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There are a thousand reasons for Gen Z to be angry right now. As we usher in a new year and a new presidential administration, the nation’s two dominant political parties have yet to put our interests front and center. Solutions to issues like climate change, the housing crisis, and the cost of higher education remain little more than campaign rhetoric.

Our voices also haven’t been prioritized in the national debate, which is unsurprising given our lack of political representation. According to NBC News, the 119th U.S. Congress is the third-oldest in our nation’s history, and December races for congressional committee posts—largely viewed as a litmus test for future Democratic party leadership—yielded few appointments for members under 40 years old. The GOP has attracted more and more young voters (especially young men) in the most recent election, but the party has yet to fully engage them in formulating its platform. The very people inheriting this country are left out of shaping its future.

I was born in 2008, and from what I’ve seen, many in my generation aren’t holding their breath. Countless headlines laud our activism, and predict radical political transformation once we come of age. We’ve led student movements for climate action, fought for racial justice, and revolutionized the use of social media as a tool for social change. We’re opinionated, informed, and growing rapidly as a portion of the electorate: In the 2024 election, more than 40 million members of Gen Z were eligible to vote, with 8 million having turned 18 since the 2022 midterms.

Yet, the overall youth share of the vote in presidential elections (14 percent in 2024) has steadily declined since 2016, when it was 19 percent, and 2020, when it was 17 percent. Last November, only 42 percent of eligible voters aged 18 to 29 showed up at the polls, compared to about half just four years earlier. We’re indisputably a force to be reckoned with in American politics, but what’s missing is our actual votes. Disillusioned and disaffected with a broken system, some are tuning out entirely.

When I spoke with peers over the summer, I witnessed it firsthand. As I sat around a picnic table with a group of like-minded friends, one girl winced as she scrolled through her phone. We had all read the news—headlines dominated by the same two graying men for as long as we could remember. It was always yet another of Joe Biden’s gaffes or one of Donald Trump’s alarming comments in praise of foreign dictators. For a while, sardonic humor and TikTok edits of the two candidates set to songs by Chappell Roan had been entertaining, but our patience was wearing thin. “Not this again,” someone sighed, and slammed his phone down on the table. Expressing apathy or disgust towards both candidates, several of my friends who had recently turned 18 announced their intention not to vote in November.

As a 16-year-old longing to cast a ballot of my own, their words disheartened me. Why would they relinquish such a vital opportunity to make their voices heard? “There are other things we can do,” I insisted. “I volunteer with reproductive rights organizations—phone-banking, canvassing, lobbying Congress—you could, too.” The table fell quiet. My friends averted their eyes. I became self-conscious: Had I sounded naive?

The person to my right explained that her parents wouldn’t let her engage politically; another claimed it wouldn’t make any difference; a third just didn’t have the time and energy. The fight, they believed, was out of their hands, left to the whims of political power-brokers in Washington, D.C. When Biden was replaced by another establishment Democrat without an open primary or any other efforts to engage voters, their disenchantment persisted. Eventually I, too, began to doubt whether my efforts and those of fellow young organizers meant anything at all.

My friends weren’t the only ones to abstain from this past election. According to Tufts University’s Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement, the estimated voter turnout among people aged 18 to 29 was only 42 percent in 2024, down from around 52 to 55 percent in 2020.

Those who chose to withhold their votes from Trump and Harris had a myriad of reasons. Many young progressives were appalled by Harris’ equivocation on the conflict in Gaza, with some choosing to abstain or casting a ballot for Green Party candidate Jill Stein, who won 22 percent of the vote in hotly contested Dearborn, Michigan. I recall a conversation I had with a college-aged Michigan voter while phone-banking on Election Day: While she was a registered Democrat, she told me she’d be voting Stein because the party’s national leadership didn’t have the guts to stray from the script and address one of their voters’ pressing concerns.

Meanwhile, many Gen Z conservatives felt alienated by both parties, regardless of who they ended up voting for. A friend of mine confessed in October that while she agreed with her conservative parents on most things, she knew she wouldn’t vote the same way if presented with different options.

Still others expected nothing new from a sitting leader of the current administration or an aging former president: Nearly 20 percent of young voters interviewed by GenForward at the University of Chicago in October said they believed no candidate running in the election represented “change.” For a while last fall, I personally lacked the appetite to read the daily news, even as pundits and politicians alike belabored the impending election’s high stakes. Every headline offered more of the same. With neither party fully in touch with our interests, I began to grow weary, and I wasn’t alone.

Summer 2024 studies by the University of California’s Berkeley Institute for Young Americans issued an early warning. “Millennials and Gen Zers are generations unlike any other because of the risks they face,” Erin Heys, the institute’s policy director, said to a university publication. “From the housing crisis to the threat of climate change and AI, young people are feeling hopeless about the challenges in front of them, and are disillusioned with a political system that is unresponsive to their needs.”

These words ring true—for many of my friends, home ownership feels like a distant dream; unemployment an all too real possibility; and the consequences of global warming an inevitable disaster. Many of us struggle with anxiety and depression on an unprecedented level, as a comfortable future seems further and further out of reach. We use dark humor to cope with terrifying possibilities, but beneath the sarcasm hides an earnest fear: In a moment of painful sincerity, one of my close friends told me that all he really wanted when he grew up was a stable job, a happy family, and enough money to have a roof over his head. Is it too much to ask?

The answer: No, it’s not—but we’ll have to fight for it ourselves. Too many appear to have boycotted this past election, dissatisfied with a political establishment that has failed time and time again to ensure for us a future. That’s where Gen Z is making a mistake. These problems remain urgent, unaddressed, and wholly up to us. If we don’t step up and take action, who else will?

The moment is now. By 2028, Gen Z’s share of the electorate will have grown significantly. Both parties will increasingly rely on our support, and to win, they’ll need to accommodate our needs in their platforms. But to be heard, we need to be loud and clear.

Those who are too young to vote today, like myself, can still make their voices heard and work toward a better future—for example, by calling voters, knocking on doors, posting on social media, raising funds, talking to family and friends, calling representatives, writing letters to the editor, or signing petitions. Gen Z has already elected our first peer to Congress, Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-FL), and taken leadership in movements like the School Strike for Climate and March for Our Lives. Organizations like NextGen America, Voters of Tomorrow, and Future Caucus are already mobilizing Gen Z and millennial voters nationwide for the 2028 elections. In 2023, Reproductive Freedom For All established a Youth Action Council run by members under 30 years old to organize young people for reproductive freedom. As an active member of the council, I found ways to help make a real difference. You can, too.

This country is on the brink of seismic political change, and Gen Z must rise to the occasion. Both major parties are in the process of reinventing themselves: Donald Trump has radically transformed the Republican Party from what it was ten years ago, and in response to his shocking successes, Democrats must reckon with their glaring weaknesses to make a resurgence in 2028. Amid this process, it’s time for Gen Z to speak up about who we are and what we want, so that we may play a role in rewriting American politics and shaping the future. Our generation has a thousand reasons to be pissed—but one big reason to be poised.