Poll: It's actually normal for young people to be worried about America's future


While much has been made of millennials' generational uniqueness — they're exceptionally political independent and internet savvy, for instance — survey analysis from Pew Research suggests that pessimism is not a millennial distinctive.
While it is true that young people are less confident in the future of America than their elders, older generations were similarly worried when they were around the same age:
Adding further complexity to generational assessments, millennials are presently the generation most likely to say America's best years are ahead of her, suggesting intragenerational differences or perhaps simply higher levels of both uncertainty and hope.
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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.
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