Does Gen Z still believe in politics?

Gen Z is political. Just not always where politics expects to find it.

In 2025, 24.3% of Europeans aged 16 to 29 participated online in civic or political issues, compared with 20.2% of the population overall. In 23 of the EU’s 27 Member States, young people were more likely than the general population to participate politically online.

That does not mean online participation has replaced voting. In European youth research, voting still comes out as the action young people most often see as effective for making their voice heard. But formal and informal participation increasingly coexist. OECD data shows that 18-to-29-year-olds are less likely than older citizens to vote, contact politicians or participate in formal consultations, while being more likely to attend demonstrations and post political content online.

That distinction matters.

For earlier generations, being politically engaged was often closely tied to institutions: joining a party or union, attending meetings, voting regularly, or reading a newspaper with a recognizable political position. Gen Z can be intensely engaged with a political issue without ever joining the organization historically associated with it.

A young person can organize around climate, housing, Gaza, women’s rights, migration or education, sign a petition, attend a demonstration, share information and debate the issue publicly without ever describing themselves as politically active. Politics has not disappeared. It has spilled outside the institutions we traditionally called political.

What actually worries young Europeans?

Their priorities are also more pragmatic than some generational stereotypes suggest.  In the European Parliament’s 2025 Youth Survey, 40% of 16-to-30-year-olds said rising prices and the cost of living should be a priority for the EU. Climate and the environment followed at 33%, the economy and job creation at 31%, social protection and healthcare at 29%, education and training at 27%, housing at 23%, and defence and security at 21%. Geography matters too. Security ranked considerably higher among young people in countries such as Czechia, Poland and Estonia.

This is important because we often describe young voters through one political lens. Climate generation. Progressive generation. Protest generation. TikTok generation. The reality is much more fragmented.

Young Europeans care about climate and purchasing power. About social protection and jobs. About housing and defense. Their political priorities shift with the economic, social, and geopolitical conditions around them, just as those of previous generations did.

And there is another useful correction to the idea that young Europeans are simply turning away from institutions. The European Parliament’s latest Eurobarometer found that 58% of 15-to-30-year-olds had a positive image of the European Union, higher than that of older age groups. Sixty-eight percent wanted a stronger role for the European Parliament, 90% wanted greater unity between EU Member States, and 87% wanted Europe to have a stronger international voice. So this is not simply an anti-system generation. It may instead be a generation with high expectations of what institutions should deliver.

Is left versus right still enough?

One of the most tempting conclusions would be to say that Gen Z has moved beyond traditional left and right politics. The evidence does not support such a simple claim. Young people still position themselves on the left-right spectrum, and traditional ideological divisions remain meaningful. But the picture is becoming more complex. Research published in 2025 using data from more than 466,000 people aged 20 to 29 across 32 European countries found considerable variation in the political positions of young men and women. In some countries there was almost no ideological gender gap. In others, young women were more left-leaning than young men, and in a further group the gap had widened over time. The researchers explicitly caution against the popular narrative that a single, dramatic political gender divide is occurring everywhere.

Other European research suggests that the classic economic left-right divide is no longer the only axis organising political choice. Cultural questions, identity, migration, climate, gender and national belonging can cut across traditional economic positions. So rather than saying Gen Z is post-left and post-right, I would suggest something more cautious. Gen Z may be becoming less politically loyal.

A voter can be progressive on one subject, economically liberal on another, sceptical about immigration, strongly pro-European and deeply concerned about climate. That combination does not always fit neatly into the political identities inherited from parents or grandparents. And perhaps that helps explain why political movements at both ends of the spectrum can attract young voters at the same time. There is no single European Gen Z vote.

The real issue may be voice, not simply trust

Trust in politics is another area where the stereotype does not quite fit the numbers. According to the OECD’s 2026 Survey on Drivers of Trust in Public Institutions, 42% of 18-to-29-year-olds reported high or moderately high trust in their national government in 2025. That was only two percentage points below the figure for people aged 50 and above. In 2021, the generational trust gap had been ten points. It has narrowed substantially.

So young people are not uniquely distrustful of government. The much larger problem appears to be whether people believe they have any influence over it. Across OECD countries, only 31% of respondents believe that people like them have a say in what government does. Among those who feel politically heard, 69% trust the national government. Among those who do not, trust collapses to 22%. That may be one of the most important findings for understanding Gen Z politics.

The question may be shifting from: Can I trust you? to: Can I influence what you do?

For a generation accustomed to commenting, challenging, responding, organising and seeing reactions in real time, politics can feel remarkably distant. You vote, and then you wait. Decisions travel through parties, committees, coalitions, administrations and institutions. The next formal moment of accountability may come years later.

Democracy needs some of that slowness. Good political decisions cannot be reduced to instant reactions, likes or online polls. Compromise takes time. Institutions protect societies partly by preventing every emotional wave from immediately becoming policy. But the gap between a real-time generation and institutional-time politics is becoming difficult to ignore. The challenge may be to make democracy more participatory without making it more impulsive.

Does political leadership still fit the generation it wants to represent?

This brings us to leadership. Much of the conversation about Gen Z in the workplace concerns changing attitudes towards authority. Younger employees do not necessarily reject leadership, but formal position alone increasingly does not guarantee legitimacy. Leaders are expected to explain decisions, demonstrate competence, listen, provide context and show how people can contribute.

Politics still often operates through a much older leadership architecture. Strong leaders. Party hierarchies. Discipline. Speeches. Controlled messaging. Adversarial debate. Decisions are communicated downward after they have been negotiated elsewhere. That model can still be effective. But it sits uneasily beside a generation accustomed to participation and direct access.

There is also a literal representation gap. Across OECD countries, people aged 20 to 39 make up around 34% of the voting-age population, yet only 22% of members of parliament were aged 40 or below in 2024. Only 8% of cabinet members were under 40, and just 3% were 35 or younger.

But simply putting younger faces into older structures will not solve the problem. Young politicians can reproduce exactly the same hierarchical behaviors as older politicians. Older political leaders can understand and practice new forms of participation. The generational question is therefore not simply whether politics needs younger politicians. It is whether politics needs a younger way of thinking about leadership

They are still ready to take to the streets

If disengagement means young people no longer care enough to act, the evidence again challenges the assumption. OECD research shows young adults are more likely than older adults to participate in demonstrations and to express political views through social media, even while their participation in formal politics remains lower.

The European Parliament’s review of youth participation also found that 16% of young respondents had taken part in street protests or demonstrations in 2024. In 2025, 23% considered joining a demonstration or strike an effective way to influence decision-makers, while 22% pointed to joining or supporting a political organisation. Yet 30% of young people who had never contacted a politician said they believed doing so would have no impact, and another 23% felt decision-makers did not listen to “people like me”. That contradiction says a lot.

Young people are willing to express political opinions. They are willing to mobilise. But many remain unconvinced that traditional channels will translate their participation into influence. Maybe that is why the street, the petition and the feed remain attractive. They make political voice visible.