Poll: Weary of division, most teens still voice faith in future

Though 51% say now is a bad time to grow up, compared to 31% 16 years ago

Sophia Grigsby watched with horrified amazement as insurrectionists stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, defiling the halls of power in a violent attempt to prevent Joe Biden from becoming president.

The 16-year-old from rural Minnesota wondered, fleetingly, if she had been naive in believing that the protests last summer following the murder of George Floyd had truly marked a turning point. Yet even as the televised spectacle confirmed her belief in the rising dangers of white supremacy - some of the rioters were carrying Confederate flags - Grigsby’s optimism won out.

“Even with the murder of George Floyd, I’m finding people have become so much more aware,” said Grigsby, who starts her junior year of high school in St. Peter, Minn., this month. “While our country is really divided, I think that part of that division is because of that newfound awareness.”

Despite some difficulties as a mixed-race student, including once filing a legal complaint against her school district after it failed to stop classmates from hurling racial slurs at her, Grigsby is also optimistic about her own life. She sees herself graduating from college, meeting her husband in medical school and raising two children “a boy and a girl, twins,” she hopes - all the while most likely becoming rich.

Grigsby’s largely upbeat attitude about the future, combined with a worldweary realism that seems mature beyond her years, is echoed in the findings of a national Washington Post-Ipsos poll of teens ages 14 to 18.

While still hopeful about what lies ahead, many teens do not view the current moment so favorably. Fifty-one percent say that now is a bad time to be growing up, compared with 31 percent who answered that way 16 years ago, in a poll of teens conducted by The Post, the

Kaiser Family Foundation and Harvard University. Their parents are even more negative, with more than 6 in 10 saying it’s a bad time for teenagers to be growing up.

These young Americans, who are coming of age amid a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic, political and social unrest, growing economic inequality and rising crime, are keenly aware of the country’s problems. Majorities view political divisions, racial discrimination, the cost of health care and gun violence as “major threats” to their generation, according to the new Post-Ipsos poll. Nearly half also rank climate change as a major threat.

Some are already trying to make a difference. Heily DeJesus, who lives in Lebanon, Pa., said she dashed from her brother’s high school graduation to a Black Lives Matter protest, where they all took a knee for a selfie as her brother raised his fist in the air.

“It felt great to know that we’re a part of making a change for the world,” she remembered. “Even if it’s a small town, we’re still making a change.”

The survey of 1,349 teens was conducted online in May and June primarily through Ipsos’s randomly recruited panel of U.S. households. Overall results have a margin of error of plus or minus three percentage points, and the relatively large sample allows comparison of White, Black, Hispanic and Asian teens.

These young people are part of what is likely the most diverse cohort in the nation’s history. New Census Bureau data shows that the country’s under-18 population is majority-minority for the first time, with White children making up 47.3 percent of that age group compared with 53.5 percent in 2010. Their childhoods have been marked by racial justice protests and a growing societal acceptance of LGBTQ people. Most also perceive significant discrimination against a wide range of groups in American society. Black and transgender people topped the list, with about 6 in 10 teens saying Black people are treated unfairly very or somewhat often and an almost equal share saying the same thing about transgender people.

But even given such looming challenges, the optimism of teens runs through the poll findings, especially when it comes to what the future holds for their own lives.

Nine in 10 teens say they are very or fairly likely to achieve a good standard of living as an adult, while nearly half still believe their opportunities to succeed in life are better than their parents’ were. About 4 in 10 believe they are about the same, while fewer than 2 in 10 say their opportunities to succeed in life are worse.

Vincent Bornhorst has a rosy view of his future. The 18-year-old, who just graduated from Thomas S. Wootton High School in Rockville, Md., is a freshman at Virginia Tech, majoring in computer science. Earning a college diploma is a top priority, he says, which puts him among the roughly 8 in 10 teens who describe this goal as important. He expects to have about the same opportunity to succeed as his mother, a physician, and his father, a stay-at-home dad. What he doesn’t anticipate: one day becoming rich or famous, especially since he thinks the latter would entail public speaking, which he hates.

Overall, even with the omnipresence of social media stars who make achieving celebrity and wealth look as easy as racking up TikTok likes, a significantly smaller percentage of teens today believe they will become rich.

About half think it’s very or fairly likely that they will be rich one day, compared with more than 6 in 10 in 2005. White teens like Bornhorst are among the least likely to expect to become wealthy - with 44 percent predicting they will likely become rich. That number rises slightly to 49 percent for Hispanic teens. By contrast, about three-quarters of Black teens and two-thirds of Asian teens believe they will be rich one day. (Presumably, the notion of the top 1 percent hasn’t quite sunk in yet.)