Gen Z and Political Violence in the United States

Researchers interested in understanding acts of criminal violence have argued that the historical context in which individuals are born may differentiate their crime trajectories. So far, most of this research has been done on ordinary crimes like homicide and robbery. However, there are good reasons to think that politically motivated violence might also be affected by the historical epoch in which individuals are born. In particular, we ask whether radicalized members of Gen Z, the generation born between 1997 and 2012, might be unique in terms of their use of violence. They are the first generation who moved into adulthood since the widespread adoption of social media, compared to members of other generations, they suffer disproportionately from a variety of psychological stresses, and they have lived during a period of growing political violence. In this paper, we examine nearly 600 political extremists from the United States who were either arrested, convicted or killed in support of their beliefs. Using logistic regression analysis we find that compared to other generations, members of Gen Z were more likely to engage in violent behavior. However, the perpetrators’ generation was less important for predicting violence than having a radical friend or family member or supporting a right-wing or Islamist ideology. Random forest analysis confirmed the results. We consider the implications for theory, policy and future research.