Free Republic

Generation Z adults are more likely than older Americans to describe themselves as “religious,” even as many also engage in practices at odds with Christian teaching, according to a new survey. The Harris Poll released a survey Thursday based on responses from 2,136 U.S. adults collected July 1 to 4. The poll grouped respondents by generation: Generation Z (ages 18 to 29), millennials (30 to 45), Generation X (46 to 61) and baby boomers (62 and older). Gen Z adults were the most likely to consider themselves religious and the least likely to describe themselves as neither religious nor spiritual....

“What the K-shaped economy gets right, what it exaggerates, and what believing the worst version is costing a generation.”The bottom half of American households owns about 2.5% of the nation’s wealth. That number is real, and it ought to bother you. However, that number is also higher than it was in 2019 and 2015, and roughly six times higher than the 0.4% low it hit in 2011. You will not read that in many places because it doesn’t “fit the narrative.”Unfortunately, the K-shaped economy headlines have settled into a single unvarying note, and after a while, people stop hearing anything...

A recent article from The Cut received a huge amount of attention: ‘It’s Hard to See My Parents Live So Lavishly While We’re Struggling’. The piece includes vignettes of Millenial hardship:…his dad, Steve, sold his company to a private equity firm about five years ago, which enabled him to retire comfortably in his mid-60s…Two years ago, Joe asked his dad for a loan. He wanted to start a lawn-care business and needed capital for commercial-grade equipment and a trailer, at least $15,000. He presented Steve with his business plan, which included a schedule to pay back the money. Still, Steve...

ASPEN, COLORADO — Billionaire Peter Thiel stunned a largely liberal audience Tuesday at the Aspen Institute's Ideas Festival with a warning that democratic socialists are taking over the Democratic Party. During a panel discussion about the direction of humanity, Thiel lamented the cultural, technological and economic "stagnation" that has taken place in recent years, something he considered to be "very destabilizing" in the long term. He argued that the "haywire" effects of that stagnation trickled into politics. "My generation was the first one where things felt really stuck," Thiel said. "I think millennials are doing less well than their boomer...

Interviews with six chapter leaders of the youth conservative movement Turning Point USA in swing states revealed a striking level of frustration. “From a lot of my peers, especially in Gen Z right now, there is a lot of frustration and now, distrust, in our current administration over the decisions with the war in Iran,” said Rebekah Bushmire, vice president of the University of West Georgia’s Turning Point USA chapter. Connor Darby, vice chair of a TPUSA chapter at the University of North Georgia, pointed out Trump’s comments about pre-war strikes having destroyed Iran’s nuclear capabilities. “I thought that was...

‘Hey, you promised lower gas prices. You promised the economy would be better.” Christian conservative influencer Savanna Faith Stone...is one of a flurry of influencers who flocked to San Antonio to gather under a bevy of bright pink lights at Turning Point USA’s Women’s Leadership Summit. “It’s harder than ever for a young couple to be able to buy a home." “I cannot express to you the level of alarm bells that should be ringing for the GOP,” conservative influencer Alex Clark told POLITICO. "Young women are looking at everything from the ongoing war in Iran to the persistence of...

MAGA host Dave Rubin drew a painful blank when a debate opponent asked him for a single measure under which the economy has improved under the second Trump administration. “What is one main metric that Donald Trump has made better off since he got into office?” asked one of Rubin’s opponents in the debate, published Sunday by Jubilee Media under the title “Dave Rubin vs 20 Far-Left Democrats.” “An example would be GDP, unemployment, inflation, et cetera,” the person, who goes by the social media handle “parkergetajob,” added.

Center for Scholars & Storytellers at UCLA study finds Gen Z and Gen Alpha want to see caring, affectionate dads and men showing vulnerability in movies and TV, rejecting outdated masculine stereotypes. Joyful fatherhood was the single most requested portrayal of masculinity by adolescents surveyed by the researchers, with nearly 60% of young people asking to see more fathers openly showing love and enjoying parenting. 46% of respondents are seeking content that shows men asking for help, including with their mental health. "For today’s young audiences, the most compelling hero isn’t the one standing alone, but the one who has...

For many millennials, the economy can feel like a game of musical chairs where previous generations already grabbed the seats, refinanced them at 3% interest and now insist there are still plenty left if younger people would just "budget better." Somewhere along the way, the American dream started feeling less like a finish line and more like one of those carnival games rigged just enough to keep people throwing money at it. That frustration spilled into Reddit's r/economy subreddit when one millennial who grew up in the 1990s posted a blunt message about the growing disconnect between younger Americans and...

In 1974, New York Times humorist Russell Baker identified a “pig in the python” working its way through the economy: the bulge of 76 million Baby Boomers squeezing through America’s economic system, distorting everything they passed through. When Boomers flooded the labor market in the 1970s, they created a competitive squeeze that never fully released — leaving the generations behind them without the wage rebound economists had predicted. When they bought homes, prices soared. When they took the top jobs in business, culture, and civic life, they held them — and held them, and held them. For half a century,...

Younger consumers’ drinking habits have been the focus of much attention over the past few years. Statistics have painted a broad picture of an alcohol industry in crisis, driven in part by a declining interest in liquor among the Gen Z cohort. Though the numbers don’t always add up (do they ever?), the prevailing hypothesis is that the 18 to 34 crowd is trading alcohol for cannabis, screen time and a bevvy of wellness-oriented goals.On a recent episode of “Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard,” economist Alvin E. Roth chimed in with some insight. A Nobel Prize-winner, Stanford professor and author...

...Exhaustion helps explain why ideas once treated as radioactive — socialism, in particular — are now discussed less as utopian fantasies and more as possible exits from a stalled national project. For younger Americans, the appeal is less ideological romance than hunger... They face unaffordable rents, unstable work, medical debt and student loans that metastasize faster than they can be paid down... When people can’t eat, can’t save and can’t think clearly, the abstractions of “free markets” lose their magic. Systems are judged not by theory but by outcomes. Right now, the outcomes for average Americans are brutal. This is...

“It’s a coming attraction of what is coming next,” Kirk told Tucker Carlson. “Zohran Mamdani the…Muslim communist that is running for mayor in New York City…most people are missing the point of really what this is. This is another distress signal by young people to say, ‘Hey, if you’re not going to fix our life, economically, we’re going to get very radical politically.” … “Let’s take a step back. President Trump won the youth vote in many states across the country,” Kirk stated. “12, 13 years ago when I started Turning Point, if you would have told me that a...

545 Comments The anti-Immigration and Customs Enforcement protests in Bushwick on Saturday night included a tight-knit group of young semi-pro protesters, familiar from previous clashes with cops. This network of Gen Z agitators — largely young, upwardly mobile transplants to New York City — seem intent on picking a fight with authority first and cause second, moving seamlessly from climate activism to anti-Israel protest and now anti-ICE and immigration enforcement. They organize through decentralized non-public networks, such as Discord and encrypted messaging apps, which you have to be a vetted member to join, according to sources, which is how they...

Ever since the Never Trumpers left the Republican Party and rushed into the arms, politically and financially, of the Democrats, it's been pretty clear that all the "conserving conservatism" talk was a smokescreen. They wanted to run the Republican Party, and when they were rebuffed, they exited to grift off the Democrats. I wrote about Jeb!'s former communications director now embracing Hasan Piker and Nick Fuentes because he wants to preserve "democracy" against Donald Trump, and we all know that David French, who ran into the arms of The New York Times, argued that the best way to fight abortions...

I hear a lot from young people about their hopes, their dreams, and their fears. You see, young people are idealists. They respond to vision. For the past four years, they’ve seen the vision of the Biden-Harris regime. That vision is you’ll own nothing and be happy. The Democrats say instead of owning a home, you’ll rent a 400 square foot studio apartment. Instead of owning a car, you’ll rent a scooter using some app. Their vision is this, limit your dreams, give up, aim lower, be content with less. If you’re a twenty-something in America, life has been really...

Existential crises tend to arrive when the gap between how life feels and how we thought it would feel becomes too wide to ignore.For a growing number of Americans, 2026 hasn’t just been hard. It’s been disorienting. A Talker Research survey of 2,000 U.S. adults found that one in three people (32%) say they’re currently experiencing an existential crisis, with younger adults far more likely to feel that way than older generations. Nearly four in ten (37%) say their entire lives feel out of their control... A separate survey of 5,000 Americans, conducted by Talker Research for Current in December...

At a time when secularization has long been treated as an irreversible trend in Western Europe, new data indicate that a significant segment of Spanish youth may be rediscovering religious identity... Preliminary findings from the forthcoming “Spanish Youth Report 2026,” produced by the SM Foundation and based on data collected in 2025, suggest that 45 percent of young people in Spain identify as Catholic. The figure marks a notable increase from 31.6 percent in 2020... Several dynamics appear to be at work. One is demographic: religious families... tend to have higher birth rates and transmit faith more consistently. Immigration also...

The president of Turning Point USA’s University of Georgia chapter says the organization has strayed from the mission it had under the leadership of Charlie Kirk. Caroline Mattox wrote on Instagram that she could not in good conscience stay with an organization that has “strayed so far from its original purpose and principles.” Mattox is not the first TPUSA chapter president to express dissatisfaction with the organization’s current direction. The University of Arkansas chapter cut ties with TPUSA last month. Former President Dino Fantegrossi also expressed the sentiment that TPUSA had strayed from its original mission.

More Americans are choosing to walk away from difficult relationships instead of working through them, a new survey has revealed. Nearly two in five Americans — 38% — say they have gone "no contact" with a friend or family member in the past year, according to a survey of 2,000 adults conducted in March by Talker Research for the therapy platform Talkspace... Younger Americans were far more likely than older generations to report cutting someone off. The survey found that 60% of Gen Z respondents had gone "no contact," compared to 50% of millennials, 38% of Gen X and 20%...