Imagine coming of age in a world surrounded by vitriolic semi-anonymous and often deindividualized voices that try to consume you, whether you are on or offline. Racial tensions and political divisiveness have created a culture defined by chronic stress for many, contrasted with overwhelming insulation from the deleterious impact of this, a privilege afforded to the few. A global pandemic that disproportionately impacted communities of color alongside racial and politically motivated killings, were algorithmically amplified through social media. Concurrently, misinformation fostered a culture of cynicism toward foundational institutions and between sociodemographically diverse groups. Instead, trust has been replaced by dependence on the very digital technologies which have contributed to the erosion of critical thinking.

Current regression of societal norms has contributed to a return to the systemic injustices we have struggled to overcome for decades, potentially fostering division for future generations. Many people lack the ability to agree on a foundational set of facts that define objective truths, at times negating the lived experiences of those who are not part of the privileged majority. For Gen Z African Americans, their voices are even further removed from public discourse, as scientific research continues to default to older White male perspectives and opinions. This has left a significant blind spot precisely where race, age, and digital technology converge.

Old Wine, New Bottle

Americans have always processed collective trauma through the lens of race. What has changed is the speed and scale of the delivery. World War II helped reshape the American social contract and galvanized subsequent generations to fight for civil rights. The aftermath of 9/11 altered national identity (Li & Brewer, 2004) and fostered the erosion of civil liberties and privacy (Huddy & Feldman, 2011). Gen Z’s defining traumas were normalized before society could collectively process their impact. This occurred largely because social media evolved from a simple mechanism for computer-mediated communication into a tool of attention monetization and weaponization of our emotions. This operates at a speed, scale and sensory intensity that previous generations did not endure as they came of age.

Social media no longer just informs; it is a behavioral activation tool (Roberts & David, 2025) that differentially impacts people across sociopolitical and racial lines. Consider how White Americans morally opposed to what the January 6 insurrection attempt publicly mobilized in resistance, while equally alarmed and outraged Black Americans have coped with the current polarization less visibly, not out of indifference but more so for survival given a long history of being marginalized within the institutions they are asked to defend. The emotional labor of fighting for rights within a system that has institutionally undermined Black civic life and economic power is not new (Anderson, 2016; Rothstein, 2017), but being able to utilize digital technologies such as social media is.

Older generations were no stranger to racial tensions, but over the past several decades, social media has come to represent a uniquely complicated role for Black Americans. Not just for Gen Z, it has become a genuine vehicle for cultural solidarity (Florini, 2014) but has been weaponized for targeted online acts of racial discrimination (Keum & Miller, 2018; Tynes et al., 2012). We have extensive research telling the older generation’s story, but we have largely failed to directly capture Gen Z’s voice. To capture this overlooked dynamic, we directly asked them.

Hearing Their Voice

In 2025, my cyberpsychology research team at Norfolk State University began exploring this gap. We recruited African American and White Gen Z, social media-using college students from two public universities in southeastern Virginia. Over 90% of the 145 respondents (median age of 22 and ~60% Black) reported being on social media one to six hours daily, primarily on Instagram and TikTok. Nearly all reported some awareness about algorithmic influence on the social media content they see, and at least minimal political awareness. They completed minimally adapted survey items sourced from a large national study examining political polarization in the US, with respondents averaging 43 years of age (Marino et al., 2023) but no breakdown of non-majority racial inclusion.

Compared to Marino’s study, our full sample reported greater skepticism that access to accurate information could reduce polarization, despite also believing the public is relatively uninformed politically. They tended to view polarization as harmful, but many also responded closer to neutral. About 65% reported that social media exposes them to diverse political views at least occasionally, and most described the political news they encounter as at least somewhat accurate even while mis/dis/malinformation is noticeably prevalent.

Notably, despite heavy social media use, it was not for active political engagement, preferring to consume and share content for social connection, entertainment, and news. This matters because peer-to-peer information exchange is a promising way to combat polarization (Balietti et al., 2021), but with so few seeming to participate in that exchange. Is this evidence of the stereotype that Gen Z is politically disengaged, or does it suggest that they might be using social media for more adaptive purposes? Recent research suggests that while active political participation remains lower, Gen Z does engage more online than through traditional civic activity (Junaidi & Suryadi, 2025).

Most important in our study was comparing the Black and White respondents to identify potential areas of critical concern for future research. Our study demonstrated some differences between Gen Z Black and White young adults, less pronounced than the differences between our full sample and the national sample.  Results suggested both groups use social media for similar reasons, demonstrate similar awareness about algorithmic curation of content, espousing comparable views on polarization’s potential harms without endorsing it as being particularly salient, and expressing similarly muted confidence that better access to information would meaningfully reduce polarization. The significant divergence emerged in how each group actually uses social media. Black respondents spent more time daily and reported considerably more active commenting and sharing. White respondents were more passive consumers, reading or watching without the same interaction.

White respondents also identified significantly greater concern about the spread of mis/dis/malinformation, more strongly believed that Americans are politically polarized, and saw polarization as a more serious problem than their Black counterparts. They also attributed polarization to a more poorly informed public, whereas Black respondents were more likely to actively engage with political content that challenged their views, even though their White counterparts reported encountering such content more frequently. The gap between passive exposure and active response across the two racial groups is seemingly the most critical finding and speaks to whether social media can adequately function as a depolarizing force at all.

What’s Next

We need to recalibrate our operational definition for social media to fully realize the opportunities available to understand “…the cultures that emerge around social networking sites” (Boyd & Ellison, 2007, p. 210). We need to ask people how and for what purpose they use this tool. We need to explicitly identify societal impacts that coincided with the progression of previous ways social media was conceptualized. We need to better understand the symbiotic relationship diverse groups of people had with online communities in the 1990s, the social networks filled with user-generated content they evolved into, and how social media ecosystems became integrated into everyday life. And now, we need to reverse-engineer racial and generational differences regarding participation with social media over time.

Algorithmic curation of content is now the norm even though the AI driving social media platforms are inherently flawed and often produce biased results (Noble, 2018). However, these recommendation engines are on the cusp of becoming AI-mediated mechanisms of participation, increasing the urgency to fill the gaps in understanding about how younger, non-White users uniquely and reciprocally fit into these ecosystems.

For communities that have spent generations being asked to educate others about their own oppression while simultaneously fighting for basic civic recognition (Saad, 2020), skepticism about information’s ability to simply change opinion seems warranted. But there is optimism on the horizon. If we can be honest about how different communities experience their online existence, then maybe our existing tools can yet again be transformed into participatory systems of action that transcend race, and perhaps future generations to come.

References

Anderson, C. (2016). White rage: The unspoken truth of our racial divide. Bloomsbury.

Balietti, S., Getoor, L., Goldstein, D. G., & Watts, D. J. (2021). Reducing opinion polarization: Effects of exposure to similar people with differing political views. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 118(52), e2112552118. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2112552118

Boyd, D. M., & Ellison, N. B. (2007). Social network sites: Definition, history, and scholarship. Journal of Computer‐Mediated Communication, 13(1), 210–230. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1083-6101.2007.00393.x

Florini, S. (2014). Tweets, tweeps, and signifyin’: Communication and cultural performance on “Black Twitter.” Television & New Media, 15(3), 223–237. https://doi.org/10.1177/1527476413480247

Huddy, L., & Feldman, S. (2011). Americans respond politically to 9/11: Understanding the impact of the terrorist attacks and their aftermath. American Psychologist, 66(6), 455–467. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0024894

Junaidi, A., & Suryadi, M. (2025). Political participation in the digital age: Impact of influencers and advertising on Generation Z. Cogent Arts & Humanities, 12(1), 2520063. https://doi.org/10.1080/23311983.2025.2520063

Keum, B. T., & Miller, M. J. (2018). Racism on the Internet: Conceptualization and recommendations for research. Psychology of Violence, 8(6), 782-791. https://doi.org/10.1037/vio0000201

Li, Q., & Brewer, M. B. (2004). What does it mean to be an American? Patriotism, nationalism, and American identity after 9/11. Political Psychology, 25(5), 727–739. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9221.2004.00395.x

Marino, M., Iacono, R., & Mollerstrom, J. (2023). (Mis-)perceptions, information, and political polarization (Working Paper No. 90). International Inequalities Institute, London School of Economics and Political Science. https://eprints.lse.ac.uk/119268/

Noble, S. U. (2018). Algorithms of oppression: How search engines reinforce racism. NYU Press.

Roberts, J. A., & David, M. E. (2025). Technology affordances, social media engagement, and social media addiction: An investigation of TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts. Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, 28(5), 318–325. https://doi.org/10.1089/cyber.2024.0338

Rothstein, R. (2017). The color of law: A forgotten history of how our government segregated America. Liveright.

Saad, L. F. (2020). Me and white supremacy: Combat racism, change the world, and become a good ancestor. Sourcebooks.

Tynes, B. M., Umaña-Taylor, A. J., Rose, C. A., Lin, J., & Anderson, C. J. (2012). Online racial discrimination and the protective function of ethnic identity and self-esteem for African American adolescents. Developmental Psychology, 48(2), 343–355. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0027032