Redefining Citizenship: Gen Z Voices

Concerns about the strength and efficacy of our democracy are front and center for many Americans, including the very concept of democratic citizenship. How can we redefine “citizenship” for today’s context in a way that resonates with a diverse range of civic learning advocates? In this series, Citizens & Scholars is excited to share three projects we undertook to explore this question raised by the Mapping Civic Measurement report.

Nearly 8.3 million newly eligible Gen Z voters have turned 18 since the 2022 midterm election. On November 5, 2024, many cast their first vote in a presidential election, hopefully setting themselves on a path toward regular civic participation. As more young people age into the electorate, the representation of youth voices on questions of civic life and citizenship is essential. And with millions of young people participating in this year’s election, it’s clear that they are demanding their voices be heard.

With a small team of graduate students from American University’s Education Policy and Leadership program*, we designed a pilot survey to bring Gen Z’s perspective into the conversation about citizenship. This survey included questions drawn from our interview protocol and additional citizenship categories identified in the literature review. We surveyed 28 individuals aged 18-27 across six states. While not a representative sample, we hope this pilot serves as a template for a future, broader survey.

Here’s what we found:

Gen Z has a diverse understanding of citizenship.

Though our survey design didn’t replicate the interview questions, we observed similar trends in how both groups defined and talked about citizenship: each group offered us multiple understandings of the concept and explained citizenship in ways that encompassed both legal and cultural definitions.

• Typically, Gen Z survey respondents strongly emphasized an individual’s legal rights, community engagement, and voting in local and national elections. This pattern of foregrounding the legal definition of citizenship before expanding out to other facets of citizenship mirrors our interviews with individuals (who were typically from older generations). Both groups highlighted citizenship as both legal status and a social construct defined by one’s membership in a community.
• It is also worth noting that a majority of Gen Z survey respondents identified friends and family as essential sources of political and civic information. Here we see another throughline to our interviews with older adults, who frequently discussed the positive influence of family, friends, and teachers in their own development as “good “citizens. Survey responses suggest that Gen Z also values these relationships, just like the generations that precede them.

Global citizenship remains a hard-to-define concept.

• Gen Z respondents were the least familiar with the concept of global citizenship. Some survey respondents equated global citizenship to having citizenship in multiple countries or the ability to travel, while others described it as a global sense of community and knowledge about the world beyond the U.S. border. As with interviewees, there was no clear consensus.

The importance (and pitfalls) of online engagement and social media.

• Nearly all the Gen Z survey respondents said they stay informed about civic and political issues through social media. Many felt it allows their generation greater access to information and ways to engage. When asked what barriers prevent active citizenship, respondents noted that lack of access to the Internet along with limited information is a major barrier to participation.
• However, Gen Z respondents were pragmatic in their views on the benefits and limitations of social media platforms. They noted several pitfalls, like the existence of echo chambers and the spread of mis- and disinformation, which can deter young people’s civic engagement.
• We also asked respondents to share whether they identified themselves as digital, silent, or global citizens. For a generation that often gets labeled as “disengaged,” only a small number identified themselves as “silent” citizens. Nearly half described themselves as digital citizens. This is notable, if not surprising, for a generation born into an era where nearly every adult has a smartphone in their pocket. This is a major differentiator between our interviewees and survey respondents.

As we reflect on our findings, three “ingredients” emerge for the type of productively engaged citizenship Citizens & Scholars seeks to cultivate among young people:

Where we go from here?

This is just a snapshot. We have captured diverse ideas from civic practitioners, have begun to test how young people understand citizenship, and situated what we’ve learned in the academic literature on citizenship. However, there is a need to continue to ensure we account for missing perspectives, especially a more comprehensive sample of young people, and recognize that modern citizenship is a concept likely to continue evolving in our fast-changing world. 

Our initial goal was to propose a working, common definition of “citizenship” for the field. We hoped it could help those seeking to measure both the civic readiness of individuals and the availability and quality of civic opportunities provided by organizations. However, the emerging lessons at each stage of the project shifted our focus and have instead provoked new questions for our team, including:

• How do young people understand citizenship? What role might digital citizenship play in their understanding of active citizenship and American citizenship?
• How do we capture and categorize ideas of citizenship which are not directly tied to legal status, but rather to membership within a community?
• Are there connections between people’s experiences of civic education and their understanding of citizenship?

Over the coming year, Citizens & Scholars is expanding our direct work with Gen Z, offering more opportunities to engage young people’s understanding of concepts of citizenship. At the same time, we continue to build our network of college presidents seeking to advance critical inquiry, free expression, and civil discourse on their campuses.

If this project has shown us anything, it is that for young people to discuss important questions, like “what is a good citizen?” they must be equipped with the skills to think critically and be willing to engage in discussions with individuals who may disagree with them.

We remain optimistic that a common definition of citizenship may open avenues for productive dialogue in polarized times. As we undertake new work, we hope to revisit these varied understandings of citizenship and explore the new questions that emerged and how they may impact our ability to productively engage as citizens.

*Special thanks to Vanessa Gibson, Bridget Green, Tamiyah Miller, Anna Rodriguez, and Cara Zanta, graduate students from American University’s Education Policy and Leadership program, for designing this pilot survey.

The Institute for Citizens & Scholars would also like to thank the many individuals who made this work possible: Debi Ghate, Jessica Sutter, the survey respondents, and interviewees.