obviously, there's a lot of controversy around him, and I can see that there's a lot of complaints, but when you look just on the surface at the way he's communicating, he has provided a blueprint that other politicians, but also just leaders, can leverage when it comes to transparency, when it comes to being hopeful about the future, and not just dwelling on the problems of the current day.
Lisa: One of the pieces of research that came to mind when I started to read about how you were describing that these politicians or elected leaders that are able to show that they're making a difference in people's lives comes out of Harvard; this is years ago. Teresa Amabile, who is a creativity professor, wrote a very powerful book called The Progress Principle. What she found was that we used to think for people at work, what was really motivating was money, getting a raise, the highest salary. Then they felt like, "No, it's about feedback, and do people tell you that you're doing a good job?"
Then she studied 10,000 journals of work, and she realized one of the most motivating things was this feeling that you're making progress. I think for any public official or candidate, this ability to give metrics to things that are invisible or not always talked about, but are actually really meaningful in people's lives, can be a very powerful signal to say, "I understand what you're going through. I get that this pothole, or I get that this issue is very important to your life, and it's not abstract. It's concrete. I'm able to communicate in a way that suggests I'm working on it. I noticed you, and I care about it."
I think about that a lot because sometimes these big promises can just feel so abstract and out there versus, like, what are you doing right now? I just think that you're really highlighting the importance and the opportunity that they have with social media to use that in a very responsive way of communicating and reaching folks. It's a different mindset versus, again, the old model of, like, "We're going to raise a lot of money and do these big sweeping ads that talk about big policies" versus, like, "No, I'm ready to be iterative and responsive."
Rachel: Along those lines too, something that keeps coming up that is super underrated is that with the nuance in Gen Z's politics, they're looking for leaders who are willing to say when they make a mistake and be upfront about it, or not even a mistake, but who try something and it doesn't work out, and then are honest about that and look for ways to improve or move forward. This literally has come up in so many of my focus groups where, when I ask what they're looking for from a candidate, they're looking for a leader who will try something, it doesn't work, they tell their community it didn't work, and then they work on a new solution. I feel like that's so missed from the conversation.
Lisa: I think if I could ask you, you started asking nuanced questions about how Gen Z felt about government versus leaders. Can you talk a little bit about that? Because I think that's so interesting.
Rachel: Yes, I did ask this. Two separate questions. I would start by saying, "What are you looking for from a political candidate or an elected official?" Then, "What are you looking for from the government?" The findings are related but different. What they're looking for from a candidate was often more someone who's transparent, someone who is telling it like it is, someone who is a good communicator, someone who understands the needs of the everyday people. I'm repeating that from before. Someone who's a unifier rather than a divider, things like that.
Then when you ask what are you looking for from the government, they're looking for social safety nets. They're looking for policies and programs that will help improve their quality of life. This is where we heard things like SNAP benefits or WIC and more of the social support systems. Also, just constituent services, really. It's not sexy, but that's what they're looking for. That's the thing, too. I think people assume that, oh, because Gen Z-- There's this mysticism that they're going to be wanting these crazy outlandish things. No. They're looking for a pretty boring, run-of-the-mill support that will just help them get by.
Lisa: That research reminds me of, again, what got me into this accidental civic catalyst mode six years ago with our what was called designing the president workshop where we would say to young people who felt, I think, so overwhelmed by the prospect of voting and just felt so put upon them as opposed to empowering them, and I would say, "When you turn 18, you become a hiring manager of the most important position in the country, if not the world." How cool? You don't even need to have a job yourself, but you get to hire who you think is going to do this job great.
Then I would say, "What are you looking for? What matters to you?" Rather than saying, "Are you a this person or a that person?" We gave them a sheet that had them, first of all, discuss what is the job description of this role? In our case, it was the president. Turns out there's a job description. It's in the Constitution. Article Two, let's take a look. It's not everything. It's some things. Now they're having a conversation about, "Who do I think would do this job well?" Then we had what past experience matters, what leadership qualities, and what personal traits. It was just a very different way, like what you're doing, of saying, "What matters to you?"
Likewise, we ran this with people across the country, not just the coast. We even brought different people together when the pandemic hit, where we got a kid from Detroit talking with a kid from Appalachia. It was just incredible to see, actually, how much alignment they did have around what they wanted. They wanted a leader that was going to unify, that was going to turn down the heat. I think allowing us to understand that and not get stuck in something that might feel like it's serving a certain moment of time versus really serving our future, I just think is so valuable.
We could talk about that more. I still look back on that, and I think, "Oh, my gosh." Once we had them identify what mattered to them from a leader, we actually gave them scenarios of the future. Then we said, "Now make a speech to the American people responding to this crisis, embodying the leadership qualities that you selected were important." If you were empathetic or you're a good communicator. We had scenarios that were like a flu-like virus that emanated out of China and took down the world economy that we wrote in 2019. We had a capital insurrection that was at a local capital [unintelligible 00:38:43].
Rachel: Oh, wow.
Lisa: We had a hacking scenario for the election. We had Superstorm Sandy hitting Florida. All these things that actually did come true and to the point where people were like, "No more scenarios. Don't write any more scenarios." It gave people a chance to practice and really for themselves try to understand. I think, again, your research is giving people that gift. I really hope everybody signs up for it and really follows alongside of you because it's just so actionable and insightful. All right, Rachel. The last thing we, of course, need to talk about, little bit of the elephant in the room, I don't even know, but how Gen Z is feeling about AI.
Rachel: Yes. I was going to say, we haven't even really gotten there. Just for one second, I love what you're saying about that you said that these 18-year-olds are hiring managers because it gives the agency back to them, which is the core of all of this. Related to the AI conversation, because with AI, I think what's driving a lot of young people's love-hate relationship with AI is that they feel like they're not the ones in control. Instead, this thing is happening to them rather than them being a part of the creation of it. They're not anti-progress.
Gen Z is not anti-progress. They're not anti-future. They're not anti-tech. They are pro-human. They want to feel as though they have had a role in creating this thing and that they're a part of learning how we balance human and tech capacity and potential rather than just letting tech overtake human capacity and potential. We could do a million podcast episodes about AI and Gen Z's relationship to it, but I think the foremost question really at the heart of a lot of young people's concerns about AI does go back to agency, goes to a sense of purpose, where for generations, one's purpose and a sense of fulfillment in this country has been related to their work and what they do every day.
AI has been marketed as something that is going to take away their jobs and make them irrelevant in the workforce. They're wondering, "What's my purpose?" I think it boils down to that a lot. There's also the conversation about the economic impact beyond jobs, data centers, energy, climate, but at the brunt of it, I think it's about what is my purpose, what is my role in society, and is AI going to make me irrelevant?
Lisa: I think it also builds on some of what we were talking about earlier about the doomsday, even more recently. We're like, "By the way, it's going to take away your jobs, and it may kill us within 10 years." Again, who gets to decide the future of what's happening? Do they have a voice in it in shaping? I know you've talked about-- I think you say this was the summer of in-real-life, in the spirit of pro-human, what can we do in the face of it? It was interesting. I teach a class at Stanford called View from the Future, where every week we bring in someone who's on the edge of their fields to help our students understand where things are going so that they can feel agency.
It was in February where we had a futurist and a very pro-technology professional executive, and they were talking about this movement called the Modern Luddite, which was really about young people taking back their control with their relationship with technology. This predated the three months later when we saw this season of graduation booing, that anytime a graduation speaker would mention AI, the students would just have a reaction. It was just so interesting to connect those dots about how are you seeing what's on the edge so that you're A, not surprised by what unfolds, but B, can get ahead of it to make choices that really lift people up.
Rachel: Definitely.
Lisa: I wonder if you could just say even a little bit more about what you're seeing on the positive side, coming back to the hope-maxing of Gen Z and how people are thinking about AI and maybe opportunities for people to message that there is opportunity ahead amid some of these terrible headlines that are warning of job loss and all the rest.
Rachel: I think young people see the opportunity, and they do talk about that. It's not that just everyone hates this. They're using it every single day, and they're using it to streamline work processes, to make study guides if they're in school, to have practice tests, to organize their notes in the workplace. They're using it to boost efficiency, to streamline workflows, all of the above. They're also bullish on that, on the way that it can continue to improve their life.
They're looking for education around that because it feels like they don't really know-- I'm generalizing, but a lot of young people will say that they feel like they wish that they were better informed about the ways that they should be using it because they're oftentimes fearful that they're using it incorrectly or they're worried they'll be left behind from their friends or peers who know how to use it, and they feel like they don't have that same level of education or ability to experiment.
I think, again, Gen Z is not anti-progress. They're looking for how to incorporate this tool best in their lives and have it augment their personal capacity rather than think for them. They want to think with it and really are just learning how to do that best and most appropriately.
Lisa: That's another great headline. They're not anti-progress. What I would say is they're pro-purpose, [laughs] pro-meeting, pro-connection. I've got two quickish final questions for you, Rachel. I could talk to you all day long. Besides signing up for The Up and Up, which I think everybody should do, what advice do you have for people listening to this if they want to better really listen and learn from young people? What are some practices they could do?
Rachel: It's so simple and easy. I love this question because it's literally just talk to them. Literally just talk to young people. There are young people in your lives. Whether they work at your company or go to the school that you're at, or are your kids or your neighbors or your grandchildren or your nieces and nephews or the person who is making your coffee at the local coffee shop, there are young people in your lives. Ask them how they're feeling. I really just think that's the key is letting them tell it to you rather than deciding for them.
Lisa: Yes, I love that. I want to really emphasize when you say talk to them, engage with them, ask them questions. Don't do more mansplaining, momsplaining, dadsplaining. Really--
Rachel: Momsplaining, I like that.
Lisa: [crosstalk] One of my favorite questions: what's exciting you these days? Just really getting into a conversation, which I think you do so well. Then I want to maybe return to something you said earlier, which is that you're a little concerned, as am I, that we're not necessarily seeing the engagement coming up to the midterms of this generation. I just wonder, we still have some time left, if there's any advice you have about trying to just rally involvement, engagement.
Earlier in the season, we had an unbelievable conversation with Eric Liu, who was just like, "We can all be citizens." It shows up in different ways. I wonder if you have any advice for those that are really trying to organize or trying to connect with this generation to remind them that they really do have a voice and a vote.
Rachel: Yes, I think making it really tangible and practical to their own lives. I think in prior years, there was a big emphasis on voting for your community, for your neighbor, for someone else. What resonates today is, and I don't necessarily think this is a bad thing, it might come across as it's a little bit selfish, but making it rooted in the individual; I think that's where young people are feeling the most concern right now.
I think also making it feel really tangible, practical to their local area, and again, rooting it in the local aspects and local politics rather than the national, because the national feels overwhelming. It feels hard to inform and to sway. It feels pretty toxic and controversial, whereas the local is about community. That is really where young people are finding their purpose right now.
Lisa: Amazing. Amazing. All right, Rachel, besides signing up for your newsletter, I'm just going to again pitch it one more time: where else can people find you?
Rachel: Across all social media, I'm @RachelJanfaza. On Instagram, we're @TheUpandUp and on Substack, of course, which is where our newsletter is, but we're on all social media. Thank you. Lisa, I really appreciate all that you're doing and that you're having these conversations. It's so important, and I'm just such a big fan. Thanks for having me on.
Lisa: Oh, thanks for being here. I can't wait for people to listen.
[music]
I'm so grateful to Rachel for the conversation and for the work she's doing to help us all better understand Gen Z, who are really our future. I particularly loved Rachel's point about hope-maxing and the desire for leaders who can offer a more positive vision while showing people that real progress is possible. For me, such an important part of how we future is about moving beyond assumptions, making space for different perspectives, and giving people a real sense that they have a role in shaping what comes next.
If you're listening and wondering where to start, talk to young people. Ask them what they care about, what's worrying them, and what's exciting them. We'll include links to Rachel's work and the resources we discussed in the show notes. If this conversation gave you a new perspective, share it with someone who wants to better understand the next generation so we can co-create a future they can believe in. I'm Lisa Kay Solomon. Thanks for listening, and I'll see you next week.
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