Miami Gen Zers are frustrated, afraid and becoming more conservative | Opinion

If you’re a Florida Gen Zer who’s watched your school or college — along with your education — reshaped and censored by political ideology, you are likely feeling confused, anxious and fearful.

I have felt this way, too.

You may be tempted to retreat from public engagement or, worse, adopt the rhetoric of the censors. You shouldn’t do either.

According to PEN America’s documentation, our generation has seen Florida-based Moms for Liberty take over school boards as well as the spread of mass book banning across the country.

Twenty-six states have proposed some variation of “Don’t Say Gay” laws, and DEI bans have shut down programs related to diversity and inclusion at colleges and universities.

This confusion, anxiety, and fear wear us down, and many of us are simply disengaging in the interest of self-preservation or, more alarmingly, aligning ourselves politically with the rhetoric of censors out of a desire for security and validation.

Though Gen Z has been portrayed in the news as a generation of progressive activists, data from the 2024 presidential election shows otherwise and we have to consider that frustration and fear may be driving a conservative turn.

Youth voter turnout was down compared to the 2020 election, and surveys show that racial injustice, LGBTQ+ discrimination and educational censorship all remain contentious issues among Gen Z voters. America’s teenagers and young adults are tending to lean more conservative than previous generations of young people.

Regardless of political affiliation, one statistic unites Gen Zers: 70% of Gen Zers believe that the government is not doing enough to solve problems critical to their future. Despite the stakes being higher than ever before, apathy about our government and our futures is also on the rise.

I felt this frustration and hopelessness as a student at New College of Florida in Sarasota, when Gov. Ron DeSantis replaced the college’s board of trustees with his own political allies in 2023, including extremist anti-LGBTQ+ and anti-CRT media personality Christopher Rufo.

Students’ rights to study what they wanted and freely criticize the institution’s new leadership came under fire almost immediately. Over time, the college’s DEI resources and gender studies program were abolished, and peaceful student protesters were threatened with having their degrees withheld.

It’s hard to put into words how damaging and demoralizing this was for New College students. While many of my peers fought to hold onto their rights, many others fled New College.

I would fantasize about moving somewhere where I didn’t have to fear state censorship and discrimination. But I believed then and still do, that it would have been tragic if those most impacted by unconstitutional state overreach were the first to retreat.

Gen Z has been described as the most educated generation in history and lacking any collective memory of an America without harsh division.

Perhaps because of that, we are more willing to accept limitations on rights that were hard fought to gain in the past or more inclined to turn away when our rights are being dismantled. Our inclination is to pull away, to hide until it’s safe.

But I believe now is the time to take a stand against the apathy threatening to crush us all. Gen Z, we need to understand that there’s nowhere left to run. We must fight to secure a better future for ourselves.

And we don’t have to do this work alone. In my home state of Florida, Gen Z can look to powerhouse youth advocacy organizations like the Youth Action Fund, the SEE Alliance and PRISM as living examples of the strength and resilience we have.

We have each other to lean on, to learn from and to rally beside. Exercising our free speech now is the strongest way to ensure that we’ll still be able to exercise it in the future.

We must keep up the fight to ensure that censorship doesn’t cast a very long shadow over young Americans’ understanding of the world and what it can be.

Sophia Brown, a Gen Z member, is a 2023 graduate of New College and a Florida native. She is a program coordinator at PEN America’s Florida office in Miami.