Coming of age in an unserious time

Why does politics feel so hollow to young people? This piece argues that Gen Z hasn’t disengaged out of apathy, but out of clarity – encountering politics not as a serious collective project, but as a degraded system incapable of meeting existential crises. What’s missing isn’t knowledge, but faith – and the consequences of that absence may be profound.

There’s a question I keep coming back to when people talk about ‘young people disengaging from politics.’ It’s not ‘why don’t they care?’ but rather: what exactly are they supposed to be engaging with?

What does politics look like if you’re encountering it for the first time – not as a memory of something better, but as the only version you’ve ever known?

Because from that vantage point, politics doesn’t just look hostile or unresponsive. It looks strange. Performative. Weirdly hollow. Less like a serious collective project and more like an ecosystem of vibes, scandals, half-believed promises and deeply rehearsed non-answers. 

Older generations often frame this disillusionment nostalgically. It didn’t used to be like this. Even at its worst – Vietnam, Watergate, McCarthyism – there was at least a sense that something enormous and consequential was being fought over. You could loathe politics, but you recognise its gravity. 

But if you’re in your late teens or early twenties now, you don’t have that reference point. There is no ‘before’. There is only this.  And that changes everything. 

For many young people, politics arrives already degraded. They encounter it as a system that feels incapable of responding to crises they experience viscerally: housing insecurity, climate breakdown, unaffordable education, precarious work, war and human rights abuses livestreamed to their phones. The stakes feel existential – but the political response feels theatrical at best, evasive at worst. 

It’s not that young people don’t understand politics. By osmosis, they often understand exactly how it works. They know which parties triangulate. They know which leaders perform sincerity while avoiding commitment. They know how quickly ‘red lines’ dissolve. They know when outrage is real and when it’s rented. 

What’s missing isn’t knowledge – it’s faith. 

Take voter disillusionment in Scotland. Among young voters, you increasingly hear a grimly pragmatic settlement: I’ll vote for you, but I hate you. Not because they don’t care about outcomes, but because loyalty has been replaced with resignation. Voting becomes damage limitation rather than democratic expression. 

That’s a corrosive position to inherit as your starting point. 

There’s a similar mood in conversations about alternatives. Why not the Greens? Why not something smaller, more radical, more aligned? And then the hesitation creeps in. Are they serious enough? Are they capable of power? Or are they destined to orbit the system rather than change it?

Even leaders who are principled, thoughtful, and credible – Ross Greer is a good example – are often perceived as constrained by a political culture that rewards moderation, incrementalism, and respectability over urgency. Being ‘serious’ now seems to mean being careful, managerial, non-threatening. Not visionary. 

And if you’re young, that’s profoundly demotivating. Because the problems you face are not incremental. 

There’s also something deeply unsettling about encountering politics primarily through its absurdities. Keir Starmer’s studied blandness, his refusal to articulate a compelling moral vision, and his willingness to hollow out principle in the name of ‘electability’ – all of this reads less like seriousness and more like emptiness when viewed fresh. It’s politics stripped of conviction and sold back as competence. 

“What’s missing isn’t knowledge – it’s faith. ”

Across the Atlantic, the situation is even starker. Trump’s America isn’t just polarised – it’s grotesquely theatrical. Power is loud, vindictive, personalised. Truth is optional. Institutions bend openly. Watching it from afar, young people don’t see a cautionary tale; they see a system that never protected anyone in the first place.

So when older commentators ask why Gen Z seems cynical, the answer is painfully obvious: they have learned from the evidence available to them. 

There’s also a more existential layer to this. Imagine realising, at the point you’re invited to participate politically, that the system cannot deliver the kind of change you intuitively know is necessary. Not because you’ve failed, but because the architecture itself is hostile to transformation. 

What do you do with that knowledge if you’ve never experienced anything else?

Some disengage. Some retreat into irony, humour, and nihilism – not because they don’t care, but because caring too much without agency hurts. Others turn to activism outside formal politics, where at least action feels tangible. Mutual aid, protest, community organising – spaces where politics still feels embodied and real. 

And some stay, but without illusion. They vote. They pay attention. But they don’t expect much. Which may be the most dangerous outcome of all. 

Because democracy does not survive on procedures alone. It survives on the belief that participation matters – that politics is a site of genuine contestation, not just managed decline. When a generation grows up without ever seeing that belief rewarded, the long-term consequences are severe. 

This isn’t a failure of youth. It’s a failure of inheritance. 

We’ve handed over a political system that feels unserious in the face of ever-growing serious problems, and then expressed surprise when young people treat it accordingly. We’ve told them to engage while modelling disengagement. We’ve asked them to trust institutions that visibly do not trust the public. 

Perhaps the most haunting question is this: what happens when an entire generation learns that there is nothing to ‘lose faith’ in, because faith was never offered? If politics is encountered only as farce, defensiveness, and managed disappointment, then opting out doesn’t look like apathy. It looks like clarity. 

The task, then, isn’t to scold young people back into the voting booth or to package politics in trendier language. It’s to make politics serious again – not dour or technocratic, but morally legible. Rooted in purpose. Willing to risk something. 

Until then, it’s entirely rational for young people to look at the system and think: Is this really it? 

And if it is – why would they invest their hope here?