Social media is abuzz with a survey showing 12th-grade boys are twice as likely to identify as conservative. The reality is a little more complicated, writes Arwa Mahdawi
Social media was recently abuzz with a survey that shows 12th-grade boys (who are aged 17 or 18) are nearly twice as likely to identify as conservative v liberal.
The numbers showing young men becoming conservative come from the 2022 Monitoring the Future study, a respected annual survey looking at American adolescents that began in 1975.
This got the jubilant attention of a bunch of high-profile rightwingers, such as Steve Bannon and Kimberly Guilfoyle, the conservative media personality and fiancee of Donald Trump Jr.
Some rightwing influencers, such as Charlie Kirk, the founder of conservative youth group Turning Point USA, used the chart as proof that their outreach to high school kids (or, as some might describe it, “brainwashing”) was working.
There is certainly a lot to be said about how young men are drifting to the right – or, in many cases, how they are being pushed there by misogynistic conservative influencers such as Andrew Tate and Ben Shapiro.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Social media was recently abuzz with a survey that shows 12th-grade boys (who are aged 17 or 18) are nearly twice as likely to identify as conservative v liberal.
The numbers showing young men becoming conservative come from the 2022 Monitoring the Future study, a respected annual survey looking at American adolescents that began in 1975.
This got the jubilant attention of a bunch of high-profile rightwingers, such as Steve Bannon and Kimberly Guilfoyle, the conservative media personality and fiancee of Donald Trump Jr.
Some rightwing influencers, such as Charlie Kirk, the founder of conservative youth group Turning Point USA, used the chart as proof that their outreach to high school kids (or, as some might describe it, “brainwashing”) was working.
There is certainly a lot to be said about how young men are drifting to the right – or, in many cases, how they are being pushed there by misogynistic conservative influencers such as Andrew Tate and Ben Shapiro.
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