The kids are all (leaning to the) right. Well, teenage boys in the US are, anyway. Social media was recently abuzz with a survey that shows 12th-grade boys (who are aged 17 or 18) are nearly twice as likely to identify as conservative v liberal. Their female counterparts, meanwhile, lean overwhelmingly liberal.
There are, of course, lies, damned lies and statistics. Before digging into these statistics it is worth explaining how they went viral. The numbers showing young men becoming conservative come from the 2022 Monitoring the Future study, a respected annual survey looking at American adolescents that began in 1975. Jean Twenge, a psychology professor, used this data for a chart in Generations, her new book about generational differences.
In April, someone posted a photo of Twenge’s chart on to Reddit. From there it spread across the internet; this week it inspired an article on political website the Hill. This got the jubilant attention of a bunch of high-profile rightwingers, such as Steve Bannon and Kimberly Guilfoyle, the conservative media personality and fiancee of Donald Trump Jr. Some rightwing influencers, such as Charlie Kirk, the founder of conservative youth group Turning Point USA, used the chart as proof that their outreach to high school kids (or, as some might describe it, “brainwashing”) was working. “The data is showing we are making a difference,” Kirk tweeted along with a picture of Twenge’s chart.
But the data is actually a little more complicated than that. As the Hill notes, the chart in question omits people who identify as moderate or who haven’t made up their mind about how they identify. Twenty-three per cent of boys in the survey said they identified as conservative and 13% said liberal. The most popular answer about political affiliation, however, was “none of the above” or “I don’t know.”
There is certainly a lot to be said about how young men are drifting to the right – or, in many cases, how they are being pushed there by misogynistic conservative influencers such as Andrew Tate and Ben Shapiro. But I am not sure that this particular chart tells that story. Rather it seems to show how young men feel alienated from both sides of the political aisle.
“Among liberals, the future is female,” Twenge wrote in her new book. “And among conservatives, the future is male.” That is all true. But what is also true, according to those survey numbers, is that the future is dangerously apathetic.
• Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist
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