Should we just give up if all Gen Z want is a dictatorship?
Opinion
Channel 4’s study on Gen Z attitudes presents serious implications for everyone in politics, education and journalism.
Polls come and go with varying degrees of accuracy or usefulness. But one that appeared on the front page of The Times on Monday was a true shocker.
We already know that young people, for the first time last year, spent more time with YouTube than BBC One and that, for many, their trusted source of information is TikTok rather than newspapers or conventional television news.
Yet, it is still deeply alarming to read that more than half (52%) of Gen Z — aged between 13 and 27 — said they thought “the UK would be a better place if a strong leader was in charge who does not have to bother with parliament and elections”. In effect, they apparently believe that hundreds of years of parliamentary and democratic history should simply be junked.
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Children of the revolution
According to research by polling company Craft for the Channel 4 report Gen Z: Trends, Truth and Trust, to be unveiled at a Royal Television Society event on Thursday, there are even more shockers within.
A third of Gen Z think the UK would be better off if the army was in charge of the country, while a massive 47% agreed with the statement that “the entire way our society is organised must be radically changed through revolution”.
Support for revolution mercifully drops to a third when 45- to 65-year-olds were asked.
Less surprising, but worrying all the same, was the finding that 58% considered social media posts from friends as trusted as — and sometimes more trusted than — established journalism.
For good measure, 42% of Gen Z males trust influencers such as former kickboxer from Luton Andrew Tate and Canadian conservative gender warrior Jordan Peterson.
In a Donald Trump/Elon Musk world of lies and quarter-truths, should we give up on costly education systems and expensively verified news and information?
Hardly. And maybe Channel 4 is simply setting out to shock and it is difficult for a newspaper sub-editor to resist writing the headline: “Half of Gen Z want Britain to be ruled by a dictator.”
Clear disengagement
The research was based on a poll of 3,000 people covering all ages groups — and it would be good to know more about the way the propositions were proffered and whether any context was provided.
Historical background would also be useful. Is this a brand new phenomenon or have similar opinions been dredged out in the past?
Channel 4 CEO Alex Mahon probably hits the nail on the head when she suggests that, although Gen Z are media-savvy, they are the first generation to have been “exposed to the full force of the polarising, confusing and sometimes wilfully misleading nature of social media since they were born”.
There was, Mahon added, clear evidence of a disengagement from democracy, fuelled by online pied pipers and a growing gender divide.
However, if the research stands up to detailed scrutiny, there are serious implications for everyone in politics, education and journalism, as well as those who want to sell goods and services to Gen Z.
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Fact vs myth
There was some less alarming news from Channel 4 last week. Consumption of Channel 4 News content on its website and social media outlets had increased year on year by almost 50% to 1.8bn views.
So not all bad, then, and Channel 4 News, as is often the case, was on top form on Monday evening when it led with detailed reports of the people of Gaza walking north by the shore with their meagre possessions to see what was left of their homes.
Gaza was rightly given priority over the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camps, although the ceremony in Poland was fully covered as the second item.
The anniversary of the liberation and Holocaust Memorial Day does, however, highlight other elements that can appear on a charge sheet against Gen Z: lack of knowledge of the Holocaust and its surrounding history.
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According to an eight-nation survey of awareness of Holocaust knowledge and surrounding history, there is room for improvement.
A third of young adults in the UK were unable to name Auschwitz or any of the other concentration camps and ghettoes of the Second World War.
Only 15% of adults in the UK knew that, when it became aware of the mass murder of Jews and others, the UK government did nothing other than say the Nazis would be punished after the war.
Two-thirds believed, incorrectly, that the government allowed Jewish refugees to emigrate to the UK during the Second World War. Only Kindertransport had been sanctioned for unaccompanied children.
Meanwhile, 9% believed the Holocaust was a myth or that the number of Jews killed — 6m — had been greatly exaggerated. More than 40% said they had seen Holocaust denial material on X, Facebook and TikTok.
At the end of the war, Dwight D Eisenhower insisted that all records of what had happened should be gathered and preserved. “Because somewhere down the road of history, some bastard will get up and say this never happened,” he said.
With a bit of luck, if they had consumed mainstream media in the past few days, Channel 4’s Gen Z will have learned not only more about the Holocaust but also what dictators can do.
Raymond Snoddy is a media consultant, national newspaper columnist and former presenter of NewsWatch on BBC News. He writes for The Media Leader on Wednesdays — bookmark his column here.