By Auguste Meyrat
As many members of the Gen Z cohort (b. 1997-2012) reach adulthood and enter public life, it is fitting that older generations understand them better. I recall the many essays, books, and films that examined my own generation, the millennials (b. 1981-1996), as well as those that assessed Generation X (b. 1965-1980) before that. Though not always accurate or entirely illuminating, they helped ease generational tensions.
Unfortunately, with Gen Z the differences can be so vast and deep that understanding them will prove more difficult. Much of their formative experience is unprecedented. Not only have they grown up with smartphones, high-speed Internet, and now AI, but they have also lived through a series of widespread social upheavals, including the Covid lockdowns. Taken together, this makes their integration into adult life especially challenging—and I say this as a teacher who has worked closely with Zoomers for decades.
As my friend and fellow teacher-writer Jeremy Adams explains in his book Hollowed Out (which I reviewed here), much of what surrounds Gen Z is a paradox. On the outside, they have the knowledge of the world at their fingertips (in theory: many will not even know what today’s date, 9/11, means). And they enjoy countless comforts. On the inside, many still feel empty and resentful. In response, Adams calls for a national-scale intervention to help these young people discover the blessings of American democracy and Western wisdom.
While this solution makes sense to older generations, Zoomers would likely scoff at the very idea. As Joey Oliver makes clear in his new book American History Z: Gen Z’s Journey to the Far Right, the situation for Zoomers has deteriorated far beyond Adams’s modest proposal. A Zoomer himself, Oliver offers a detailed account of how these ostensibly privileged individuals have grown to despise their cultural heritage and embrace radicalism. The account is at times hard to read, but it sheds light on a host of blind spots that anyone hoping to improve the prospects of today’s young adults should understand.
Far from growing up in an idyllic culture of stability, respectability, and technological progress, Oliver and his peers witnessed firsthand the great collapse of every narrative that once defined the West. Race, immigration, feminism, free speech, economic opportunity, public health, American history, or democracy: all these topics were reopened and reshaped despite inherent contradictions, corrupt leadership, and online polarization in Zoomer circles.
This was not entirely bad. The narratives of the secular left tend to target Oliver’s own demographic—conservative white males—making them scapegoats for all the world’s ills. For decades, the vast majority of institutions unthinkingly reinforced that toxic message, while lamenting the sudden rise of political and cultural polarization in American life.
But other voices emerged to challenge those narratives and restore a degree of sanity to public discourse, bravely enduring the ordeal of censors and cancelers. While some of these defenders stood firm in their positions, many were silenced or pressured to retract, leaving much of their Zoomer audience to fend for themselves.
This collective abandonment of Zoomers constitutes the darkest aspects of Oliver’s story. Yes, secular leftism (popularly known as “woke culture”) was checked by opposing forces, but it has not disappeared. The conflict between right and left simply intensified as political violence became common and public discourse degenerated into hate-filled propaganda. The revival of democratic virtues that Adams recommended in his book was replaced by partisan tribalism.
In the end, Oliver loses faith in the entire American project. Everyone he followed has let him down, turning him into a cynic before he even reaches 30. Even more striking is his overwhelming contempt for the system: “As we watch the West fall, we know we will be portrayed as the villains of it all. We know we will never be praised or recognized by our once-great institutions, but we don’t care. Our loyalty and duty are to our people above all, not to The New York Times.”
That said, rather than using Oliver’s extremism as an excuse to dismiss his argument, one should treat it as an opportunity for reflection. As he admits, he did not reach this point on his own. In many ways, the people and institutions that were supposed to support his generation simply were not there.
Sadly, one of those absent institutions has been the Catholic Church. While Oliver and his peers desperately sought moral guidance and empathy, Catholics and Christians in general were conspicuously absent. Too often, many of them aligned with the secular left and adopted its causes.
While young Zoomers were routinely scolded for being privileged white Westerners who polluted the planet and oppressed minorities, Church leaders organized conferences on climate change and synodality. While young Zoomers struggle today in a terrible job and dating market, bishops and priests busy themselves defending the rights of illegal immigrants and sexual deviants. While more than a quarter of Zoomers have been killed by abortion, the Church has quixotically directed its criticism at traditional Catholics and American conservatives.
In short, the Church has largely abandoned young Zoomers, so no one should be surprised that online influencers have filled the void. And since an influencer’s goal is to gain followers by capturing their attention, no one should be surprised that they and their followers drift toward increasingly extreme views.
In American History Z, Joey Oliver performs an important service to older generations by letting us know what happened. Sure, Zoomers would do well to unplug, step away from the online madness, and reconnect with the physical world. But they will need far more support from the rest of us. Like it or not—and whether they like it or not—Gen Z will soon be running the world and will need all the help it can get.
God help us—all of us.
About the author
Auguste Meyrat is an English teacher in the Dallas area. He holds a master’s in Humanities and an MEd in Educational Leadership. He is the senior editor of The Everyman and has written essays for The Federalist, The American Thinker, and The American Conservative, as well as for the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture.