The clip hit my phone first; Charlie Kirk collapsing behind the table after a gunshot, blood seeping into his collar. Then came the political factions rapidly splitting into teams — “I’m glad he’s dead,” and “This is war.”
Within hours came the usual churn of grifters taking advantage of the tragedy: wrong names, fake images and AI-generated videos claiming to "explain" what happened, complete with fabricated witness accounts, doctored timelines and fabricated "expert analysis" that contradicted basic facts already confirmed by law enforcement and eyewitnesses on the ground.
Fact-checks eventually exposed many of the posts as coordinated disinformation campaigns linked to Russian and Chinese influence operations meant to inflame U.S. divisions, according to the Associated Press. But by then, the feed had already moved on. Another shock. Another loop. Next video. But what I hate admitting is, for me, and for a lot of Gen Z, all of this just felt ... dull.
Not because we’re cruel, but because we’re saturated. Another mass shooter? Just background noise. Another deportation clip? Ugh, scroll. Another Trump power grab? Whatever; nothing I do can change it anyway.
Walk anywhere on campus between classes, and you'll see it everywhere — students scrolling through catastrophe with the same glazed expression they use for lecture slides. The apocalypse has become elevator music, and that's no accident. Gen Z is systematically desensitized to political crisis through the architecture of the feeds we live in.
Social feeds
What that clip revealed isn’t new; it’s the logic of the feeds we live in. Today’s social media feeds reward speed and spectacle, not careful thought. In this environment, emotionally charged posts and outright falsehoods spread faster than verified facts, especially during major breaking events. For students and Gen Z refreshing Instagram between assignments and study sessions, this is the information ecosystem that shapes every political opinion they form.
And the more time you spend inside that loop, the more it shapes how things feel. Gen Z feels this more than anyone. Nearly half of U.S. teens report being “almost constantly” online, and 96% go online at least daily. That constant connectivity has a cost — dulled emotions. When you see the same content over and over, it begins to numb you.
In 2023, the U.S. Surgeon General warned that social media poses “a profound risk of harm to the mental health and well-being of children and adolescents.” The advisory pointed to design choices that prioritize novelty and speed over reflection.
Effectively, the system rewards our shortest attention — then trains it like Pavlov's dog. The result is fatigue. Many young people cope by conserving energy and focusing on content instead of community. They seek control, not meaning. In the process, their ability to reflect, and often to act, gets weaker.
If people lose faith that they can influence governmental decisions, participation quickly dissipates. Trust is on the floor, and the floor is already low. According to the Pew Research Center in May 2024, only 22% of Americans said they trusted the federal government. For students who've grown up watching institutional failure play out in TikTok videos and Twitter threads, that distrust is embedded in the interface itself.
Biased feeds
But weakened reflection is only half the problem. When people do engage, the feeds ensure they're not even looking at the same reality.
Among Gen Z and younger adults more broadly, social media platforms and independent creators now rival and often surpass television and traditional news outlets as primary sources of information. And when news feels unreliable or fragmented, civic motivation, or the willingness to vote and show up, drops.
And the result is already visible at the ballot box. According to CIRCLE, the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement, youth turnout in 2024 fell by three points, with only 41% of 18- and 19-year-olds voting. By contrast, about 75% of older Americans cast ballots, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
Across age groups, men in the U.S. remain more likely than women to identify with the GOP; the Pew Research Center's 2025 National Public Opinion Reference Survey shows that even Gen Z (ages 18-27) reflects that pattern. Research from Ofcom, the United Kingdom's communications regulator, further describes a fragmented "manosphere" ecosystem in 2025 that most strongly appeals to socially isolated young men.
Awareness of controversial figures like Andrew Tate — a British-American influencer known for promoting hypermasculine, anti-feminist views — is extremely high among teen boys according to a 2024 YouGov survey. Meanwhile many young women's feeds center around themes of safety, rights and well-being according to Ofcom's 2024 Children's Media Literacy Report.
The problem is that different things grabbing attention means different definitions of urgent for each groups. In our classrooms and dining halls, these algorithmic echo chambers create a campus where students technically attend the same university but live in fundamentally incompatible information realities.
What still cuts through
But numbness doesn't always win. Sometimes a call-to-action breaks through it and triggers action.
In June, 33-year-old Zohran Mamdani won the Democratic primary for New York City mayor, an upset that quickly became official the following week. Teen organizers insisted his victory wasn't a fluke; they'd spent months talking in climate clubs, running multilingual canvasses and building youth-to-youth online outreach that spoke directly to their peers.
Now Mamdani is carrying that momentum into a full mayoral campaign, leaning on a base of younger voters who often feel ignored by traditional politics. He has drawn surprising support from young men — a cohort that many studies find has tilted rightward in recent years across multiple countries.
The same pattern is visible closer to home. In January 2023, USC student activist Courtney McClain organized a march against racist culture on campus after a viral TikTok video sparked outrage. Students rallied from the Horseshoe to Russell House, and McClain followed up months later by leading students to the S.C. Statehouse to protest for more administrative support and representation for students of color. The viral moment grabbed attention, but the sustained organizing converted outrage into action.
These moments don’t erase the larger trends of fatigue and apathy, but they do show that when campaigns meet young people where they are, with authenticity and persistence, political engagement can still break through.
When feeds help
Of course, social media isn't all bad. When the stakes are concrete and the facts are settled, it can be a force multiplier. In a single day of internet "blackouts," Wikipedia's banner sent 162 million people to its page about SOPA (the Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (the Protect IP Act), and petitions amassed millions of signatures. And in a randomized 61-million-user Facebook experiment, social "I voted" prompts produced an estimated 340,000 additional real ballots — modest per person, but massive in aggregate.
And even here at USC, when the stakes are personal and the mechanism is simple, social campaigns can mobilize extraordinary support. In March 2025, USC's MIND club launched the #SpeakYourMIND Ice Bucket Challenge, which raised over $370,000 for mental health nonprofit Active Minds.
The campaign, started by Club Founder Wade Jefferson after losing two friends to suicide, went viral with participation from USC head football coach Shane Beamer, Peyton Manning and even Jenna Bush Hager from the "Today" show.
The point isn't that feeds can never move people; it's that we've built a system that trains us to scroll past everything that matters until we can't tell the difference between a celebrity challenge and a constitutional crisis. And the scariest part is that we're getting comfortable with this new normal.
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