New polling from Harvard's Institute of Politics shows a majority of young Americans are gloomy about their future and the country's. Jordan Schwartz, student chair of the Harvard Public Opinion Project, joins to break down the findings.

Cambridge

A recent poll conducted by Harvard's Institute of Politics shows that only 13% of Americans aged 18 to 29 believe the United States is headed in the right direction, while 57% say it is on the wrong track. The survey highlights widespread financial struggles, with 43% of respondents reporting they are struggling financially or barely getting by.

The poll also reveals that young Americans have low trust in political institutions, parties, and the media, with the highest trust reserved for doctors and scientists regarding vaccine information. Additionally, a significant majority believe that artificial intelligence is more likely to take away opportunities than create them, contributing to uncertainty about their future prospects.

Most young people say U.S. is on wrong track, Harvard poll shows

Welcome back to The Takeout and the Conversation Corner, which I'm happy to say the Nat has not discovered that I have moved to, so we're gonna try to keep that momentum going. Interesting new polling from Harvard's Institute of Politics shows that a majority of young Americans pretty gloomy about their future, as well as the country's. 13% of those surveyed between the ages of 18 and 29 say the United States is headed in the right direction. 13%, 57% as you can see, say wrong direction. Jordan Swartz joins me now. He's the student chair of Harvard Public Opinion Project. Jordan, it's great to have you with us, and because you're from Harvard, I feel like I should intone with some sort of literary reference, so I would summarize this poll as bleak house or something like that. It would certainly seem that way. Thanks for having me on the show, Major. This has been a fantastic opportunity to talk about the poll, but certainly not a particularly optimistic poll here. The results across the board from faith in the country being on the right track to attitudes on political violence, trust in institutions, parties, and even each other really show that young Americans are in a very dangerous and precarious position right now, deeply dissatisfied with the way the world is, struggling with finances, and hopeful for a solution, but not seeing one ahead of them anytime soon. And how does artificial intelligence, this advertised transformational technology, fit into this array of anxieties? Absolutely. So if we consider this baseline where 43% of respondents in our poll are struggling financially or barely getting by, that's sort of this level of present economic anxiety, but it goes so much further than that because it also goes into the future as well. And these future concerns could not be more obvious than in the case of AI, where by a three to one margin, young Americans are more likely to believe that AI will take away opportunities than create them. And I think this is part of a much larger trend among young Americans. You know, we're looking at the future and we have no idea what it holds. With artificial intelligence threatening to shake up the job market, potentially take away jobs, potentially help, but really leaving us in a situation where we don't know what's going on, that's really disturbing for a lot of young people who are just trying to figure out where their place is in the world in the years moving forward. So one of the interesting questions you have is what do you view as a survey participant as a source of strength? And I wanna go down the answers. 32%, colleges and universities, control room, we can bring that up. 23%, immigrants. 12%, Democratic Party. 9%, Republican Party. Oh, great, look at this. 6%, mainstream media. I are one in that category. That's great Harvard diction for you and grammar. So that's not a lot of strength for those surveyed to look for to either encourage them about the future or give them a sense that they've got someone to rely on in the near term. No, it really isn't. And this has been one of the themes across the poll. You know, many of the times when we run this, we spend a while going through the data and we try and come up with 10 or so big headlines and they'll go in all sorts of different directions. And this fall poll of all of the ones that I've been a part of has truly been unique because across every headline we've come up with, every data point we've researched, the fact remains that young people are really disillusioned, really distrustful, really dissatisfied. The one I'd say bright point of light in this poll in terms of trust is when we asked a question about trust in various people and institutions when it comes to vaccine information. Young people actually did display a high degree of trust in doctors and scientists and researchers. But beyond that, politically speaking especially, trust remains extremely low. Breaking it down really well. Jordan Schwartz, there's no question to me why you are the student chair of the Harvard Public Opinion Project. It's been a pleasure. Thanks so much for your time. Thank you, Major.

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Breakdown