Gen Z and wanting a dictator...
Insidious is how I’d describe this study. Not the statistic itself, but the tendrils of the implications which snake out from it. It argues that it’s rooted in Gen Z’s disillusionment in the political establishment, but it seems to me to be rooted in a machiavellian participation in exactly what they claim to condemn; sensationalising for impact rather than participating with young people for change.
Channel 4 found - in a study published a few weeks ago - that 52% of gen Zers thought “the UK would be a better place if a strong leader was in charge who does not have to bother with parliament and elections”.
We have one of the major media outlets in the UK ascribing our spooky slide into strong-man populism to the youth, to us.
The reactions to the study found a few contradictory points. To list a few:
People within this age bracket (13-27) often exhibit less confidence in democratic ideals than people in older age brackets anyway. In fact, gen z came in as more supportive of democracy than Millennials did when they were in this age bracket (Kings College).
The British Election Study found that ‘the % of Gen Z supporting dictators much lower than reported by the Times (13% in 2024 vs 52%). Gen Z are the least likely generation to support a strong leader.’
Perhaps the problem is not necessarily the lack of support for democracy in theory, but rather lack of support for current democracy in practice. The phrasing of the question to young people - asking if we need "strong leaders not bothering with elections” - could have been interpreted by my generation as thoughts around the futility of the current sluggish election process. The conclusion that this study is ‘clear evidence of disengagement from democracy’ perhaps needed a slight addition of ‘democracy as it is’ rather than presenting this as disillusionment from the concept of democracy itself.
The studies are being churned out; sociological analyses thrusting us under the microscope and worrying we don’t drink enough, we don’t party enough and, god forbid, we’ve all become autocracy groupies worshipping at the altar of Andrew Tate.
I don’t think it’s all rosy, I’d be quick to say, but I think the attribution of anti-democratic sentiments to an entire age group in a dubious national study ever so slightly misses the mark. Let’s look at why we may be discontent with the iteration of democracy we’re being handed.
Entitlement is definitely more ingrained in my generation. Although entitlement doesn’t translate well when it manifests as vanity or tik-tok influencer-dom, it could potentially be harnessed as an energy force driving new forms of political engagement. The individualism granted by social media warrants us an immediacy, an audience and a voice previous generations have not had.
Unless all the young people I know are statistical anomalies, it seems to me to be that yes, the craving for a strong personality is real because our current reality demands that but no, most of us do not want a Stalin-type strongman who quashes democracy.
We are accustomed to a new information network where we distill our own forms of knowledge from a digital stream, meaning we turn to individuals rather than institutions. The cult of personality that has arisen as a result means the charisma and familiarity inherent to the individuals sourcing our information needs to be replicated in politics. The FT, for example, found that 80% of young people in the UK trust financial information provided by 'finfluencers', social media personalities who offer financial advice demonstrating the power these online personalities have on the decisions we all make.
Fresh forms of civic engagement that usher in a new democratic era would be received well. Reinventing deliberative democracy for the digital age we exist in needs to happen before the digital age reinvents democracy for us. Better democratic education in schools would pave the way for a generation who can participate in co-creative environments where tech is used to amplify participation in politics rather than just amplify disdain for the political system. The Deliberatorium, for example, an online collective intelligence tool developed at MIT by Mark Klein allows for collaborative refinement of solutions and consensus. We need to start thinking about how to organise the huge volumes of disorganized dialogue we’re seeing into forums for participation and then, maybe just maybe, when we have the space to deliberate and participate so reciprocal trust can be built for and within the political institution, rather than shouting incessantly into a deafening vortex, gen z will raise their pints and have that drink.
(As a side note, to the Gen Z’s in the UK reading this who may have legitimately meant that they want a strong-man in the most despotic sense of the word, I spoke to Jessica Ní Mhainín who knows what it’s like for individuals living under a real strong-man dictator. She is Head of Policy and Campaigns at Index on Censorship which seeks to protect and defend journalists, lawyers, human rights defenders, artists, and academics around the world by tackling some of the greatest threats to free speech and developing advocacy campaigns to push for change in legislation or public attitudes. She has worked with people who have been detained under the Belarusian dictator Alyaksandr Lukashenka, who claimed victory in August 2020. Index on Censorship gives completely unjustly detained individuals under Lukashenka a voice by collecting, translating, and sharing their letters online. Jessica said ‘at Index, we engage with and support people who live in the regimes of so-called strongmen everyday. People cannot access reliable information without a free press, the internet is turned on and off at will, and all forms of dissent are subject to severe restriction, including by imprisoning those that speak out. Our own former colleague, Andrei Alisaksandrau, remains in prison in Belarus for having done nothing more than help to pay the fines of protestors, who were contesting an illegitimate election. We must not take our right to freedom of expression for granted’).