Welcome to From the Politics Desk, a daily newsletter that brings you the NBC News Politics team’s latest reporting and analysis from the White House, Capitol Hill and the campaign trail.
In today’s edition, Alexandra Marquez dives into the latest NBC News Decision Desk Poll and examines a strain of nostalgia for past eras pervading Gen Z. Plus, Kristen Welker takes us inside the latest edition of NBC News’ “Common Ground” bipartisan interview series.
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— Scott Bland
Some members of Gen Z are feeling so pessimistic about the future of the country and modern technology that they want to hop into a time machine.
Nearly half (47%) of adults ages 18-29 said that if they had the option, they’d choose to live in the past, according to a new NBC News Decision Desk Poll powered by SurveyMonkey. One-third said they’d pick a time period less than 50 years in the past, while another 14% said they’d choose more than 50 years in the past.
Meanwhile, 38% of Gen Zers said they’d prefer to live in the present, 10% said they’d go less than 50 years in the future, and 5% chose more than 50 years in the future.
The results were largely consistent across gender lines and partisan divides, though young Black adults were less likely to say they’d prefer to live in the past (33%) than young white adults (52%) or young Hispanic adults (47%).
The broader sentiment underscores the negative outlook many young Americans feel about their future prospects and the state of the country. The poll found that 62% of Gen Z respondents said they expect life will be worse for them compared to previous generations, compared to 25% who said it will be better and 13% who said it would be about the same.
And 80% of Gen Z adults said the United States is on the wrong track, the highest share of any age group in the survey.
In interviews with NBC News, young adults said the desire to live in the past is shaped by their relationship with technology and a growing discomfort with being connected to the internet at all times. Nostalgia for a previous era can bring a sense of community and comfort to Gen Zers who are anxious about an uncertain technological and geopolitical future, they said.
The desire to live in the recent past is part of a growing trend among young adults interested in the culture, fashion and technology of the 1980s, ’90s and early 2000s.
Just look at the growing resurgence of claw clips, baggy jeans and strappy tops among young women. Or the flourishing markets for cassette tapes and iPods and the recent social media obsession with ’90s figures like John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette, prompted in part by the FX TV series “Love Story.”
Some members of Gen Z, born in 1997 or later, wish to live in an era “right before social media and computers mediated life,” nostalgia researcher and existential psychologist Clay Routledge said in an interview.
In today’s polarized politics, it can sometimes seem like there’s more that divides us than unites us. But there is still bipartisan work happening here in Washington, with members of both parties teaming up to find solutions on pressing issues facing the country.
We’re working to shine a spotlight on those stories as part of an NBC News series called “Common Ground.”
Some of these bipartisan conversations, with Republican and Democratic lawmakers sitting side by side, have been featured on “Meet the Press” and “Meet the Press NOW.” Last year, my colleague Savannah Guthrie spoke with Govs. Josh Shapiro, a Pennsylvania Democrat, and Spencer Cox, a Utah Republican, who discussed their bipartisan friendship and shared concerns about rising political violence.
As part of this series, I sat down last night with Sen. Katie Britt, R-Ala., and John Fetterman, D-Pa., who became fast friends when they arrived in the Senate — and whose friendship has sparked bipartisan efforts on issues like social media use.
“We’ve taken the time to not just understand our politics or position on something, but to really get to know each other as people. And I think that’s missing so much right now,” said Britt, noting that they connected during orientation after they were first elected in 2022.
Britt visited Fetterman in the hospital amid his struggles with his mental health, and Fetterman said her visit meant the world to him.
“Having relationships, now, it’s often punished where it’s like, ‘Well that’s the enemy because we’re on different sides.’ And that’s absurd,” Fetterman said, later adding, “Working together is the only way it actually works. We can’t forget that.”
Fetterman and Britt talked about their work together on legislation to address youth social media use. Britt noted that the bipartisan group of senators who came together approached the issue “not as Democrats or Republicans, but as concerned parents.”
We’ll have more from my conversation with Sens. Britt and Fetterman on “Meet the Press” this Sunday, where we’ll also be joined by Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., and Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif.
That’s all From the Politics Desk for now. Today’s newsletter was compiled by Scott Bland.
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