Where Are the Young People?

Zohran Mamdani’s recent electoral victory felt both vindicating and slightly surreal for the young voters who turned out in force at a moment when American politics feels increasingly hostile to collective action. The win was historic, driven largely by Millennials and Gen Z voters who have grown disillusioned with an unresponsive political system and eroding democratic institutions. For many, Mamdani represented something rare: a candidate whose politics reflected their critiques of American democracy while remaining grounded in egalitarian ideals. In a digital landscape shaped by polarization and algorithmically curated echo chambers, that kind of hope can feel scarce.

Yet Mamdani is not alone. Across the country, a new generation of leaders is stepping forward, translating frustration into local power. Abdul-Razak Osmanu, a 24-year-old City Council member in Hamden, Connecticut, is one of them. Despite his age, he brings nearly a decade of political experience. As the demographic core of the electorate shifts, political representation is beginning to shift with it—offering cautious optimism to young voters increasingly exhausted by stagnation and the broader right-wing turn within American institutions.

Abdul and I met in early December at Kaiyden’s, a tucked-away spot in New Haven. Within minutes of arriving, he was deep in conversation with a regular and the owner, Chidi Onukwugha. They talked about his role as an uncle, the possibility of secret golf lessons, and his work on the Hamden City Council. The exchange was warm and easy—an immediate counterpoint to the narrative that young people are increasingly antisocial or disconnected. Osmanu’s demeanor felt grounded and disarming, far from the caricature most people conjure when they hear the word “politician.”

We quickly fell into a rhythm, bouncing between serious political questions and playful tangents, a cadence we jokingly attributed to shared ADHD and the built-in kinship Gen Z often extends to one another. Part of my interest in Abdul’s story stemmed from the persistent claim that young people are disengaging from politics. If that were entirely true, how had he carved out a place for himself in elected office? The question feels even more complicated when placed alongside the record-breaking youth turnout in the recent New York City mayoral election. Young voters appear both deeply frustrated with political institutions and, at critical moments, capable of mobilizing in force. Osmanu operates at the intersection of that contradiction.

Performing Politics vs Real Work

Osmanu's political origin story began more than a decade ago. He traces his early interest to local incidents of police violence and a personal drive to push beyond his comfort zone. He also spoke candidly about navigating anxiety and mental health challenges as a teenager—experiences that shaped his desire to engage more directly with the world around him. When local representatives recruited his freshman class to volunteer on a campaign, Osmanu jumped in. What began as volunteer work quickly evolved into a long-term political commitment.

While the path to elected office is not a common one for young Black men—Congress, for example, included only 46 Black members out of 533 when he first entered politics—Osmanu’s upbringing exposed him to political conversations early. With family ties to politics both in the U.S. and abroad, the idea of running for office had always been “floated around at home,” as he put it. Still, early exposure alone does not explain his trajectory. Within a few years, the self-identified socialist moved from campaign volunteer to candidate, winning a seat on the Hamden City Council at just 19 years old.

His focus has remained firmly local. Osmanu gravitates toward what he calls “niche” issues: paving roads, town budgets, contracts, teachers’ union concerns. It is granular work—unglamorous, often invisible—but grounded in tangible impact. His politics are distinctly grassroots, centered on being a vehicle for localized change rather than a brand to be scaled.

That choice sets him apart. In an era when politicians curate digital personas and treat social media as a portfolio for prospective voters, Osmanu rarely performs his politics online. Outside of council meetings, he works closely with local teachers’ unions and remains active with Connecticut’s chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America. His approach feels almost anachronistic in a political ecosystem dominated by optics and algorithms.

“People are too complex for pedestals,” he told me. “Young people just want to be listened to—and they definitely have questions.”

In a political culture increasingly shaped by influencers and viral campaigns, his ethos stands out. Rather than centering himself, he centers the work—and the people most affected by it. That orientation, grounded in humility and empathy, is what distinguishes representatives like Osmanu from many of their contemporaries.

So, Where Are the Young People?

Young people sit at the center of today’s debate about political progress, particularly in the age of social media. Over the past decade—especially after the 2020 pandemic—their political education and participation have come under intense scrutiny in the United States. On both sides of the aisle, conversations about civic disengagement are often filtered through the politicization of education and the long shadow of COVID.

“[COVID] conditioned young people into being reclusive,” Osmanu told me. In many ways, that observation anchored our broader question: what does the political future hold for our peers?

Organizations like the Democratic Socialists of America have served as entry points for young leaders such as Osmanu and Zohran Mamdani, helping translate frustration into formal political participation. That pipeline itself is notable—but what troubled me more was the widening gap between highly engaged young organizers and a broader literacy crisis in the U.S. Political energy and political comprehension do not always move in tandem.

Our conversation shifted to the rise of right-wing extremism and its growing presence in mainstream discourse, particularly among young audiences. Osmanu attributes part of that shift to what he calls “a deficit of a coherent counter-narrative.” The problem, in his view, is not simply the volume of right-wing messaging, but the fragmentation of left-wing thought. Within mainstream Democratic politics especially, ideological clarity often gives way to branding, cultural signaling, or internal disputes.

What distinguishes representatives like Osmanu, he argues, is a willingness to engage political complexity rather than avoid it. The current administration’s executive actions have reshaped the terrain in ways that feel unprecedented in recent American politics. Yet, he believes, the left has struggled to respond with a unified or compelling framework. Instead, he says, too much energy has been spent “worried about leftism culture” rather than constructing a substantive alternative vision. Osmanu points to what he calls an “unspoken soapbox” within the Democratic National Committee—a posture that prioritizes ego and internal hierarchy over meeting voters “where they are.” It is an unusually blunt critique for an elected official, but he does not hedge it.

“We can’t force people to live in what doesn’t exist,” he said.

In the absence of a grounded, accessible counter-narrative, young people often gravitate toward whatever is most digestible. The danger, Osmanu suggests, is not simply ideological drift but the erosion of nuance itself. When nuance gives way to oversimplified framing, the loudest narrative wins.

Do They Even Have the Capacity?

While it may be tempting to assign blame, Osmanu resists the idea that any one individual is at fault. Instead, he points to corporate-driven digital ecosystems that have reshaped how young people engage with the world. Social media, short-form content, and generative AI have engineered environments built on dopamine loops and constant stimulation. The result, he suggests, is not apathy but conditioning.

During our conversation, a recurring theme emerged: what Osmanu called the “Celebrity Complex”—more commonly known as “Main Character Syndrome.” For those of us in the 18–29 demographic, there is a peculiar reality to political coming-of-age: we rarely experience ourselves unobserved. Our lives unfold on screens, curated and watched in real time. If identity is always performative, how does political consciousness form authentically?

Osmanu’s answer was deceptively simple: by reconnecting to our humanity. He describes his generation as born into an ethos of “frictionless optimization,” a culture that prizes efficiency and speed over reflection. In his view, this has left many young people less equipped to grapple with real-world complexity. Access to information has expanded, but practical understanding and sustained attention have not necessarily followed.

He ties this back to nuance. Online spaces flatten complexity; they reward immediacy over depth. Over time, that dynamic erodes not only discourse but our capacity for self-actualization. Importantly, Osmanu sees this fragmentation as structural, not moral. The issue is not individual weakness but systems designed to commodify attention.

Self-actualization, in his view, is inseparable from community. And community is the foundation of his political work.

Some activists argue that digital participation—organizing, posting, amplifying—is itself a valid and necessary form of engagement. I floated a more dystopian possibility: a future where people send virtual avatars to protests rather than showing up in person. Osmanu laughed. “That is not a reality I would want to live in.”

Still, the concern is not entirely far-fetched. Osmanu speaks of the “lost art of digesting things”—the ability to sit with complexity rather than react instantly. In a culture built around short-form content and instant gratification, waiting feels intolerable. What is most visible is often mistaken for what is most correct.

Young voters have demonstrated extraordinary mobilizing power when stakes are clear—New York City’s recent mayoral election being one example. But speed-driven political culture compresses context and rewards oversimplification. Nuance becomes collateral damage.

Optimization, Osmanu argues, can also breed dehumanization. When interaction is mediated primarily through screens—and when Americans already average higher daily screen time than the global norm—it becomes easier to categorize strangers as abstractions. Echo chambers reinforce that distance. And as distance grows, so too does our diminished capacity to empathize.

The danger is not merely polarization. It is the slow atrophy of the deeply human impulse to gather, deliberate, and build community in response to shared problems.

Yet Osmanu returns, again, to structure. People are navigating systems they did not design. The solution, he suggests, is not to retrofit what exists but to imagine something fundamentally different. “We accept all that came before us as all-encompassing,” he said. But there is no reason to assume current political arrangements are the outer limit of possibility.

His own work reflects that belief. Grounded in face-to-face organizing and local accountability, you can find Osmanu organizing union meetings, working on town budgets, and talking to his constituents about neighborhood concerns. For him, political currency is best spent in one’s own community, building tangible change.

Final Thoughts

I entered my conversation with Abdul expecting a certain degree of pessimism. Within political spaces—particularly on the left—there is a prevailing sense that both young people and the nation itself may be too far gone to salvage. That fatalism, though understandable, often becomes self-defeating. It seeps into young people’s political consciousness and narrows the horizon of what feels possible.

Osmanu resists that framing. Rather than fixating on the enormity of partisan dysfunction, he focuses on the micro: grassroots organizing, municipal governance, tangible outcomes. By narrowing the scope, he preserves space for optimism. His politics are rooted less in spectacle and more in proximity—less in diagnosing the poison, and more in tending to the well.

At the center of that approach is a commitment to the humanity of political participation. It is a stance that feels increasingly urgent—and, slowly, more visible in mainstream conversations. For Abdul, victories by figures like Mamdani and other young candidates such as Bond, DeFendini and Shvets signal more than symbolic wins. They draw broader attention to the kind of ground-level work representatives like him are doing every day. Work that often escapes national headlines but shapes daily life.

Historically, young people have represented some of the lowest rates of consistent political participation. But recent elections suggest a shift—not only in polling data, but in lived reality. Faced with what many see as the erosion of democratic norms under the current administration, young voters have shown renewed willingness to mobilize.

For decades, young people have operated from a place of political powerlessness, unsure whether their engagement could meaningfully alter entrenched systems. Abdul represents a growing cohort unwilling to accept that posture. His work rejects cynicism as strategy.

There are still open questions about whether this renewed energy can be sustained. But as Abdul reminded me, political power rarely resides in individuals alone. Its force is collective—and when organized locally, it becomes reality.