So, in the spirit of the season, we asked Americans about a different set of things that keep us up at night: ghosts, spells, and the things we can’t quite explain.

These stories don’t just tell us what people believe; they’re also part of the traditions and experiences we share. At a time when it can feel harder to connect with our neighbors, is Halloween still one of those rare occasions that gets people out of their houses and into their communities?

Do We Believe?

For all the ghosts, witches, and monsters we treat as fiction this time of year, belief in the supernatural is hardly unusual in America.

More than half of Americans (56%) say stories about ghosts, haunted places, or supernatural events were common in their family or community growing up. And when we asked what shaped people’s beliefs, Hollywood wasn’t at the top of the list. Personal experiences came first (38%), followed by the experiences of family or friends (36%) and religious or spiritual beliefs (35%). Movies, television, books, and podcasts came in at just 24%.

“Long ago, I was living with my family in a house we had recently moved into. We were all sitting in the living room after supper when we heard a noise coming from the kitchen. It was loud enough we all heard it; it sounded similar to the sound a bowling ball makes when hitting the surface and rolling down the lane. We all jumped, then scurried to the kitchen to see what had fallen and rolled on the floor. We found absolutely nothing on the kitchen floor. We checked the other nearby rooms to see if we had misjudged the exact location, but didn’t find anything out of place. The house did not have a basement or an upper story. For as long as my family lived there, this occurred periodically, always with nothing we could find to explain it. At first it was a joke when we said it must be a poltergeist, but we never came up with another explanation!” - 71, Male, Democrat, Hancock County, IN

Those stories become attached to places, too. More than half of Americans (56%) say there is a place in or near their community that people claim is haunted. About one in five even know the story behind it.

“I grew up in York County PA. Getting to drive around to all the haunted and mysterious places with my sisters was a very fond memory.” - 39, Female, Democrat, El Paso County, CO

Of course, knowing the local ghost story is one thing. Being asked to do something about the supernatural is another. In perhaps our least serious measure of civic duty, we asked people to imagine being told they were the next Slayer—chosen to protect the world from vampires, demons, and other forces of darkness. Even if they were allowed to decline being chosen, fifty-two percent said they would probably or definitely accept the job.

The Neighborhood Comes Alive

For all the ghosts, costumes, and promises of fright, Halloween is also one of the few holidays that sends us out our front doors and into our neighborhoods.

Nearly eight in ten Americans (78%) say trick-or-treating happens in their community, while 73% see Halloween decorations. Majorities also report pumpkin patches or fall festivals (60%), trunk-or-treat events (59%), haunted houses or ghost tours (53%), and school Halloween events (53%). Just 4% say none of the activities we asked about happen where they live.

“The whole neighborhood where I live has a decorating contest that we all do. And then on halloween, we all go around looking at each other’s houses and lights and decorations” - 18, Female, Democrat, Platte County, MO

And all of that activity appears to create something increasingly unusual: a reason to interact with the people who live around us. Nearly half of Americans (47%) say Halloween gives them more opportunities to interact with their neighbors than they otherwise would, compared with just 7% who say it gives them fewer.

“Our tradition is to participate in the town’s business trunk or treat. We dress up and get kids from neighboring towns to come to get candy from each business on our stretch of street.” - 43, Female, Republican, Hardeman County, TN

What people enjoy about Halloween also changes as we get older. Among adults under 35, being scared is one of the biggest attractions: 38% say it’s among the things they like most about Halloween. Among Americans 65 and older, just 12% say the same. Instead, more than half of older Americans (51%) say they enjoy seeing kids trick-or-treat—compared with just 20% of adults under 35. When asked to share their favorite Halloween memory, some older Americans seem to prefer to do the scaring:

“Giving [my] daughter, her friend and their kids a hay ride behind my tractor back in my woods. My son was dressed up like Jason with the trench coat, mask and chainless chain saw. He jumped up in the woods and really scared everyone. My granddaughter would not come back to my home for over a year.” - 83, Male, Republican, Collier County, FL

“I had kids over for treats and games, and we were in our basement that had sliding glass doors. My husband snuck outside dressed in a dark, scary costume, appeared at the sliding glass doors and SCARED them silly. The kids had a GREAT time and really enjoyed the scare.” - 72, Female, Republican, Moniteau County, MO

And yet, even as Halloween continues to bring people together, nearly half of Americans still feel we’ve lost something. Forty-eight percent say Halloween feels less like a community event today than it did when they were growing up. Just 20% say it feels more like one.

But the experience of Halloween looks very different depending on how connected people already feel to the place where they live.

Among Americans who feel strongly that they’re part of a community where people care about them and they matter, 59% say Halloween gives them more opportunities to interact with their neighbors. Among those who don’t feel part of such a community at all, just 30% say the same, and more than a quarter (27%) don’t participate in Halloween activities at all.

The divide is even more striking when people look backward. Among those who don’t feel part of a caring community at all, 62% say Halloween feels less like a community event today than when they were growing up, while just 8% say it feels more like one. Among people who feel the strongest sense of belonging, those numbers are almost perfectly balanced: 35% say Halloween has become less communal, while 34% say it has become more communal.

Interestingly, the difference isn’t simply whether Halloween exists in someone’s neighborhood. Trick-or-treating is nearly equally common among the most- and least-connected Americans. The larger gaps show up in activities that require more collective participation: neighborhood parties, costume parades, school events, and community festivals.

Final Thoughts

Halloween obviously can’t solve our larger problems of connection and community. But there is something notable about a tradition that still gets millions of people to decorate their homes, walk around their neighborhoods, knock on one another’s doors, admire each other’s children, and participate in the same slightly strange ritual year after year.

“When I was little my sister and I used to dump our candy after trick or treating and trade each other for our favorites. Now my kids are old enough to do the same and I love to watch the tradition continue” - 35, Female, Independent, Cuyahoga County, OH

That leaves us wondering:

• What other traditions, rituals, and shared experiences still reliably bring people out of their homes and into contact with one another?

• How much does a sense of community depend on having places and occasions where connection can happen casually, without needing to be organized or planned?

• As some of our shared traditions become less communal, what would it look like to create new reasons for people to participate in the life of their neighborhoods and communities?

Maybe building stronger communities doesn’t always have to start with something big. Sometimes it starts by giving people a reason to open the door.

Who you gonna call?

Leave a comment

Murmuration is a non-profit that organizes a network of partners and equips them with the insights, tools, and services needed to help communities build and activate the power to transform America into a nation where everyone thrives.

It is one of those phrases that becomes almost unavoidable during an election. Pollsters ask voters whether it is their most important issue. Campaigns promise to fix it. Analysts look to inflation, unemployment, wages, consumer sentiment, and the stock market to explain how Americans are feeling about it.

But most people don’t experience “the economy” as a single issue. They experience it through their own finances—what they earn, what they spend, and what they can afford.

They experience it when the grocery bill is higher than they expected. When the rent goes up again. When their paycheck doesn’t stretch as far as it used to. When they are worried about losing their job or whether the job they have will ever pay enough to get ahead. When buying a home feels impossible, health care costs too much, or an unexpected expense could throw the rest of the month into question. And those aren’t interchangeable experiences.

To understand what those pressures actually look like, Murmuration, in partnership with Voto Latino Foundation, surveyed 7,765 people nationwide about their economic experiences, expectations of government, and priorities for the next Congress. You can read more in the full report “Economic Pressure and Political Voice”.

The topline is clear: 59% say lowering the cost of living should be the highest priority for national leadership.

Many Economies

Asked what the government could do over the next two years to make their lives better, one person told us simply: “Make wages match the cost of living. I cannot afford to live anymore.” Another said, “make housing affordable for young adults who can’t afford to live on their own and still live with their parents.” Someone else framed the problem differently: “Let me actually keep the money I’m making instead of taxing it so I can take care of my children instead of relying so much on the government and charity to just survive.”

That variation appears throughout the survey. When we asked Americans what frustrates them most in their everyday lives, 35% pointed to the cost of everyday necessities, 13% to housing, 11% to finding a good job or earning enough money, and 8% to getting affordable, quality health care. Another 10% chose crime and public safety.

But their priorities depend on the financial comfort of their household.

Different experiences also shape what people want the next Congress to prioritize. Among Americans most frustrated by the cost of necessities, 73% want Congress to prioritize lowering the cost of living. The same is true of the 66% of people most frustrated by housing and 66% of those most frustrated by jobs and wages.

But beyond that shared concern, priorities begin to diverge. Among people struggling with jobs and wages, 52% prioritize the economy and jobs, while 40% of those struggling with necessities prioritize health care.

The differences become even more clear when people are allowed to describe, in their own words, what the government could do over the next two years to make their lives better. Among people most frustrated by necessities, 41% independently say lowering prices or the cost of living. Among those most frustrated by housing, 20% specifically name housing—more than three times the share among people focused on necessities. Among those struggling with jobs and wages, 19% say better jobs or wages, more than twice the national average.

In other words, “make the economy better” means something quite different depending on where someone sits within the economy. But material circumstances are only part of the story. Our experiences also sit alongside different explanations for why things have become harder and different ideas about what the government should do next.

Among Americans most frustrated by the cost of necessities, there is no dominant explanation for rising costs. Seventeen percent point to tariffs and trade policies, 16% to inflation, 14% to government economic policies, and 14% to companies trying to make larger profits. People struggling with housing distribute responsibility somewhat differently: 16% point to inflation, while 15% each point to government economic policies and corporate profits.

Yet for the 10% of Americans whose main issue is crime and public safety, a very different story emerges. The largest group of these people (19%) say that immigration is the main reason costs have gone up, and another 10% blame the COVID-19 pandemic. Relatively fewer point to trade policy (7%) or corporate profit-seeking (9%).

So the difference is not simply that one person is paying too much for rent while another is paying too much for groceries. What people experience as the problem connects to the broader story they tell about what is happening around them—and those stories can lead people experiencing a broadly shared concern about affordability toward very different diagnoses and priorities.

What Makes Life Better?

Those different diagnoses become even more consequential when we move from identifying problems to solving them.

Among Americans most frustrated by the cost of necessities, 46% want Congress to limit excessive price increases by companies, 39% want a higher minimum wage, 36% want tariffs reduced, and 30% want greater food assistance. Among people struggling with jobs and wages, support for raising the minimum wage rises to 48%. Among people most concerned about crime and public safety, support for limiting corporate price increases falls to 36%, and support for raising the minimum wage to 31%.

Housing provides an especially clear example of how the experience of a problem can shape what people believe would solve it.

Both groups can look at the same housing market and conclude that housing costs too much. But they appear to be describing different housing problems. For one group, the pressure is more closely connected to rents and the availability of affordable housing. For the other, the cost of financing a home looms much larger.

The urgency of a solution also depends on where people are starting from. Across the country, 55% say political leaders should prioritize long-term changes that address the root causes of economic problems, compared with 37% who want immediate financial relief. But that balance changes sharply with people’s own financial circumstances.

The same pattern shows up in what people want Congress to focus on. Lowering the cost of living is a top priority for 71% of struggling Americans, compared with 48% of those who are comfortable and 33% of those who describe themselves as prosperous.

Final Thoughts

There is a lot of agreement in this data. Americans are worried about affordability. Many want something to change. And most can point to something quite specific that would make their own lives easier. But “the economy” flattens those experiences into a single category.

People worried about necessities are especially focused on prices. People worried about work emphasize jobs and wages. People worried about housing are much more likely to want action on rents and affordable housing. And people focused on crime and public safety are more likely to connect economic conditions to immigration and to prioritize a very different set of issues.

Those aren’t simply different opinions about the same political issue. They are different experiences of security, constraint, and possibility. If we want to understand what people actually need, we may need to ask a different set of questions:

• Are we listening closely enough to the specific problem people want solved, rather than the broad issue they say they care about?

• What does it take for economic improvement to become something people can actually feel in their own lives?

• When people disagree about what caused economic hardship, can the same policies ever feel like solutions to both?

The economy may be measured nationally. Financial security is lived one household at a time.

Not everyone is paying the same price.

Leave a comment

Murmuration is a non-profit that organizes a network of partners and equips them with the insights, tools, and services needed to help communities build and activate the power to transform America into a nation where everyone thrives.

Voto Latino Foundation is a civic advocacy organization dedicated to educating and empowering the next generation of Latino voters while working to build a more inclusive and representative democracy.

In this special edition of The Exchange, we’re spotlighting voices from More Human: Life, Democracy, and Connection in the Age of AI, our recent event in Boston, presented in collaboration with our media partner, USA TODAY. There, we brought together researchers, organizers, journalists, and civic leaders to explore how AI is changing the ways we work, learn, connect, and participate in our communities—and what we want to preserve about being human as these technologies become a bigger part of our lives.

Our conversation was grounded in Murmuration’s latest research, supported by the Walton Family Foundation. AI and the Human Future: Americans’ Views on Artificial Intelligence Across Life, Society, and Democracy explores how Americans are navigating AI and where they believe human judgment, connection, and participation should remain central. The findings reveal a mix of optimism and concern: Americans recognize AI’s potential to expand access to knowledge and make everyday tasks easier, but they also have questions about misinformation, privacy, critical thinking, and the possibility that technology could come at the expense of human connection. They want AI to support how people think and learn, not replace their judgment, and they believe people should have a meaningful voice in decisions about how these technologies shape their communities and democracy.

Thank you to Sarah Stamper, Abby Binder, Danielle Allen, and Susan Page for sharing their perspectives and helping us explore these questions from different angles. Their conversations underscored that the future of AI is not just a question of what technology can do, but what we want it to do for us—and how we can ensure that the future we build keeps people, relationships, and civic life at its center.

More Human Research Overview & Community Perspectives

Sarah Stamper | Chief Research Officer, Murmuration

“At the heart of everything we heard over and over and over again was that Americans are asking for a future in which human agency, human connection, and human judgment remain at the center.”

Read the full transcript of Sarah Stamper’s lightning talk on what listening to 35,000 people revealed about Americans’ views on AI and human connection.

Youth Identity, Culture & Relationships

Abby Binder | Rithm Project Fellow

“AI and big tech don’t get to decide what remains human. We do, and we have to set the norms together, especially with our young people.”

Read the full transcript of Abby Binder’s lightning talk on Gen Z’s relationship between identity and belonging, and AI.

Democracy & Organizing in the Age of AI

Danielle Allen | Author and Political Philosopher at Harvard University

“The point I want to make is that democracy is a technology. It’s like 37,000 antique clocks scattered around the country, and every one needs to be upgraded. And we have to figure out how to do that together.”

Read the full transcript of Danielle Allen’s lightning talk on how civic participation and organizing must evolve in an AI world.

Trust & Truth

Susan Page | USA TODAY Washington Bureau Chief

“It takes humans to provide judgment, oversight, and ethics, and it takes humans to fulfill journalists’ fundamental and enduring role in civic life: to tell the truth and convince Americans they can trust us to tell the truth, and to provide the shared information upon which the decisions of a democracy can be made.”

Read the full transcript of Susan Page’s lightning talk exploring how AI has impacted our ability to trust and find the truth in today’s changing media landscape.

While our More Human event may be over, the research that inspired these lightning talks lives on. Check out Murmuration’s research report to explore the data that shaped the event.

Leave a comment

Murmuration is a nonprofit working to transform America into a nation where everyone can thrive. We organize a network of community-focused partners and equip them with the insights, tools, and services they need to help communities build and activate power more effectively. murmuration.org

This research was supported by the Walton Family Foundation, which has funded Murmuration’s Gen Z research efforts since 2021. Learn more about our ongoing research partnership and findings on the youngest generation of voters.

That makes teenagers particularly important voices in the conversation about artificial intelligence. Much of the debate about young people and AI has focused on what adults think they should do: whether students should use it, how schools should respond, and what risks parents and educators should worry about. But teenagers are already making those decisions for themselves. They are figuring out when AI is useful, when it goes too far, whether it can be trusted, and what they do—and do not—want it to replace.

With support from the Walton Family Foundation, Murmuration surveyed 799 teens ages 13 to 17 across the United States about how AI is affecting their lives, their learning, and their relationships. If you want to see what adults across the country had to say, you can also read our full AI and the Human Future report.

Better and Worse

Teens are divided over whether AI is improving their own lives. Twenty-seven percent say it is making their life better, while 25% say it is making their life worse. Another 31% say it has not made much difference, and 16% are unsure. But their assessment becomes considerably more negative when they look beyond themselves. Forty-four percent believe AI is making the world worse, compared with just 19% who believe it is making the world better. Another 15% say it has not made much difference, while 22% are unsure.

That tension is clearest when they consider the future. Nearly half (46%) believe AI will be both one of the best things and one of the biggest problems for people their age. Twenty-one percent think it will primarily be one of the biggest problems, compared with just 8% who think it will primarily be one of the best things.

There are also notable differences between girls and boys. Thirty-seven percent of boys say AI is making their lives better, compared with just 16% of girls. Girls are also substantially more likely to say AI is making the world worse (52% vs. 37% among boys). Still, across groups, teens appear especially concerned about what AI could mean for independent thought. Nearly half (47%) believe AI makes people worse at thinking for themselves, while just 10% believe it helps people think for themselves. Another 31% say AI changes how people think, but not necessarily for better or worse.

Learning With AI

Nowhere are teens’ boundaries around AI clearer than in education. When asked what schools should prioritize, 62% say it is more important to teach students how to learn without using AI. Just 25% say teaching students how to use AI well should take priority. That preference is identical among younger teens ages 13 to 15 and older teens ages 16 to 17.

But teens do not want AI removed from the classroom. Instead, they make a fairly clear distinction between using AI to support learning and using it to replace the work of learning.

Nearly three-quarters (73%) believe students should be allowed to use AI to explain something they do not understand. Two-thirds (66%) support using it to check work for mistakes, while 62% support using it to look up information. More than half say students should be allowed to use AI to study for tests (58%) or come up with ideas (51%).

Support drops dramatically when AI begins doing the student’s work. Only 16% think students should be allowed to use AI to complete homework, 11% to write part or all of an essay, and 10% to take quizzes or tests.

Human Connection

The boundaries teens draw around AI extend beyond school. Nearly half say they would feel comfortable talking with an AI chatbot about a personal problem or important decision: 15% would feel very comfortable and another 34% mostly comfortable. At the same time, 37% say they would be not very or not at all comfortable doing so.

But willingness to talk with AI does not mean teens see it as a replacement for another person. Asked what would help most if they were going through a hard time, 70% choose talking to another person. Another 16% say talking with a person and an AI chatbot would help about the same. Just 5% say talking with an AI chatbot would help most.

Teens are similarly mixed about what AI could mean for loneliness. Twenty-one percent believe it will help people feel less lonely, while 15% think it will make people feel lonelier. The largest group, 41%, believes AI will do both.

Final Thoughts

Teenagers see AI as useful for explaining, checking, searching, studying, and generating ideas. At the same time, many worry that it could make people worse at thinking independently. They want schools to teach them how to learn without it. And although many are comfortable discussing personal problems with an AI chatbot, they overwhelmingly prefer another human being when they are actually going through a difficult time.

Perhaps most importantly, teens do not appear to think they need to choose between believing AI will be good or bad. Nearly half expect it to be both.

These findings are also a snapshot of a technology that is changing extraordinarily quickly. Our survey captures what 13- to 17-year-olds think in the summer of 2026. Their views may change as the technology becomes more capable, schools establish clearer norms, and teens themselves gain more experience living alongside it. That leaves us with important questions for what comes next:

• What kinds of AI use strengthen young people’s ability to think independently, and when does assistance begin to replace learning?

• When can AI support human connection, and when might it begin to substitute for relationships young people need?

• Why are girls substantially more skeptical about AI than boys, and what do those differences tell us about how young people are experiencing this technology?

The challenge ahead is not simply teaching young people how to use AI. It is helping them build the judgment to decide when to use it, when not to use it, and what parts of learning and being human should remain their own. They may already be telling us where to start.

Turns out, teenagers have boundaries.

Leave a comment

This research was supported by the Walton Family Foundation, which has funded Murmuration’s Gen Z research efforts since 2021. Learn more about our ongoing research partnership and findings on the youngest generation of voters here.

Murmuration is a non-profit that organizes a network of partners and equips them with the insights, tools, and services needed to help communities build and activate the power to transform America into a nation where everyone thrives. murmuration.org

Murmuration’s Chief Marketing and Operating Officer, Michael Slaby, sat down with author Hélène Landemore, the Damon Wells ‘58 Professor of Political Science at Yale University with a courtesy appointment in the Department of Philosophy, Distinguished Research Fellow at Oxford’s Institute for Ethics in AI, and Founder of the Governing X conference series, for The Exchange, our interview series featuring influential thought leaders, organizers, advocates, and others who are shaping the future of civic life.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Michael Slaby: Hélène, I’m so grateful for you being here. To start, I’d love to hear a little bit about your story—how your thinking, going all the way back to your book Democratic Reason, has helped us reimagine what healthy, vibrant, open democracy means and could look like in modern life. What has your attention at this point in your work?

Hélène Landemore: If you want to start at Democratic Reason, which I guess is the starting point intellectually, I was interested in this idea of collective intelligence as an argument for democracy as a decision rule and a regime form. That led me to think about the mechanisms through which we aggregate our individual judgments, generate new approaches and solutions, and make choices about which ones to pursue.

Social scientific evidence suggests that groups are smarter when they are more cognitively diverse, and that this matters more than simply bringing the best and brightest together. So I began thinking that maybe we’re not optimizing for collective intelligence in the current version of democracy that we’re familiar with, which is electoral democracy. It was born in the eighteenth century, at a time when we were living under monarchical regimes, and was seen as a major improvement because it asked people for their consent and focused on elections as a way to choose leaders.

But the people designing these systems still thought that if you wanted a smart parliament, you needed to put the smart people in it. They tended to focus on the wealthier and more educated parts of the population and then choose the most competent among them. I saw a mismatch between what contemporary social science tells us about collective intelligence and the way we select the members of our key assemblies. If we wanted to maximize the collective intelligence of our parliaments, maybe we should choose their members by random selection.

That led me to Open Democracy, where I explored what an actually smart democracy might look like. Through researching the Icelandic case study for Open Democracy, I realized that selecting representatives by lot isn’t enough. You also want that group to receive feedback from the larger public, both because you might miss perspectives and information and because of questions of legitimacy, equality, and inclusion.

Then I became more involved in actual experiments, including the French Citizens’ Conventions. I wanted to tell a story that was more humane and less focused on the epistemic dimension, and more about the emotional and relational dimensions of these assemblies. That’s what led to Politics Without Politicians. Despite the title, it’s not really about politicians so much as the kind of politics you can do when they’re not in the room.

Michael Slaby: What becomes possible when we deprofessionalize representation? One thing I see emerging from the invitation to greater participation and shared power is that, even when we’re still looking at representative expression, the fluidity of access to power invites more of us to participate in the use of power—not just in who holds it.

Our dysfunction around the choice mechanism has led to the professionalization of people in representative positions, rather than inviting everyone to participate in governing, solving problems, and exercising our collective wisdom and judgment. I love the increase in agency that your work invites us to consider. How do you think about that relationship between agency and representative democracy?

Hélène Landemore: I’m glad you say that, because one of the criticisms I often receive is that lotocratic models or assemblies chosen by lot would entail a lack of agency for the people who aren’t selected. That’s why I think it’s important to make clear that I still want people to vote and have agency in campaigning around such moments of mass voting (whether they’re regularly planned top-down or spontaneous citizen-initiated referenda). I think those moments of mass voting should be about bundles of issues, programs, or one-off issues, rather than about selecting representatives.

My argument is not only empirical but also theoretical. Even if we could achieve the best version of representative democracy, it would most likely still fail to capture enough of the cognitive diversity of the larger group. That’s why I think these systems struggle to generate the policy platforms we need. In the United States, you have two platforms, roughly on the left and the right, and they fail to cover the vast range of options that people are actually asking for.

Michael Slaby: Anything that excludes any meaningful part of the populace is going to condemn itself to blind spots that ultimately matter. You’ve also written about the distinction between agenda-setting and final say. Could you explain that distinction and why it matters for how we think about power?

Hélène Landemore: Power is often assumed to be located in the final say. If voters get to choose representatives and the policy platforms associated with them, or even if they get to vote in referenda, then they have power. That’s true, but the power to elect representatives or the power to say no is still different from the power of being in the room and setting the agenda. Agenda-setting is the “second face” of power, according to a famous analysis by Peter Bachrach and Morton Baratz. And sure, you can try to do that from outside the room, through the party system as well as campaigning, canvassing, or writing letters to representatives, but we know how limited those mechanisms are. Even at the level of the ideal, it’s a limited form of democratic agenda-setting.

There’s also what some have called the “third face” of power ideology (per the intellectual contribution of another political scientist named Steven Luke)—what’s acceptable, what kind of future we can imagine, and what policy platforms are considered realistic. People are often more on the receiving end than the shaping end of that process of defining the Overton window.

The more I think about it, the more I believe an authentic democracy would put at least two out of the three “faces” of power in the hands of the public (the third one, ideology, is perhaps the one no one in particular should control). Elites would be employed and mobilized in the service of those forms of power, rather than concentrating them. Right now, agenda-setting power and even the ideological power component are largely controlled by elites, while only some of the final say is left to the people, after much of the process has already been determined.

Michael Slaby: One of the things that captivates me in your work is that, in conversations about civic renewal, there’s often a focus on electoral reform, or on bridging and bonding through social cohesion and deliberation, but those conversations can become disconnected from power.

Citizen lotteries and assemblies offer tools for participatory power. But one of the challenges is that the experience of a citizens’ assembly is not always connected to an institutional lever of power. The findings and deliberations can be separated from the final decision and implementation. In your experience, do you see places where municipalities, states, or countries are actually giving citizens’ assemblies the power to be the final approval mechanism?

Hélène Landemore: I now think the first French Citizens’ Assembly on Climate was actually trying to do just that. President Macron made a promise that whatever came out of the convention, he would take it directly to a referendum, a parliamentary vote, or direct regulation. It was not letting the assembly decide but setting the agenda in such a way that the downstream decision-makers were likely to follow suit.

He didn’t fully keep his promise, of course, but the promise was there. Unfortunately, the citizens in the assembly were given the option of a referendum, which was, in a way, the most promising route for their recommendations, and they chose not to pursue it. They were afraid that people outside the assembly wouldn’t trust them enough to support them, that the referendum would fail, and that it would doom the future of citizens’ assemblies. So they chose to trust the government and the parliamentarians and gave them their 149 recommendations.

Those recommendations were considerably diluted by ministers and parliament, so the causal effect of the assembly on the law was greatly diminished. And afterward, the government passed a law placing citizens’ conventions under the responsibility of an existing legislative chamber. So they’re no longer as autonomous or self-standing; their power has been, one might argue, domesticated.

In Connecticut, we’re running a citizens’ assembly on property tax. Unlike in France, we started with no firm commitment from anyone to implement the recommendations. But we did get a courageous commitment from the current state comptroller, Sean Scanlon, to take the recommendations and bring them to a legislative hearing. It’s a loose docking of the citizens’ assembly to the system, but it’s a form of connection. We’ll see what happens after September 26.

Michael Slaby: There’s so much talk in American political discourse about polarization and whether we have the interrelationship and deliberative skills to be productive in a shared space. In Politics Without Politicians, you talk about a good assembly being one where the shyest person is comfortable speaking. Could you talk a little bit about what you’ve learned about how these conversations work and what helps create that kind of space?

Hélène Landemore: We’re all familiar with conversations where the loudest person, the most opinionated person, or the person with greater status or rhetorical skills ends up dominating. The rest of the group is nodding silently and hiding their true opinions. As a result, the collective intelligence of the group is lacking.

The idea in citizens’ assemblies is to make everyone comfortable, especially people who are used to being silenced, overlooked, or invisibilized. In the book, I use a phrase from G. K. Chesterton: “All real democracy is an attempt (like that of a jolly hostess) to bring the shy people out.” That captures what I’ve seen in these assemblies.

There are all kinds of facilitation techniques to bring out natural introverts, but also people who are made structurally shy by their life experiences. You can change the format, break people into smaller groups, or use chat instead of speaking on camera. The norms are also explicit, and people can appeal to them. People are told to listen carefully and let other people speak, so when someone talks over others, they’re the ones being called out for abusing that privilege.

These processes are far from perfect and still reflect inequalities in the larger society. But of all the settings I’m aware of, I think citizens’ assemblies are among the most welcoming and inclusive.

Michael Slaby: One of the things we see in our research is distrust in institutions and people struggling with their relationship to civic life. We’re living through a moment of intense populism. But beyond expanding economic inequality, we’re seeing expanding inequities of political power. Many people feel that we’re pretending to share power without actually inviting people to express it.

When people have the opportunity to participate in spaces like citizens’ assemblies—to be included in the expression of shared power and work together, even when the process is imperfect, or the recommendations aren’t fully implemented—does that experience change their relationship to community, institutions, and civic life?

Hélène Landemore: I think it does a lot. It can help depolarize people, bring them back into the fold of regular electoral democracy, and even increase trust in politicians. Although I tend to present citizens’ assemblies as an alternative to politics with politicians, they can actually help re-legitimize politics with politicians.

We’ve seen this in Ireland, where citizens’ assemblies became a routine part of the lawmaking process. The popularity of politicians increased, and Ireland became the European country where people were least likely to say they wanted to replace elected politicians with randomly selected people. The same thing happened in France after Macron organized a national debate and citizens’ convention. His popularity increased again, at least for a while. Was it specifically because of the randomly selected assemblies, or because people felt that he was making a good-faith effort to listen? I think people are willing to give a lot of goodwill when they feel they’re being heard.

At the individual level, I talk in my book about Jules, who was deeply disaffected with politics. When he arrived at the French Climate Convention, he wouldn’t even leave his carry-on at the door because he thought it was a scam and planned to leave at any moment. By the end of the nine-month process, he had embraced the community so much that he returned home and ran for election.

His self-esteem and faith in the collective had been transformed. He still considered himself a climate skeptic, but he voted for the recommendations that came out of the convention. He said he felt loved, made friends, and found a renewed sense of purpose, which he redirected toward, or at least, inside the existing political system.

Michael Slaby: It’s striking how the experience of love and belonging can transform our relationship to trust and institutions, and disconnect those things from the routine experience of politics and civic life.

You also mentioned that both populist and elitist approaches tend to promise outcomes to improve people’s lives without necessarily giving them a voice in that process. How do you think about that distinction?

Hélène Landemore: What frustrates me about both the populist and elitist answers is that they focus on the “for the people” component of democracy. They promise solutions for our welfare. The tech oligarchs might say, “We’ll give you universal basic income,” while they continue to collect your data and make money from it. Populists might promise to lower taxes or punish the rich. People certainly want outcomes, but they also want a voice. In fact, I think you don’t get the right outcomes unless you give people a voice as well. That’s what is often missing from these approaches.

Michael Slaby: I’d love to pivot to another dimension of your work: the relationship between new forms of artificial intelligence and democracy. At Murmuration, we’re about to publish a report on how AI affects representation, power, and civic life. Where do you see both the challenges and opportunities in this current collision between AI and democracy?

Hélène Landemore: I’m an optimist. I think AI is amazing, and if used and governed well, it should serve human purposes and augment our democracies rather than undermine them. The question is how we get to a place where it’s governed well. I don’t know.

In terms of civic technology, we started using some tools during our citizens’ assembly on property tax in Connecticut. Civic tech is still in its infancy, and there’s nowhere close to the level of investment that we see in commercially oriented AI tools. But we’ve partnered with MIT and other organizations to try to connect the mini-public—the deliberative assembly—to the maxi-public, or larger public.

That’s the big challenge in deliberative democracy: how do you connect the smaller assembly to the larger public? How do you get the larger public interested? You need local media, which has largely disappeared, to report on these processes. And it’s difficult to make people care if they don’t have agency. You need to give them a purpose, such as commenting on a platform. When you do that, people actually contribute substantive and interesting feedback.

But then, on the receiving end, the assembly has too much information to process. That’s where AI tools can help with summarization and clustering, while still preserving the substance of what people are saying.

Michael Slaby: At Murmuration, we think a lot about augmentation over replacement. What are the ways these tools can make possible something that has always been enriching, but has been difficult to do at scale—like listening and processing information without flattening the signal?

Hélène Landemore: We used AI inside the assembly as well. We recorded all the deliberations, turned them into anonymized transcripts, and fed those transcripts into a tool called Voice Trace. It generated a report where every statement could be traced to particular voices, although the voices weren’t individually identified.

It gave the group a record of the discussion. It was more of an archival tool, but it meant that we didn’t flatten the group’s output into a few general statements. We preserved the nuances and could trace them back to individual contributions.

We’re still trying to figure out how to use these tools most productively, and there are a lot of methodological and ethical questions. Our participants were suspicious of the use of AI, so we told them their data would not be used to train commercial models and would remain on servers at Yale University.

We couldn’t promise data sovereignty or data ownership because we don’t yet have the legal tools to make that happen at our level of organizing an assembly. But those are questions we need to think about seriously if we’re going to use AI in civic environments.

Michael Slaby: One of the questions that has come up in our conversations about AI is what’s missing from the corpus—the human knowledge, history, and culture that may not be represented in the data underlying commercial frontier models. What’s missing, and what is the cost of what’s missing, is extremely difficult to understand right now.

But it connects directly to where we started, around cognitive diversity and the risks of exclusion. What blind spots are we building on top of, and how do we mitigate them? That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t use these tools, but it does mean we need to be clear about what requires proactive inclusion and what the cost might be of missing things that aren’t in the underlying corpus.

Hélène Landemore: Listening to you, I can’t help but think about what just happened with OpenAI scooping up the work of mathematicians by brute-forcing the resolution of a mathematical problem. They spent twenty million dollars on tokens. I was thinking, “My God, give me twenty million. What else could we do with those twenty million tokens?”

I’m sure it’s important for science, but human mathematicians were about to get there anyway. It feels like a question of prioritization. Who decides what we use these resources for? I don’t claim to know the answer, but what I know is that it cannot be just OpenAI making those decisions.

Michael Slaby: This has been a beautiful conversation, and I’m so grateful we finally got to have it. One question I always ask our new friends: Given the possibilities and challenges of this moment, what’s giving you hope for the future right now?

Hélène Landemore: I think very smart people are sufficiently worried and still virtuous enough to place the common good over their self-interest, and I think they will help. When somebody starts something ambitious, I’ve seen people rally around it and offer their support. Maybe it’s not enough, and maybe it’s still too soon, but I think that if the stakes are high enough, people will respond. I have faith in human nature somehow.

About Hélène Landemore

Hélène Landemore is the Damon Wells ‘58 Professor of Political Science at Yale University, with a courtesy appointment in the Department of Philosophy, and a Distinguished Research Fellow at Oxford’s Institute for Ethics in AI. Her work spans democratic theory and collective intelligence, with a growing focus on AI governance. She is interested in normative questions such as what makes collective decisions both legitimate and reliable, what forms of non-electoral representation can claim democratic authority, the place of experts in a democracy, and what democratic oversight of artificial intelligence should look like when its effects cross borders and outpace existing institutions. She is the author of Democratic Reason: Politics, Collective Intelligence, and the Rule of the Many (2013), Open Democracy: Reinventing Popular Rule for the Twenty-First Century (2020), and, most recently, Politics Without Politicians: The Case for Citizen Rule (2026). Beyond her scholarship, she has advised and designed citizens’ assemblies, including as Director of Design of the 2026 Connecticut Citizens’ Assembly on Property Taxes.

About Michael Slaby

Michael Slaby is a leader in how values, systems, strategy, and technology drive movements and organizations. At Murmuration, he leads marketing, fundraising, network engagement, and culture. Before joining Murmuration, he was a senior strategist and head of community at Harmony Labs, where he worked on accelerating media reform and transformation. He founded and was head of mission of Timshel, a social impact technology company, and was a fellow at the Shorenstein Center at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. Michael helped lead the Obama for America campaign as chief integration and innovation officer in 2012, where he oversaw all technology and analytics, and as deputy digital director and chief technology officer in 2008.

Leave a comment

Murmuration is a nonprofit working to transform America into a nation where everyone can thrive. We organize a network of community-focused partners and equip them with the insights, tools, and services they need to help communities build and activate power more effectively. To learn more, visit murmuration.org.

But for many people, something essential is missing. They don’t feel connected to other people in their community. They rarely spend leisure time with others or in places outside their work or home. And the more people feel alone, the less likely they are to participate in—and contribute to—the social, cultural, and economic life of their city.

This summer, Murmuration partnered with Chamber of Connection to survey nearly 5,000 adults across seven U.S. metro areas (Baltimore, Chicago, Nashville, Pittsburgh, San Diego, San Francisco, and Seattle) about their relationships with the places and people around them. We asked about everything from belonging and neighbors to socializing, third places, community activities, and what gets in the way of making and maintaining connections (see here).

Here’s what we learned about the state of connection in America and what it takes to build community in our lives today.

Feeling At Home

Nearly eight in ten people (79%) say they feel like they completely or mostly belong in their area. Eighty-one percent are very or moderately happy with their community and neighborhood. And 73% say they’re likely to still be living there five years from now (50% very likely and 23% somewhat likely).

That attachment isn’t confined to the places that tend to top “best places to live” lists. In Baltimore (where I personally live and love), 74% of residents say they feel like they mostly or completely belong, and nearly three-quarters are happy with their community and neighborhood.

That sense of connection extends to the people around us, too. Two-thirds of adults say they have at least one neighbor they would feel comfortable asking for help, and 63% say they are part of a community of people who share similar values and life experiences.

But being rooted in a place is only one part of connection. Fewer than half of adults (48%) say they are part of a community of people who actually do activities together. Forty-seven percent regularly engage in community service or activities that help others. And 21% say they never or almost never spend time socially with people outside their household in a typical week.

The places and institutions that make repeated interaction possible aren’t a regular part of everyone’s lives either. Only 29% regularly spend time somewhere outside home and work where they feel a sense of belonging—a coffee shop, library, gym, religious space, community center, or somewhere similar. Twenty-eight percent say they don’t have a place like that at all. And 43% have no active membership or commitment that requires showing up somewhere in person.

People who have relationships with their neighbors, who spend time socializing, and who have places where they feel they belong are far more likely to describe themselves as happy. But they are also more likely to engage in a range of other prosocial behaviors: donating to charitable causes, being members of community organizations, attending local cultural events, and generally taking advantage of leisure time to be outside of their home.

Making Connection Possible

When we asked people what makes it difficult to build or maintain connections, the most common answer was remarkably ordinary: we’re tired and busy.

Thirty-nine percent say being too tired or busy gets in the way. Twenty-nine percent say it costs too much. Twenty-seven percent are uncomfortable going to social events alone. Twenty-three percent don’t know where to start, and 21% are scared or nervous to put themselves out there socially. Others say they find it hard to share their true selves, don’t know how to join the right communities, or struggle to keep connections going after they start.

Those barriers look somewhat different depending on where you live. In Seattle, cost is especially prominent: 35% say connecting costs too much, the highest of the seven cities. In San Francisco, time and energy loom largest: 45% say they’re too tired or busy, also the highest of the cities we studied.

Financial comfort also has an impact. Those struggling financially are not only most likely to say building or maintaining connections costs too much (52%), but also more likely to experience barriers to connection overall. Just 8% of those who are financially struggling say that they have run into “None of the above” barriers, compared to 16% overall and 31% of those who say they are financially prosperous.

It is easy to treat connection as something that should happen naturally if people want it enough. But much of what we think of as community requires resources. It takes time to go somewhere after work. It can take money to join something, get across town, hire a babysitter, or meet someone for dinner. It takes energy to make plans when you’re already tired. And it takes repetition to turn the people around us into people we actually know.

There is also a more hopeful side to the story. In Pittsburgh, we asked whether people who had recently sought help from their neighbors actually received it. Of the 59% who said they had asked for help, 56% said they always or almost always did, and another 34% received help some of the time. Only 10% said they didn’t get the support they needed.

Politics Keeps Us Apart

We also asked people what kinds of differences they’d be open to crossing to connect with someone else. Across the seven metros, 71% would be open to connecting with someone of a different race or ethnicity. Sixty-seven percent said nationality. Sixty-four percent said gender, and the same share said education. Sixty-two percent said income. Fifty-six percent said religious belief, and 55% said sexuality. Political ideology had the lowest percentage at 38%.

The question didn’t ask whether people would agree with someone politically, vote for the same candidates, or even become close friends. It simply asked whether they would be open to connecting.

And this wasn’t being driven by one particularly polarized place. Political ideology ranked last in every city we studied. Even in Nashville, where willingness to connect across political ideology was among the highest of the seven cities at 41%, it still trailed every other type of difference we asked about.

Final Thoughts

What stands out in these findings is that the desire for connection does not seem to be the problem. People still feel attached to where they live. Most have someone nearby they could imagine asking for help. Many are open to connecting with people whose backgrounds and experiences differ from their own.

The harder part is turning that potential into something lived.

Connection needs places to happen. It needs enough time and energy to keep showing up. It often needs money, information, or simply the confidence to walk into a room alone. And it needs opportunities to encounter people we might not otherwise choose for ourselves.

That leaves us with a few questions worth asking:

• How do we make it easier for people to participate in community life when time, money, and energy are already stretched?

• What kinds of places and institutions create repeated, low-stakes opportunities to know the people around us?

• And how do we preserve spaces where people can build relationships across political differences?

Communities thrive in part because of the people we come to know there. And if there is something hopeful in these findings, it’s how many of those relationships still seem possible—with the neighbor we haven’t asked for help, the familiar face we haven’t introduced ourselves to, or the person we haven’t yet thought to know.

Leave a comment

Murmuration is a non-profit that organizes a network of partners and equips them with the insights, tools, and services needed to help communities build and activate the power to transform America into a nation where everyone thrives.

US Chamber of Connection is a civic institution dedicated to building and sustaining the core infrastructure needed to address the greatest issue facing society today—our lack of connection. They mobilize and equip cross-sector leaders to unite in collective ownership and action to create connection and trust in their community

For years, more of our lives have been moving online: how we work, shop, bank, find information, entertain ourselves, and stay in touch. And then the pandemic accelerated that shift, disrupting many of the places, routines, and interactions that had long brought people together in person.

Many of these changes made life more convenient. They also made it possible to stay connected across distances in ways that are genuinely valuable. But convenience and connection are not the same thing. (Aside: We highly recommend watching Cord Jefferson speak on this at America 251; video here.)

So as part of our research on digital life, we wanted to understand the other side of that shift: not just how people feel about technology today, but what else they feel may have been lost as more of our lives and relationships moved online. And because the pandemic accelerated so many of those changes at once, we used it as a natural point of comparison, asking a new open-ended question: Is there anything about how people connected, communicated, or spent time together before the COVID pandemic that you miss today?

What We Miss

More than seven thousand people answered this question, and the first thing worth noting is that not everyone feels something has been lost. Thirty-nine percent said there was nothing in particular they missed or they weren’t sure, with responses ranging from a simple “no” to people saying life had largely returned to normal. Another 5% did not answer the question. One respondent saw the changes positively:

“No. It is pretty much like before covid with the added benefit of online options to stay connected.” - 68, Male, Democrat, Black Diamond, WA

But among those who did identify something they miss, the most common answer was also the simplest: being together in person. Twenty-two percent of all respondents talked about missing gatherings, family and friends, parties, physical closeness, or simply spending more time together. Put differently, among respondents who named a substantive thing they missed, nearly four in ten mentioned getting together in person.

The examples ranged from the significant to the wonderfully ordinary. People missed “social gatherings,” “getting together and having a BBQ,” “being closer to family,” “crowded concerts”, and “seeing friends more regularly”. One person wrote, “The desire to want to be around people.” Another said, “I miss how people used to plan time to physically meet up with people.”

That distinction—the desire to see people—is interesting. Respondents weren’t only saying there are fewer opportunities to gather. Some felt that the social expectation itself had changed. Here are two young adults on opposite sides of the country, in cities that are thought of as quite different, sharing this experience:

“The efforts and desire people had to see each other in general. It seems that it has diminished significantly.” - 24, Female, Los Angeles, CA

“It got quieter after Covid. No more family reunion and no more laughing and talking.” - 24, Male, Springdale, AR

The second major theme was not about where people interacted, but how they treated one another. Twelve percent described missing greater kindness, patience, openness, trust, or a general sense that people used to be friendlier and less guarded. “We were kinder to each other,” one person wrote. Another missed “the kindness and empathy of other people and the interactions with them.” Others simply said “trusting others,” “there was more kindness and compassion,” or “people were nicer and civil.”

Some of these responses went beyond manners. They described a change in people’s willingness to engage with one another at all. One respondent remembered “how open people were to talk to one another,” adding that now “it’s like no one talks or speaks up and would rather just not talk.” Others wrote:

“People didn’t hesitate to chat with you when out in public. Now everyone is on their phones and nobody wants to bother with strangers.” - 64, Female, Kenosha, WI

“It seemed before Covid people connected and weren’t hostile to each other. Post-Covid people don’t connect and nearly everyone is hostile about someone or something.” - 85, Male, Quincy, IL

That is a subtly different kind of loss. It isn’t the absence of close relationships. It is the disappearance of the weak ties and casual encounters that make a place feel social: talking to a stranger, chatting with a neighbor, recognizing someone at a store, making small talk without having planned to do so.

Technology was its own recurring theme. Eight percent explicitly said they miss talking face-to-face rather than through screens, including less reliance on phones, social media, texting, Zoom, and other forms of digital interaction. One person wrote, “I miss that a lot more of people interactions were in person, rather than online.” Another said simply: “Less phones, more face to face connection.”

Here, younger Americans stood out. Eleven percent of Gen Z adults mentioned face-to-face interaction rather than screens, compared with 7% among adults 46 and older. Among the youngest Gen Z adults, ages 18–23, that rose to 14%. In other words, the generation most associated with digital life was also among the most likely to explicitly say it missed communication that happened off-screen.

The responses were not uniformly anti-technology. What people seemed to object to was substitution. As one respondent explained, before COVID, people might connect online and then make plans to see one another; afterward, they felt “connection and communication primarily online” had increasingly replaced “daily interactions within the community.”

Another put the tradeoff particularly well:

“With technology we can just call each other, shoot a quick text or FaceTime but we don’t receive the same connection and bond we once did when we were connecting in person.” - 23, Female, Gainesville, FL

The physical places where connection happened mattered too. Younger adults again stood out: 12% of Gen Z mentioned this category, compared with just 6% of adults 61 and older. Among Gen Z ages 24–30, it was 13%. Across all generations, nine percent mentioned places being open, events, and travel—including restaurants, stores, malls, concerts, clubs, movies, and sporting events. Plus, one answer I did not expect to encounter quite so often: 24-hour stores with 365 people (3% of our data)—but extrapolates to roughly 8 million nationally—missing longer store hours, including 263 folks, specifically lamenting the loss of 24-hour or all-night businesses, and 151 respondents calling out Walmart by name.

“I definitely feel people connected easier in person before the pandemic. Restaurants/shopping centers still haven’t opened back up to previous hours. I miss 1am Walmart runs,” one person wrote. Another remembered, “24/7 Walmart lol I used to meet some cool people late at night.” Others missed late-night shopping with family or “midnight snack runs with friends.”

It sounds trivial until you think about what those places provided. A store open at 1 a.m., a mall, a diner, a neighborhood event, or somewhere inexpensive to wander isn’t just a business. It is somewhere people can be around other people without formally arranging to be around other people.

Smaller shares talked about no longer having the same freedom from illness fears, masks, or distancing (5%); spontaneity and a slower pace (4%); community and neighbors (2%); and school or work happening in person (2%).

These categories overlap, but people aren’t describing one missing behavior. They’re describing an ecosystem of connection: the desire to get together, places where gathering happens, spontaneous encounters, face-to-face conversation, trust between strangers, and enough openness to turn an interaction into a relationship.

One response captured almost all of it:

“Being able to spend time with friends and family, going out often, attend special occasions, go shopping, traveling. In truth, there are a lot of things I miss before that COVID pandemic, but I could never truly sum it up in a few words.” - 38, Female, Red Bluff, CA

And a few more quotes for good measure:

Final Thoughts

It would be easy to read these responses as simple nostalgia for life before 2020. I don’t think that is quite what they are telling us. Nearly four in ten respondents said there was nothing in particular they missed or they weren’t sure, and many of the changes that accelerated during COVID—from remote work to online communication—have made life easier and connection more accessible for millions of people.

But among those who do feel something has been lost, the answers extend well beyond screens. People miss seeing friends and family. They miss conversations that happen face-to-face. They miss strangers being more willing to talk to one another and people seeming kinder, more patient, and less guarded. They even miss the malls, restaurants, neighborhood events, late-night stores, and other ordinary places where social life happened without anyone explicitly planning for it.

Connection is not only a relationship between two people. It also depends on the conditions around them: places to gather, time to linger, opportunities to encounter strangers, norms that make conversation feel welcome, and enough trust to engage with someone you don’t already know. If people are missing the conditions that made being together easier, that raises a set of questions:

• What kinds of places and routines make casual connection possible, and are we losing too many of them?

• If people perceive one another as less open, trusting, or friendly, how does that change the way communities function?

• What would it mean to design neighborhoods, institutions, and civic life not simply around access and convenience, but around making it easier for people to be together?

We often talk about connection as though it is something individuals either have or don’t have. But these responses suggest that connection also has an infrastructure. It is built through people, certainly, but also through places, habits, expectations, and countless small encounters that make us feel part of the world around us.

Make room for each other.

Leave a comment

This research was supported by the Walton Family Foundation, which has funded Murmuration’s Gen Z research efforts since 2021. Learn more about our ongoing research partnership and findings on the youngest generation of voters here.

Murmuration is a non-profit that organizes a network of partners and equips them with the insights, tools, and services needed to help communities build and activate the power to transform America into a nation where everyone thrives. murmuration.org

This year, that opportunity extends well beyond a handful of high-profile races. Voters across the country will help determine control of Congress, elect governors and state legislators, choose attorneys general, judges, mayors, school board members, and local officials whose decisions shape daily life in tangible ways.

At a moment when Americans are questioning many of the institutions around them, we wanted to understand how they think about one of democracy’s most fundamental acts: voting. How many people believe their vote matters? More importantly, what helps people feel that their actions—including voting—can make a difference?

What Shapes Our Belief in Voting?

Nearly four in ten Americans (37%) believe their vote makes either a great deal or a lot of difference. Another 42% say it matters some. An uncomfortably high 18% say their vote makes no difference at all, while 3% are unsure.

So what distinguishes Americans who believe their vote matters from those who don’t?

The first factor is political identity. Strong Democrats and strong Republicans look remarkably alike. Only 8% of strong Democrats and 10% of strong Republicans say their vote makes no difference. Weak partisans fall somewhere in the middle, while Independents stand apart. One in four Independents (25%) say their vote makes no difference at all, more than double the rate among strong partisans.

The second factor is financial comfort. Over the past several months, we’ve written repeatedly about how financial comfort shapes Americans’ daily lives, explaining differences in stress, hope, belonging, trust, and life satisfaction. It emerges here as well.

Among Americans who describe themselves as financially prosperous or comfortable, only 12% say their vote makes no difference. Among those who are financially struggling, that figure more than doubles to 30%. Financial circumstances don’t just shape how people experience everyday life. They also appear to shape whether people believe they can influence the world around them.

These two patterns don’t exist independently. Among strong Democrats and strong Republicans, financial hardship changes relatively little. Whether they are financially comfortable or struggling, most continue to believe their vote has value. Among strong Democrats, the share saying their vote makes no difference rises from just 5% among the financially comfortable to 15% among those who are struggling. Among strong Republicans, it increases from 9% to 15%.

Independents tell a very different story. Even among financially comfortable Independents, 17% say their vote makes no difference—already higher than every group of strong partisans. Among those who are getting by, that rises to 25%. Among Independents who are financially struggling, more than four in ten (42%) believe their vote doesn’t matter at all. That’s a 25-point increase driven by financial circumstances alone.

A Broader Sense of Agency

Political identity and financial comfort help explain who believes voting matters. But both appear to reflect something even deeper: a person’s broader sense of agency.

Among Americans who say they have a great deal of control over the direction of their own life, only 12% believe their vote makes no difference. Among those who feel they have no control at all, that figure more than triples to 39%. The pattern becomes even more striking when we move beyond the individual and ask about communities. Among people who believe ordinary people can make a great deal of difference where they live, only 12% say their vote doesn’t matter. Among those who don’t think ordinary people can change much of anything locally, that rises to 55%.

That broader sense of agency also shapes how people think about change itself. When we asked Americans where real change comes from, those who believe their vote matters were most likely to say “ordinary people and local communities” (+9pp). Those who believe their vote doesn’t matter were most likely to point to “major crises or hard times” (+5pp). The distinction is about where people locate the source of change. One group sees change as something people build together. The other is more likely to see change as something imposed by circumstances beyond anyone’s control.

It also shapes how people choose to participate. Americans who believe their vote matters are much more likely to see voting as a meaningful civic act. Those who don’t believe their vote matters mostly favor helping someone directly instead, with nearly half saying the most meaningful thing they can do is help another person, while very few choose voting.

Final Thoughts

Belief that a vote matters appears to grow from the same conditions that shape so many other parts of civic life: feeling financially secure, feeling connected to something larger than yourself, and believing that your actions can change what happens around you.

That may also be the opportunity. If confidence in democracy reflects a broader sense of agency, then strengthening democracy isn’t only about Election Day. It’s about creating more opportunities for people to experience that their choices matter in their neighborhoods, workplaces, schools, and communities.

A few questions:

• What are the earliest experiences that teach people their actions can make a difference, and are we creating enough of them?

• If financial comfort is so closely tied to political agency, what does that mean for how we think about strengthening civic life?

• How might our approach to democracy change if we focused as much on building agency between elections as we do on participation during them?

In that sense, confidence in voting may be less a cause of civic engagement than a consequence of it. The more people experience that they can shape the world around them, the more likely they are to believe that casting a ballot is another way to do the same.

Vote of confidence.

Leave a comment

Murmuration is a non-profit that organizes a network of partners and equips them with the insights, tools, and services needed to help communities build and activate the power to transform America into a nation where everyone thrives. murmuration.org

Murmuration’s Chief Marketing and Operating Officer, Michael Slaby, sat down with Emma Lembke, Co-Founder and Co-Executive Director of the LOG OFF Movement, Co-Founder of Design It For Us, and Director of Gen Z Advocacy at the Sustainable Media Center, for The Exchange, our interview series featuring influential thought leaders, organizers, advocates, and others who are shaping the future of civic life.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Michael Slaby: I am talking to you at a really interesting time for Murmuration, as we are publishing a new report in a couple of weeks on how Americans, including many young people, are rethinking technology, connection, and what they want to reclaim from digital life. So, I couldn’t be happier about getting to speak with you today. To kick us off, could you introduce yourself, share your work at the Sustainable Media Center, and tell us how the LOG OFF Movement came to be?

Emma Lembke: It is an honor and a pleasure to be in conversation with you. I’m genuinely very blown away by and inspired by the work that you all do to equip leaders and advocates like myself with the tools and services necessary to make meaningful change, which is what we all want and what we all deserve. I have dedicated the past six or so years of my life to helping empower younger generations to build a healthier relationship with their technology, specifically starting with social media, but now also encompassing AI.

The reason I got started in the tech advocacy space is largely due to my lived experience. I got social media when I was 12 years old. I was ironically one of the last in my friend group to join these platforms, specifically Instagram, and I remember seeing each one of my friends decrease the amount of time they were spending in communication and connection with me, and taking that time and energy and putting it towards taking pictures to post online, counting followers and likes, and posting at the right time. I eventually reached a breaking point in ninth grade, where I had the buzz of a notification and a Pavlovian response to grab for it. I finally asked, “What exactly am I doing? I value control. How am I giving so much of my control up to these apps? And why do I feel so bad?” That moment made me pause and reflect, and I decided to take more time to think and reflect upon my own usage so I could regain a healthy relationship with technology.

I deleted social media for a little bit, and what I discovered was that I had a ton of questions. I wanted to look up what online communities were available for young people who were annoyed or frustrated by social media, how social media impacts younger generations, and how a young person’s mental health is impacted by increased scrolling. I found a plethora of emerging research showing the negative side effects of using social media more, but I couldn’t find a community for young people. So, at the beginning of my senior year of high school, I wanted to create that community for young people to talk about ways to build healthier habits, find community with one another, and push for changes that we wanted to see in the online world. And that was called the LOG OFF Movement.

Michael Slaby: That experience of logging off before it became a movement came with a cost. When you remove yourself from social spaces, you’re also giving something up, because these tools work because you’re getting something—a relationship to be had, a space to be in, and greater connectivity.

I’m curious what you’re seeing in that movement, how you’re seeing young people seeking ways of building healthy relationships, using tools, demanding better agency, and becoming better, stronger users. Do you see young people making different design choices or different user choices, or finding spaces that are healthier?

Emma Lembke: When I started my advocacy at the end of high school, I was working with young people to help them develop a level of awareness. A lot of young people felt like they were a part of the system, a cog in the system, and they felt like the relationship they had was a bad one, and they wanted the tools to develop a better one. But they hadn’t really gotten to the point where they could articulate that.

In those six years, my advocacy has taken many twists and turns. I think there has been a major uprising, especially within Gen Z, of a newly developed sense of awareness. More people are feeling that they have permission to not only make changes, but to begin to develop those healthy relationships themselves. A lot of young people within my community have been very creative. Gen Z is such a scrappy generation, and young people are finding new and interesting ways to unplug. Whether that is developing a third space, putting more energy and effort into building in-person connections and prioritizing them, or playing around with downloading screen-time-blocking apps like Opal. I think that a healthier relationship with technology looks very, very different to every single user. It’s been very, very exciting from an advocacy perspective to see more voices enter the mix wanting to talk about building a healthy relationship and feeling empowered to do so.

Michael Slaby: Social pressure is real, and the emotional burden of losing connections if you leave social media can be especially significant for young people. You just mentioned third spaces, and your new “Forks Up, Phones Down” campaign takes a similarly simple approach: put the phone down and connect with the people around you, starting with a meal. It reminded me of something Amanda Litman shared with us recently—how impactful having people over for dinner was in building connection and community at a time when those things felt so far away. Why did you want to focus on something as ordinary as sharing a meal?

Emma Lembke: That question makes me really happy. When we came up with the idea for “Forks Up, Phones Down,” we really just wanted to connect with more people around building healthy relationships with technology. But it is very, very hard to come to a consensus around proper tech usage, so I told my team we needed to zoom in, avoid the ambiguity at the macro level, and focus on something so easy and actionable that every individual could take that step instantly. Building greater tech intentionality starts with one step at a time. One thing can compound and build upon another.

So we identified one super unifying and common frustration across generations: fubbing, the intentional act of not paying attention to someone when you’re with them, especially at the dinner table. I came up with the idea out of personal frustration and then went to every single person I knew and asked if they agreed it was a shared frustration. I think it was a great place to start, especially at a time when, for centuries, we’ve connected with one another at the dinner table. And the dinner table is a really simple way to nourish relationships built on trust, accountability, depth, and emotional support.

Michael Slaby: Logging off can seem like a later step in a process of first recognizing how these systems are designed to keep us engaged. Do you see that awareness becoming more of a default for young people, or is it still something they have to discover and learn for themselves?

Emma Lembke: I think it depends on the generation. And I want to make it abundantly clear that I’m not anti-technology. A lot of people hear about the log off movement, they hear about my work, and they think that I’m anti-technology. Absolutely not. I’m pro-tech intentionality. I’m focused on cultivating greater tech intentionality so that each individual can determine what a healthy relationship with technology means for them. One of my favorite researchers, Rachel Janfaza, always talks about Gen Z 1.0 and Gen Z 2.0, separated by COVID, which I think is a very important distinction as far as lived and educational experience of technology.

With Gen Z, I think there is an inherent understanding that there is an issue. Almost every young person I’ve talked to is at least somewhat aware that they probably shouldn’t be scrolling as much, or that social media could impact kids’ lives more than they want it to. I think that’s partly because we grew up alongside social media as it grew and expanded its reach. That experience has allowed us to cultivate a deeper understanding of it. Awareness is the first step, and tech intentionality is further along in the process, but it’s much easier for me to work with Gen Z to build those healthy relationships because I don’t have to do as much convincing.

Michael Slaby: At Murmuration, we do a lot of listening at scale, and what we hear from younger Americans is that they seem to have a healthy skepticism about digital tools and, more broadly, AI. You’ve talked about Gen Z. Gen Alpha (depending on how we draw the lines between generations) is now about to enter civic life, having grown up with AI. So, I’m curious, do you see differences in how those younger generations come into this conversation?

Emma Lembke: I think the issue area has shifted. For a lot of the Gen Alpha individuals I’ve talked to, their focus is much more expansive than just social media, because they have inherited a much more difficult technological world, and I think there is a healthy level of skepticism there. There’s an inherent understanding that older generations didn’t act productively—they failed Gen Z. They didn’t protect them from big tech and allowed them to be a guinea pig generation. We’re now seeing the negative ramifications, whether it’s the impact on our democratic systems, trust in institutions, our ability to access information, or our ability to connect with one another.

At the same time, I think Gen Z and Gen Alpha understand that there are obvious benefits to AI: connective, expressive, and exploratory capabilities. Unlike older generations, they don’t exist in this space of “let’s go back to the good old days” or “let’s ban all social media.” They understand that the genie’s out of the bottle and lean into the realism in a way that only they can. I feel bad for Gen Z because we let them down with social media, but Gen Alpha we really let down—we not only didn’t address social media, but we’ve also allowed the beginning of chatbots and LLMs to impact them in a whole new set of ways. But I do think Gen Alpha will be the more capable generation at understanding how to move forward.

Michael Slaby: There is still agency here. Rather than walking away from these spaces or looking nostalgically toward a past that didn’t really exist, how can we be more explicit about what we want from technology and fight to make these spaces healthier? As AI becomes more embedded in our lives and social media continues to evolve, what’s giving you hope about what’s possible?

Emma Lembke: I’m a very hopeful person, which I think a lot of people would not expect because tech advocacy can often feel like a David and Goliath situation, with many setbacks. And the current state of AI does not necessarily help with that hopefulness. But at my core, I really do believe in the power of people. I drive my hope from people fighting for change and refusing to accept the status quo—whether that’s an advocate working to design better spaces or a literal 13-year-old girl who chooses not to use her phone at the dinner table.

Every act of resistance matters in shifting the status quo from harm toward a brighter future. So I encourage, listeners and readers to think really critically to themselves and like what I’ve been doing about how not only to like support these macro and micro acts of resistance, but like how to personally engage in it yourself and whatever lights your fire. It is those who decide to resist that alluring pull of the “what is” in pursuit of “what could be” who give me profound hope that humanity can usher us out of a darker moment in history with social media and AI and into a new chapter where we can beautifully coexist with technology, reap its benefits, and design social media and AI in ways that allow us to thrive rather than simply increase the profits of a select few.

Michael Slaby: One of the challenges of the power imbalance between a platform and a young person is that expecting a kid to resist the tide is a lot to ask. Meta just recently settled one of the big lawsuits against them. Now, whether that settlement ends up being them buying their way out of responsibility, time will tell. But built into the settlement is this idea that there are design changes that could create healthier spaces and give young people more guardrails. Does that give you hope that advocacy and institutions can begin to make this a less asymmetric battle—and hold tech companies accountable for creating healthier environments?

Emma Lembke: I believe that the settlement is more nuanced than people think. I agree that time will tell if design changes will be made, but the fact that media news sources are reporting on it and so many people are excited about the potential for design changes makes me optimistic. Going back to when I was that 12-year-old getting on Instagram, to say to a child, “Here is a trillion-dollar corporation, and they’re going to create this expensive algorithm that’s going to try to hook you and maximize the time that you spend on your device. But you should push back, build better habits, and put your phone down at dinner”—that is a lot to ask. While I advocate for micro changes at the individual level, I do think that the ultimate responsibility and onus needs to fall on the tech company, the corporations who are making active choices.

I think lawmakers need to step up to the plate and begin to actively and critically and meaningfully regulate. One of the design changes they were talking about making was not sending notifications during school hours. That is one very easy choice that could have been made at the beginning that is being triggered by a gigantic settlement, which is very discouraging. Companies need to be held responsible and make better choices, but a way to do that is to pressure, regulate, and pass bills and laws. I think there has to be a myriad of responses from different stakeholders to be able to truly hold these companies accountable. It is discouraging that design changes are conditional upon seventeen billion dollar settlements.

Michael Slaby: Which, by the way, is about the profit they made last quarter. I love the way that you talk about the idea that technology may be inevitable, but the outcomes are not. How do we move from seeing ourselves as passive users of these tools to recognizing our collective responsibility—and our agency—to shape how they affect our communities and society?

Emma Lembke: So many people come to me and ask, “How can I get involved?” I truly believe there are people waiting to know what to do next, and there are so many ways to engage at both the micro and macro levels. You can develop individual habits, reach out to your lawmakers, or join the emerging coalitions doing this work. There are so many actionable steps and so many levers we can pull.

I really love your framing that big tech has fed us this myth of inevitability. I hear it all the time with AI—that we have to adapt because this is simply the future. While I think it’s important to become acquainted with new technologies and feel like you have agency over them, I’m excited because there are still so many choices to be made. I don’t think we’re at the point of doom, but it’s going to take all of us. It won’t happen because one 13-year-old puts down her phone or one lawmaker passes a bill; it will take a collective moment. And while a $17 billion settlement might be a drop in the bucket for a big tech company, it’s still a place to start. It’s still an important milestone. It’s a drop in the bucket, but there’s still a bucket—and there’s still a cost. It may be small, but it is progress.

About Emma Lembke

Emma Lembke is the Co-Founder and Co-Executive Director of the LOG OFF Movement, the Co-Founder of Design It For Us, and thevDirector of Gen Z Advocacy at the Sustainable Media Center.

About Michael Slaby

Michael Slaby is a leader in how values, systems, strategy, and technology drive movements and organizations. At Murmuration, he leads marketing, fundraising, network engagement, and culture. Before joining Murmuration, he was a senior strategist and head of community at Harmony Labs where he worked on accelerating media reform and transformation. He founded and was head of mission of Timshel, a social impact technology company, and was a fellow at the Shorenstein Center at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. Michael helped lead the Obama for America campaign as chief integration and innovation officer in 2012 where he oversaw all technology and analytics and as deputy digital director and chief technology officer in 2008.

Leave a comment

Murmuration is a nonprofit working to transform America into a nation where everyone can thrive. We organize a network of community-focused partners and equip them with the insights, tools, and services they need to help communities build and activate power more effectively. murmuration.org

To better understand that instinct, we asked Americans a simple question: How often are the government’s official explanations accurate? The answers reveal a profound shift in how people approach information. Nearly seven in ten Americans begin from the assumption that any official account is either incomplete or intentionally withholding something.

This is not simply a story about conspiracy theories or fringe beliefs. It is a story about what happens when public trust in shared sources of information erodes.. Increasingly, Americans are questioning the motives of anyone claiming to give an authoritative account of reality. They are starting from the assumption that every account is incomplete, and that the truth, if it exists, must be pieced together from somewhere else.

More to the Story

But questions about trust in government are only one part of the story. People’s skepticism extends well beyond the government itself. Nearly nine in ten Americans (88%) believe major events are at least somewhat likely to have hidden causes that are never made public, including 42% who say hidden causes are very likely. Perhaps surprisingly, this worldview is almost identical across political parties. Just under half of Democrats (42%), Independents (42%), and Republicans (43%) all say hidden causes are very likely. Another 46% say hidden causes are at least somewhat likely. At a moment when nearly every issue appears polarized, Americans begin from remarkably similar assumptions about whether the public is receiving the complete story.

At the same time, Americans no longer appear to have a shared authority they turn to for answers. Asked whom they would trust most to know what really happened during a major national event, no source was named by even one in five respondents. Mainstream news organizations led at just 18%, followed by “no one” (15%), eyewitnesses (10%), and themselves (8%).

But that does not mean Americans have stopped looking for help. When they are unsure whether a claim about politics or current events is true, they draw from a much wider network of sources to try and verify what happened. Twenty-nine percent say they turn to friends or family who know about the topic, 26% to subject-matter experts or academics, 23% to national news organizations, and 22% to local news. Another 18% look to someone they trust on social media.

Even the definition of healthy skepticism appears to be changing. While 35% of Americans say skepticism means questioning claims until there is good evidence, 20% define it as assuming there is usually more happening behind the scenes. Another 40% say both definitions describe healthy skepticism equally well.

History, Controversy, and Conspiracy

Over a range of questions, Americans vary from broad consensus on certain documented historical facts to division over more controversial or contested events.

The strongest agreement appears around events that have since become historically established. Eighty-seven percent believe tobacco companies knew smoking was harmful before publicly admitting it, while 69% believe the FBI monitored Martin Luther King Jr. More than two-thirds also believe climate change is primarily caused by human activity.

Other claims occupy a much less settled middle ground. Fifty-nine percent believe the U.S. government is hiding evidence of extraterrestrial life. Fifty-eight percent believe Jeffrey Epstein did not die by suicide. Fifty-four percent believe COVID-19 was intentionally engineered and released. About half believe that the assassination attempts on Donald Trump were staged, and a similar number believe that the CIA was involved in John F. Kennedy’s assassination.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, Americans overwhelmingly reject claims such as the Earth being flat (79% do not believe), members of the British royal family secretly being reptiles (72% do not believe), or birds actually being surveillance devices (70% do not believe).

Just as revealing as what Americans believe is who is most likely to believe it.

The largest differences in the survey are between generations. Younger adults are consistently more willing to entertain contested explanations. More than half of adults under 35 believe the U.S. government was involved in the September 11 attacks, compared with just 16% of adults over 65. Seventy percent of younger adults believe the government is hiding evidence of extraterrestrial life, compared with fewer than half of older Americans. Younger adults are also substantially more likely to believe that Jeffrey Epstein did not die by suicide, that the CIA was involved in John F. Kennedy’s assassination, and that the 2020 election was “stolen” through widespread voter fraud.

Partisanship matters as well, but often in predictable ways. Republicans are considerably more likely to believe the 2020 election was stolen and that COVID-19 was intentionally engineered and released. Democrats are much more likely to believe January 6 was an insurrection and are also more likely to believe the assassination attempts on Donald Trump were staged. Yet despite these differences, there are surprisingly few partisan divides on some of the survey’s most recognizable claims. Belief that the government is hiding evidence of extraterrestrial life is virtually identical across Democrats, Independents, and Republicans, and belief that Jeffrey Epstein did not die by suicide varies little by party as well.

Finally, uncertainty itself has become one of the defining characteristics of public opinion. Fifty-eight percent of Americans say they are unsure whether the official explanation for Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 is false. Nearly half are unsure whether the U.S. government conducted the Tuskegee syphilis study, and 44% are unsure whether Mitch McConnell is medically incapacitated.

That uncertainty may be the most important finding in the survey. Americans have not abandoned the idea that truth exists. Rather, many appear to be navigating a world in which they no longer feel confident that any single institution, expert, or official explanation can fully provide it.

Final Thoughts

Trust has always been part of how societies establish truth. We rely on journalists to investigate, scientists to test evidence, courts to evaluate facts, and public institutions to explain what happened. None of those systems has ever been perfect. But they have traditionally provided a common starting point from which disagreement could occur.

Today, that common starting point appears to be eroding. The result is not simply a decline in trust in any one institution, but a fragmentation of public trust across the many sources Americans rely on to understand what is true. That leaves us with difficult questions for the future:

• If Americans increasingly believe there is “more to the story,” what would institutions need to do to earn back the public trust ?

• When does skepticism strengthen democracy, and when does it begin to undermine it?

• How do we create shared confidence in evidence without expecting everyone to reach the same conclusions?

The challenge ahead is not simply helping Americans agree more often. It is rebuilding enough shared confidence that disagreement can still begin from a common understanding of truth and how truth is pursued.

The truth is still out there.

Leave a comment

Murmuration is a non-profit that organizes a network of partners and equips them with the insights, tools, and services needed to help communities build and activate the power to transform America into a nation where everyone thrives. murmuration.org

Identify someone as a Democrat or Republican, liberal or conservative, and we assume we’ve learned something about what they believe. Often, people go further: they might use those few words to make guesses about their values, priorities, and even the kind of person they are.

But what happens when people stop believing those labels are particularly informative?

Murmuration data suggest that may already be happening, especially among younger Americans. The story isn’t simply that younger people are choosing different political identities, or combining several of them. It’s that they appear increasingly skeptical that a political identity can tell you very much about a person in the first place.

Labels Aren’t Enough

The strongest finding in the survey is not that younger Americans are rejecting politics. It is that they appear to be rejecting the idea that a political label can fully describe a person. Adults ages 18 to 34 are the generation most likely to say political and ideological labels “can be useful, but often oversimplify people.” Thirty-five percent hold that view, compared with 30% of adults ages 35 to 49 and just 21% of adults ages 50 to 64. Another 16% of young adults believe political labels are generally useful ways of understanding people.

That skepticism runs deeper than simply questioning whether labels are helpful. Nearly four in ten young adults (39%) say most people are more complicated than any political label can capture. Just 16% believe people generally fit well into the labels they choose. Another 18% say people often use labels that do not actually reflect what they believe, while 22% say it depends on the individual.

In other words, younger Americans are not rejecting political labels outright. They see them as incomplete: a label may tell you something about a person, but not nearly enough to understand what that person actually believes. Among adults ages 18 to 34, 56% say someone’s actions and behavior are the best guide to their beliefs, and another 23% would rather hear the person explain their views in their own words. Just 9% say the political labels people choose for themselves are the most useful signal.

Moreover, among adults ages 18 to 34, just 38% use a political party or ideological affiliation to describe themselves, compared with 50% of adults 65 and older. Nearly a third of young adults (31%) use no label at all, while another 22% use some other type of label (value-based, behavior, etc.) and 18% describe themselves as “independent” or “non-partisan.”

Emotional Power of Labels

If the first finding is that younger Americans see political labels as incomplete, the second is that many of those labels simply provoke less emotion than they once did. For decades, political identities have become increasingly tribal. Among younger Americans, that emotional charge appears to be weakening for many ideological terms.

Only 13% of adults ages 18 to 34 feel very negatively toward the label liberal, compared with 26% of adults ages 65 and older. Likewise, only 6% of young adults feel very negatively toward progressive, compared with 15% of seniors.

The differences become even more striking around labels that have historically generated some of the strongest reactions in American politics. Just 12% of young adults feel very negatively toward socialist, while that number rises to 38% among adults 65 and older. For Democratic Socialist, only 15% of young adults express very negative feelings, compared with 34% of seniors.

These are substantial generational differences, but they should not be interpreted as overwhelming enthusiasm. Young Americans are not rushing to embrace these identities. In fact, the most common response to many political labels is simply neutrality. Large shares of young adults neither strongly identify with nor strongly reject terms like moderate, libertarian, centrist, and capitalist. Across the population as a whole, even the most positively viewed labels inspire more neutrality than excitement. Independent receives the broadest positive ratings nationally, while moderate is viewed favorably by many but passionately by very few.

There are important exceptions. Young adults remain strongly negative toward MAGA, with 45% reporting very negative feelings toward the label, higher than among adults 65 and older. Likewise, they are substantially less favorable toward Republican and conservative than older generations.

This is not evidence that younger Americans have moved beyond polarization altogether. Instead, it suggests something more nuanced. The traditional ideological vocabulary of American politics may be losing some of its emotional intensity, even as movement-based identities remain highly polarizing. Labels associated with broad political philosophies, such as liberal, progressive, or socialist, elicit less hostility among younger adults than they do among older Americans. Labels attached to contemporary political movements continue to divide sharply.

Final Thoughts

Younger Americans are not telling us that political identity no longer matters. They are telling us that identity is more layered than the categories they have inherited. They are more likely to see labels as incomplete, less likely to assign them intense emotional weight, and more likely to believe that understanding someone requires looking beyond the words they use to describe themselves. In a political culture that increasingly asks us to sort one another into camps before we’ve had a conversation, that shift may prove more consequential than any change in ideology.

It also raises a number of questions that extend well beyond this survey:

• If younger Americans are becoming less attached to traditional political labels, what will replace them as the primary way people organize their political identities?

• Can our political parties, campaigns, and media adapt to a generation that appears less interested in fitting neatly into the categories those institutions were built around?

• And if Americans increasingly believe that actions reveal more than labels, how might our politics change if we spent less time asking what people call themselves and more time asking what they actually care about?

Perhaps the future of American politics is not one without labels, but one where labels return to being what they were always meant to be: a starting point for understanding rather than the conclusion. Because if people are more complicated than the words we use to describe them, our politics should make room for that complexity too.

Understanding begins where labeling ends.

Leave a comment

This research was supported by the Walton Family Foundation, which has funded Murmuration’s Gen Z research efforts since 2021. Learn more about our ongoing research partnership and findings on the youngest generation of voters here.

Murmuration is a non-profit that organizes a network of partners and equips them with the insights, tools, and services needed to help communities build and activate the power to transform America into a nation where everyone thrives. murmuration.org

Many Americans look at political leaders, corporate executives, media figures, and other visible decision-makers and see people whose lives bear little resemblance to their own. That distance helps explain the rise of outsider candidates, frustration with political elites, and growing demands for institutions that feel more reflective of and responsive to ordinary people.

Beneath many of these debates is a fundamental question: who speaks for us?

In partnership with RepresentWomen, Murmuration surveyed more than 5,000 Americans about political leadership, representation, and the future of democracy. What emerged was a public that remains deeply dissatisfied with the current political system, but still believes that we have the ability to improve our representation, elections, and ultimately our democracy.

Americans have not stopped believing representation matters. If anything, they appear to be searching for leaders and institutions that feel closer to the people they are meant to serve. And perhaps most notably, Americans seem less interested in preserving the political system exactly as it exists today than in finding ways to make it feel more representative, more responsive, and more reflective of the communities it governs.

The People and the Powerful

For years, Americans have been told that polarization is the defining problem facing democracy. Yet when given the opportunity to identify the biggest challenge themselves, people were far more likely to focus on who holds power and whose interests are being served.

More than one-quarter of Americans (26%) identified corruption as the biggest challenge facing politics today, making it the most common response in the survey. Another 17% pointed to the influence of special interests. By comparison, just 9% cited political division, 5% pointed to ineffective government, and 4% identified political violence.

That concern also shows up elsewhere in the data. More than two-thirds of Americans (68%) say they are dissatisfied with the current political system, including 43% who are very dissatisfied. Yet this frustration does not appear to reflect a wide-spread rejection of democracy itself. A majority (53%) still believe elections give citizens a meaningful say in how the country is governed, and nearly two-thirds (64%) believe the rules governing elections can be changed to make elections fairer.

In fact, Americans seem remarkably open to change. Nearly six in ten (58%) say the country needs major changes to the way elections and representation work, while only 8% believe no changes are necessary. Similarly, 59% say making important changes to improve representation and fairness is more important than preserving stability and trust in existing democratic institutions. That appetite for reform extends across regions and community types, suggesting that concerns about representation and responsiveness are not confined to any one part of the country.

New Voices, New Perspectives

Across the survey, one answer appeared again and again: more choice, more independence, and more perspectives.

Nearly eight in ten Americans (78%) said it is more important to have an election system that gives voters greater flexibility to support their preferred candidates than one that gives political parties more control over who appears on the ballot. Similarly, nearly three-quarters (73%) said they prefer politicians who make decisions based on the issue and circumstances rather than those who reliably support their party’s agenda.

Even when evaluating candidates, Americans appear far more interested in individuals than institutions. Two-thirds (66%) say a candidate’s views and experiences are more important than the political party they represent, while just 27% prioritize party affiliation. That desire is not limited to any particular political camp. Across partisan groups, Americans consistently place greater value on candidates’ experiences and independent judgment than on party loyalty alone.

That desire for proximity extends beyond politics itself.

By nearly three to one, Americans say bringing new perspectives and experiences into government (62%) is more important than having extensive experience working within government (21%). At a moment when many institutions are struggling to earn credibility, voters appear to be placing a premium on lived experience and fresh perspectives over traditional credentials.

This may also help explain why many Americans see value in expanding who holds office. Nearly half (46%) say increasing the number of women in elected office is important, while only 21% say it is unimportant. When asked what would happen if more women were elected, Americans most often pointed to outcomes tied directly to representation: 39% believe different issues would receive more attention, 36% believe more people would feel represented, and 33% believe government would better reflect the population.

Underlying these findings is a broader belief that leadership is shaped by experience. Americans appear to recognize that people who bring different perspectives, priorities, and lived realities into public office. A government that draws from a wider range of experiences is often seen as better equipped to understand the communities it serves.

Final Thoughts

For much of the last decade, Americans have been consumed by questions of polarization, misinformation, and political division. But these findings suggest another question may be just as important: do people feel like the institutions governing them understand them?

That is ultimately a question about belonging.

People are more likely to trust institutions when they feel seen by them. More likely to participate when they believe their voices matter. More likely to accept decisions—even ones they disagree with—when they feel represented in the process.

Americans do not appear to be giving up on representation. They are asking whether the institutions around them are still capable of providing it. Which means the future of democracy may depend on answering a few difficult questions:

• When do people feel like government is truly listening?

• What would it take to narrow the distance between institutions and the communities they serve?

• And how do we rebuild trust when so many people feel disconnected from the people making decisions on their behalf?

Representation, after all, is about more than elections. It is about whether people can see their communities, experiences, and priorities reflected in public life. It is about whether institutions feel distant or familiar, responsive or disconnected, accountable or insulated.

The floor is ours.

Leave a comment

Murmuration is a non-profit that organizes a network of partners and equips them with the insights, tools, and services needed to help communities build and activate the power to transform America into a nation where everyone thrives. murmuration.org

RepresentWomen is a nonpartisan research and action hub that promotes evidence-based solutions to improve women’s political representation and leadership in the United States. representwomen.org

In today’s special edition of our interview series The Exchange, we’re spotlighting voices from America 251 & Beyond, our recent event at the Ford Foundation Center for Social Justice in New York City. We brought together leaders, organizers, creators, and journalists to explore what kind of country we want to build over the next 250 years through a series of lightning talks, grounded in Murmuration’s research.

Over the past seven weeks, our State of Us America 251 data series explored how Americans experience belonging, connection, joy and meaning, identity, change, nation, and hope–and our interactive report features even more data insights and offers a deeper look at how these themes shape our everyday lives.

Thank you to Murmuration’s Chief Research Officer, Sarah Stamper, Alex Johnston, Amanda Litman, Cord Jefferson, Astead Herndon, Daria Dawson, Murad Awawdeh, and Jason Green for sharing their ideas, experiences, and stories that made clear that the future of American civic life will be shaped not by any one institution or individual, but by the countless ways people choose to participate in, care for, and invest in their communities.

251 & Beyond Research Overview

Sarah Stamper | Chief Research Officer, Murmuration

“If you want to understand where America is going next, you should not start in Washington. You should start with the questions people are asking around their kitchen tables every night.”

Read the full transcript of Sarah Stamper’s lightning talk on what listening to 35,000 people revealed about building the next chapter of our country’s future.

Place & Belonging

Alex Johnston | Founder and CEO, Cities Reimagined

“Dignified interactions don’t just build trust in our institutions. They determine what kind of citizens people show up as….It decides whether somebody may look out for their neighbor because they care about what’s going on.”

Read the full transcript of Alex Johnston’s lightning talk on how the relationship between dignity, trust, and service delivery shapes our democracy.

Connection & Community

Amanda Litman | Co-Founder and President, Run for Something

“As I look to what we need to build to get out of this era that we are in, it’s strong ties between neighbors. It’s people feeling like they can have their friends, their colleagues, their acquaintances over for dinner without feeling like it needs to look good for Instagram, without feeling like their kitchens need to be immaculate, their meals need to be perfect, that everything needs to go exactly right.”

Read the full transcript of Amanda Litman’s lightning talk on what she’s learned about building community from hosting a year of dinners in her living room.

Joy & Meaning

Cord Jefferson | Writer and Filmmaker

“We need to fight like hell to make sure that we remain connected to one another in a world increasingly designed to limit our reliance on and interactions with one another.”

Read the full transcript of Cord Jefferson’s lightning talk on how choosing connection over convenience can lead to a more meaningful life.

Identity

Astead Herndon | America, Actually Host & Editorial Director

“I never set out to be objective because I was more focused on being fair, being transparent, and being accurate...I never pretended that my lens as a reporter was not informed by my identity as a Black person, as a young person, or even more privileged identities like being male or able-bodied or straight.”

Read the full transcript of Astead Herndon’s lightning talk on being informed by identity, but guided by curiosity.

Change & Agency

Daria Dawson | Executive Director, America Votes

“Agency has always required us to move before we know what the outcome is. Sometimes we like to confuse confidence with agency. Confidence says, I know this will work. Agency says, I don’t know how this is going to end, but I’m going to do it anyway.”

Read the full transcript of Daria Dawson’s lightning talk on why cultivating agency depends on helping people see that their actions matter.

Nation

Murad Awawdeh | President and CEO, New York Immigration Coalition

“The promise of this country isn’t dead. It’s under construction. And it always has been. We keep asking the wrong questions of who belongs in America…We act as if there aren’t enough seats at the table in this country when there’s more than enough seats. But a nation isn’t a table. It’s a barn, and we’re barn raising. It’s getting bigger every time someone new picks up a hammer.”

Read the full transcript of Murad Awawdeh’s lightning talk on why building a stronger America starts with expanding who gets to belong.

Hope

Jason Green | Community Builder and Author

“Hope is not optimism. Optimism is the blind belief that things will get better. Hope requires action. Hope is a belief that our actions still matter.”

Read the full transcript of Jason Green’s lightning talk on keeping hope alive in an unfinished America.

While our America 251 & Beyond event may be over, the research that inspired these lightning talks lives on. Check out Murmuration’s interactive research report to explore the data that shaped the event.

Leave a comment

Murmuration is a nonprofit working to transform America into a nation where everyone can thrive. We organize a network of community-focused partners and equip them with the insights, tools, and services they need to help communities build and activate power more effectively. murmuration.org

If you’re catching up on the series, here are links for our posts on: Belonging, Connection, Joy and Meaning, Identity, Change, and the Nation.

Hope can feel difficult to talk honestly about right now. Americans are living through political division, economic pressure, institutional distrust, loneliness, climate anxiety, and constant exposure to crisis. Cynicism often feels safer than optimism.

And yet people continue to hope anyway.

Not always in grand or abstract ways, but in deeply human ones: caring for family, building community, mentoring young people, creating things, helping neighbors, imagining better futures, and continuing to show up for one another even when the future feels uncertain.

Hope is not denial. It is a form of investment in the future, even when the future is unclear.

Hope Lives Closest to Home

Americans are not equally hopeful about everything. They are most hopeful about the parts of the future that feel closest to them. Roughly two-thirds say they feel hopeful about their own lives (66%). A smaller majority feel hopeful about the future of their communities (54%). Hope drops considerably when people think about the future of the United States (38%) and the world (36%).

In some ways, this finding echoes what we found throughout the series. Belonging was local. Connection was local. Change was local. It seems that Americans have not lost hope but they may have relocated it.

When Americans describe hope, they talk about people. Asked which actions best reflect hope for the future, Americans overwhelmingly choose helping someone who needs it (30%) and caring for family and friends (19%). Far fewer point to voting (5%), creating or building something (7%), or showing up for their community (6%).

This local focus is also clear when we ask people to recount a recent experience that gave them hope. There, 21% mention witnessing kindness in their community, 17% mention personal progress, and 16% mention family milestones. Only 15% mention national events, and only 11% say some version of “nothing”.

This finding is easy to overlook because it feels ordinary. But perhaps that is the point. Much of modern political life asks people to think about the future through institutions, elections, and large-scale systems change. Americans, by contrast, seem to experience hope through everyday acts of care and contribution.

But while Americans largely agree on what hope looks like, they do not experience it equally. Again, Americans who are financially comfortable are substantially more likely to feel hopeful about their own lives (83% of Prosperous vs. 38% of Struggling), their communities (68% vs. 37%), the country (67% vs. 24%), and the world (51% vs. 24%). They are also far less likely to identify financial stress as an obstacle to hope (10% vs. 44%).

Those who are struggling financially tell a different story. Financial stress looms larger. Confidence in the future is lower. The future itself can feel less certain and less attainable.

The Future Americans Want

When asked what would make America more successful by 2050, Americans point first to less stressful and more stable lives (32%). Others emphasize stronger communities (20%), more belonging (15%), more time for what matters (13%), and less loneliness (12%). Those who feel hopeful about their own lives are more likely to think stronger and more connected communities are the most important factor in America’s future success, while those who do not feel hopeful emphasize less stress and more stability.

When asked what would make the biggest difference for the country’s future, the most common answer is clear: more people being able to afford a stable and secure life (43%). Americans also point to smaller economic and social divides (18%), better physical and mental health (13%), and more opportunity (12%).

The same pattern appears when people think about democracy itself. Americans say democracy would improve if the government worked better for ordinary people (33%) and if people could disagree without hating one another (30%). But the priorities differ sharply based on how hopeful they feel about the country’s future. Among those who are very hopeful, 41% say the biggest need is learning to disagree without hating one another. Among those who are not at all hopeful, 45% instead point to a government that works better for ordinary people.

Interestingly, when we asked people to describe something they hoped they would see in their lifetime, the most common answers were about political changes. One in five (20%) cited political changes, the most common response. Another 14% mentioned world peace, and 10% described equality and social progress. Fourteen percent described accomplishing personal goals, and another 14% described family milestones.

Final Thoughts

People thrive when they have roots, relationships, and room to pursue what matters. They thrive when they feel recognized, empowered, included, and hopeful about the future. And while the specifics changed from survey to survey, one pattern remained remarkably consistent: the clearest divide in the data was between those with enough stability to participate fully in their lives and communities and those still struggling to secure that foundation.

So we will leave you with a few questions for the next 250 years:

• How do we build communities where more people feel they belong?

• What creates the conditions for people not just to survive, but to participate, contribute, and thrive?

• And how do we ensure that hope is not a privilege reserved for those with the greatest resources and security?

Across seven surveys, the future Americans described was not extraordinary. In many ways, it was remarkably human: more connection, more dignity, more opportunity, more participation, and more hope.

Perhaps the challenge of America’s next 250 years is not imagining a better future. It is creating the conditions that allow more people to experience it.

We are in. Who wants to join us?

Leave a comment

As America marks its 250th anniversary, this State of Us series looks beyond nostalgia and national myth toward the future we still have the chance to build—one grounded in belonging, connection, dignity, and the everyday realities of American life.

Murmuration is a non-profit that organizes a network of partners and equips them with the insights, tools, and services needed to help communities build and activate the power to transform America into a nation where everyone thrives. murmuration.org

America has always been an unfinished project.

From the beginning, the country’s ideals have existed alongside exclusion, inequality, and ongoing arguments about who counts, who belongs, and who the nation is ultimately built for. As debates around immigration, citizenship, identity, and democracy intensify, many Americans are asking deeper questions about the identity of the nation itself.

For some, America represents freedom and opportunity. For others, it evokes disappointment, exclusion, or a promise that has never been fully realized. Many Americans feel pride in the country’s diversity, creativity, and democratic ideals while simultaneously feeling disconnected from the national story America tells about itself.

What we found in this data is more complicated than either patriotism or cynicism. Americans remain deeply attached to the idea of America. But many are less certain that America is living up to its promise or that people like them are fully included in its future.

American, But Not Uncritical

Nearly eight in ten Americans identify strongly or completely as American (79%), including a majority who say they identify completely (52%). At first glance, that finding might seem surprising. Public discourse often suggests that national identity itself is becoming fractured. But the data tell a different story. The real divide is not whether people identify as American. It is whether they believe America is living up to its ideals.

Only about half of Americans believe the country is close to being a place where everyone has a fair chance to live freely and with dignity (53%). Many believe America remains far from that aspiration. A plurality believe America is currently mostly built to serve politicians and people in power (28%), and another 26% say it is built to serve wealthy people. Merely 7% say it is built to serve working people, and only 14% say it serves everyone equally.

At the same time, Americans continue to find reasons for pride. When asked what makes them most proud of the country, they point first to freedoms and rights (27%). Others cite America’s diversity (16%) and communities helping one another (14%). What stands out is what people do not mention. Few point to military power, global dominance, or economic strength. And when asked what disappoints them most about America, government dysfunction emerges as the clear leader (37%), far ahead of any other response.

When asked what being an American means to them, people demonstrated a surprising level of agreement, with more than half (51%) writing about freedom and liberty. Another 23% wrote simply about pride and patriotism, and 13% wrote about having responsibility to their communities. We also continue to see that some Americans are more concerned about the country’s current state, with 13% choosing to write in either “nothing” or explicitly describing a challenge the country is facing.

The Nation Americans Want

Despite most people having a strong sense of American identity, far fewer feel included in the story America tells about itself. Only about a quarter say people like them are often or always included in conversations about America’s future (23%). Roughly a third say people like them are rarely or never included (35%).

A similar result is found when people are asked whether their own life fits the American story. Only about a third say their life fits that story very well (31%). The rest say it fits only somewhat, a little, or not at all.

Despite widespread frustration, Americans remain fairly aligned on the values they want the country to embrace moving forward. When asked which value should guide America over the next 250 years, three themes rise to the top: equality (22%), caring for one another (21%), and freedom (18%). Identity has an impact: among those who identify completely as American, 22% chose freedom as the value to guide America moving forward. This compares to 11% of those who somewhat identify as American, or 9% of those who do not identify that way at all.

In fact, when we asked what today’s kids should be taught about America, the most common answer (25%) was about character and values, followed by what can be achieved with hard work (17%). Again, mentions of freedom and sacrifice (17%) were common, as was the importance of kindness and respect (15%). Five percent mentioned civic participation. But here too, people voice concern about the country, with 11% saying we should warn kids of a potential America in decline, or that the country used to be better.

That said, the data also point to more optimism than headlines might suggest. Most Americans express at least some confidence that the country can build a better future for the next generation (76%). While relatively few are very confident, outright pessimism remains a minority view.

Who Feels Included?

Across this series, financial comfort has repeatedly emerged as one of the strongest predictors of how Americans experience their lives. But the differences in this data on nationhood are among the largest we’ve seen.

Americans who are financially comfortable are dramatically more likely to feel that people like them are included in conversations about America’s future (25% of Prosperous vs. 4% of Struggling). They are more likely to say their life fits the American story (56% vs. 18%). They are more likely to believe everyone can live freely and with dignity (43% vs. 15%). And they are substantially more confident that America can build a better future for the next generation (84% vs. 57%).

Those who are struggling financially tell a different story. Many are less likely to see themselves reflected in the nation’s future, less likely to believe the American promise applies equally to everyone, and less confident that the next generation will inherit something better.

Final Thoughts

One of the most striking findings in this survey is that Americans have not abandoned the idea of America. Most still identify strongly as American. Most still find reasons for pride. Americans remain deeply attached to the country’s ideals. What many are questioning is whether those ideals are being realized in practice and whether people like them are fully included in the future being built.

Beneath these findings lies a deeper set of questions:

• What helps people feel represented in conversations about the country’s future?

• Why do so many Americans identify strongly as American while simultaneously feeling disconnected from the national story?

• And what does it take for people to believe that the promise of America applies to them too?

Six posts into this series, here is what we know: People need roots, relationships, room to pursue what matters, recognition, agency, and a sense that they belong not only in their communities, but in the broader story of the country itself.

For all of our disagreements about politics, policy, and culture, most Americans still seem to share a common aspiration: a country where people are free, treated fairly, cared for by one another, and able to contribute to something larger than themselves.

America is still being written.

Leave a comment

As America marks its 250th anniversary, this State of Us series looks beyond nostalgia and national myth toward the future we still have the chance to build—one grounded in belonging, connection, dignity, and the everyday realities of American life.

Murmuration is a non-profit that organizes a network of partners and equips them with the insights, tools, and services needed to help communities build and activate the power to transform America into a nation where everyone thrives. murmuration.org

Many Americans look around and see reasons for concern. Rising costs, political division, loneliness, declining trust in institutions, and a sense that many of the systems meant to support people are not working as well as they should. Given that backdrop, it is not surprising that many are uncertain about the country’s direction.

The deeper question is what happens next. When people see problems that feel larger than themselves, do they believe change is possible? And if so, who do they believe is responsible for making it happen? These questions matter because agency sits at the heart of civic life.

What we found in this survey is more hopeful than the national mood might suggest. Americans remain deeply frustrated by many of the challenges they face. Yet they have not given up on change. Instead, they appear to be rethinking where change comes from and what meaningful action looks like. Rather than looking exclusively to national leaders or institutions, many place their faith closer to home—in local communities, personal relationships, and the belief that small actions can still add up to something larger.

Ordinary People Matter Most

For all the discussion about cynicism and distrust, Americans still believe in the power of ordinary people. More than nine-in-ten say ordinary people can help change things in their communities at least somewhat (92%). More than half believe ordinary people can make a difference “a lot” or “a great deal” (52%). Most Americans also report having at least some control over the direction of their own lives (91%), with a majority saying they have “a lot” or “a great deal” of control (51%).

What makes this finding particularly striking is how little disagreement exists. Across age groups, educational backgrounds, races, and political affiliations, Americans are remarkably aligned in believing that ordinary people make a difference.

That faith stands in sharp contrast to how Americans view those currently in power. Asked what future generations are most likely to say we got wrong, the most common answer is political leadership (23%). Here, too, we see remarkable unanimity. Across age, education, parental status, race, income, and gender, Americans most often point to today’s political leaders, followed by lost values and connections (16%) and division and hatred (13%).

This frustration is mirrored when we ask people what they wish they had the ability to influence in America. A plurality point to politics and government (26%), the very area they expect to regret most, while another 12% name social division and civility.

The data also suggest Americans have not entirely lost faith in solving big problems. When asked which challenge seems most realistic to address, respondents pointed first to the cost of living (22%), followed by government accountability (14%), healthcare (12%), housing affordability (9%), and education (9%). Notably, relatively few selected political division (6%). The issues people believe can be solved are often the ones they can see, experience, and influence directly.

By now, this won’t surprise you: the strongest divide in the data is financial comfort. Americans who are financially comfortable are far more likely to feel they have a great deal of control over the direction of their own lives (52% of Prosperous vs. 13% of Struggling). They are also more likely to believe ordinary people can help change things a great deal in their communities (47% vs. 26%) and to have taken action locally in the past year (55% vs. 33%).

The opposite is also true. Americans who are struggling financially are more likely to feel little or no control over their own lives, less likely to have acted in their communities, and more likely to say they wanted to get involved but have not yet done so.

Making Change Local

When asked where real change happens in America, no single institution dominates. Americans are divided among ordinary people and local communities (20%), elected leaders and government (18%), social movements (17%), and major crises or hard times (18%).

But when we look at how people personally define meaningful action, a much clearer picture emerges. The most meaningful action, according to Americans, is helping someone directly (33%). Volunteering (19%) and voting (19%) tie for second. Far fewer point to joining organizations, contacting elected officials, donating money, or speaking publicly.

When Americans think about change, they tend to imagine it at a human scale. A neighbor helping a neighbor. A volunteer showing up consistently. A community solving a local problem. A person deciding to get involved.

The behavioral data tell a similar story. More than four in ten Americans say they have taken action to improve something in their local community during the past year (41%). Another nearly three-in-ten say they have wanted to but have not yet taken action (29%). Belief in how much ordinary people can change things has an impact on how often Americans take action in their own communities. A majority (56%) of those who believe ordinary people can change things a great deal have taken action at least once in the past year, compared to those who don’t think people can change things at all (21%).

The data also reveal something encouraging about how Americans connect across differences. Most report having meaningful conversations with people from a different generation at least sometimes (77%), including a substantial share who do so very often (29%).

Final Thoughts

While trust in institutions may be strained, belief in people remains remarkably resilient. Americans still believe ordinary people can make a difference. They still see value in helping neighbors, volunteering, showing up for their communities, and investing in the places closest to them. For many, change feels less like something delivered from above and more like something built from the ground up.

The data have us wondering about what strengthens civic agency:

• What helps people believe that change is possible in the first place?

• What helps people move from wanting to make a difference to actually taking action?

• How can communities create more opportunities for people to participate in meaningful ways close to home?

This data mirrors a pattern we’ve seen throughout this series. Whether we are talking about belonging, connection, joy, identity, or change, Americans consistently place their faith in things that are personal, local, and relational. The strongest forces in civic life often begin not with institutions, but with people.

Democracy starts close to home.

Leave a comment

As America marks its 250th anniversary, this State of Us series looks beyond nostalgia and national myth toward the future we still have the chance to build—one grounded in belonging, connection, dignity, and the everyday realities of American life.

Murmuration is a non-profit that organizes a network of partners and equips them with the insights, tools, and services needed to help communities build and activate the power to transform America into a nation where everyone thrives. murmuration.org

Identity has always shaped American life: who belongs, who is seen, who is valued, and who has access to power and opportunity. But identity is also deeply personal, shaped by family, community, culture, work, memory, and experience.

Most Americans are still in the process of becoming themselves.

In a culture that prizes certainty and self-definition, that may sound surprising. Yet our data suggest that identity is less a destination than an ongoing process. People are continually adapting, balancing different roles, and reconciling who they are with who they hope to become.

The result is a portrait of Americans that is both hopeful and complicated: people who are largely proud of who they are, yet still evolving; who often feel accepted, yet still feel pressure to fit in; and who are searching not just for belonging, but for the freedom to become themselves.

A Work in Progress

The first thing that stands out in the data is how few Americans believe they are finished becoming who they are. Two-thirds say they are still growing or changing as a person, either “a great deal” or “quite a bit” (66%). Only a small share says they are no longer changing at all (4%). Even among older Americans, many continue to describe themselves as evolving.

When people describe who they are today, they rarely offer fixed labels. Instead, they talk about themselves as people navigating life, balancing responsibilities, and continuing to become. As one 21-year-old woman from Texas put it, she is “an open-minded Hispanic woman trying to navigate the changes in this country.” A 38-year-old man from South Carolina described himself as “a motivated professional who values family and community.” Others defined themselves through everyday passions and aspirations: “I am a simple person. I love punk rock and beer. I love helping people,” wrote a 47-year-old man from Louisiana, while a 59-year-old woman from California summed herself up as “an American citizen just trying to live the American dream.”

At the same time, Americans see their identities as deeply rooted in the people and places that shaped them. Seven in ten say their upbringing influences who they are today either “a lot” or “almost entirely” (70%). When asked who had the biggest influence on who they became, the answers were remarkably grounded. Parents topped the list (27%), followed by spouses and partners (18%). Far fewer pointed to public figures, books, media, or cultural leaders. In an era often defined by influencers and algorithms, the strongest influences on identity remain the people closest to us. This finding also challenges the popular notion that identity is purely individual. Only about one in five Americans say they mostly figured out who they are on their own (21%).

The Many Selves We Carry

Most Americans report being able to be their true selves in daily life. Roughly two-thirds say they can do so always or often (67%). Most also say they feel respected and appreciated by the people around them (72%), and more than half say they often or always feel proud of who they are (56%).

But another set of numbers tells a different story. Large majorities say they feel pressure to act a certain way because of what others expect, at least sometimes (68%). Similar numbers say they feel pulled between different parts of their identity—between different roles, values, obligations, or expectations (68%). These pressures don’t fall only on people who often struggle to be themselves. Even among people who say they are always able to be themselves, half (50%) still feel pulled between different parts of their identity at least sometimes, and 44% feel pressured to act in a certain way at least sometimes.

The data suggest that the challenge facing many Americans is not hiding who they are. It is reconciling the many versions of themselves they are asked to be. Parent and employee. Caregiver and individual. Neighbor and newcomer. Ambitious and exhausted. Independent and responsible to others.

At the same time, those experiences are not distributed equally. Compared to people who perceive themselves as more “normal” in their communities, people who perceive themselves as more “different” are far more likely to say they often or always feel pressure to act a certain way (40% vs 23%). They are also less likely to say they can always be themselves (24% vs 42%), and more likely to say they often or always feel pulled between different parts of their identity (41% vs 22%).

And, as we’ve seen many times now, financial comfort also seems to play a role. Americans who are financially comfortable are significantly more likely to say they can be their true selves. They are more likely to feel proud of who they are. More likely to feel respected and appreciated by the people around them. More likely to see a meaningful role for themselves in their communities.

Those who are struggling financially report a very different experience. They are less likely to feel authentic, recognized, or valued, and more likely to feel different from the people around them.

That does not mean identity is reducible to economics. It isn’t. But it does suggest that authenticity may be easier when people have enough stability to take social, professional, and personal risks. The conditions of daily life shape more than material well-being. They shape whether people feel free enough to fully be themselves.

Final Thoughts

Most Americans are still growing into themselves, navigating the competing roles and expectations of modern life. That may be truer than ever in a world where people move between communities and identities at increasing speed.

At the same time, most want something remarkably simple: to feel seen, respected, and accepted for who they are. The findings leave us with a set of deeper questions about identity and self-expression:

• Why do so many Americans feel different from the people around them?

• What helps people navigate the competing roles and expectations they carry?

• What conditions allow people not only to belong, but to fully and confidently become themselves?

Becoming yourself is not something people do alone. It depends, in part, on whether the people and communities around them create space to be seen, accepted, and valued for who they are.

We are all still becoming.

Leave a comment

As America marks its 250th anniversary, this State of Us series looks beyond nostalgia and national myth toward the future we still have the chance to build—one grounded in belonging, connection, dignity, and the everyday realities of American life.

Murmuration is a non-profit that organizes a network of partners and equips them with the insights, tools, and services needed to help communities build and activate the power to transform America into a nation where everyone thrives. murmuration.org

Much of modern American life feels organized around survival: paying bills, keeping up, staying productive, managing stress. For many people, finding joy has become something squeezed into whatever time remains after work, caregiving, financial pressure, and exhaustion.

Despite how difficult it is to prioritize, joy matters. A flourishing society depends on more than economic growth or political participation. It depends on whether people have the ability to experience meaning, connection, creativity, rest, and pleasure in their everyday lives. Whether they have something to look forward to. Whether they feel their lives are aligned with what matters most to them.

When we asked Americans about joy, we found something both encouraging and revealing. Most people feel like they know what makes a good life. The issue is whether they have enough room in their lives to experience it.

If Time Were Ours

The first thing that stands out in the data is that Americans are not nearly as unhappy as public discourse often suggests. A majority describe themselves as very or mostly happy (57%). Most have at least a few close friends or family members who bring them joy (91%). Nearly six in ten say they are often or always able to be fully present and enjoy positive moments when they happen (59%). And almost nine in ten have something to look forward to at least sometimes, with nearly one in five saying they always do.

What appears to matter most, however, is not simply whether people are doing enjoyable things. It is whether they have something to look forward to. Among Americans who describe themselves as very happy, 85% say they always or often have something to look forward to. By comparison, 76% say they do something for enjoyment daily or a few times a week. Overall, 57% of Americans report making time for enjoyable activities at least a few times a week. But for many Americans, that time is constrained. Half say finances often or always prevent them from doing things they enjoy (50%). Four in ten say stress and responsibilities often or always get in the way (40%).

When we ask Americans how they would spend their time if money and responsibilities were not constraints, their answers tell us a great deal about what people believe is missing from modern life. Half say they would choose a slower-paced life (50%). More than four in ten would spend more time learning new things (42%). Similar shares would spend more time outdoors (40%). Others would devote more time to creative pursuits (36%), building or making things (32%), caring for loved ones (31%), or helping in their communities (31%). Only a relatively small share says they would spend more time working or pursuing entrepreneurial projects (19%).

And what may be one of the most hopeful findings in the data: Most Americans say they find joy in close relationships, hobbies, personal interests, and time spent with family and friends. Many are actively learning something new. Nearly three-quarters report making, fixing, growing, or building something they were proud of in the past year (72%).

Between Living and Thriving

While most Americans report being generally happy, far fewer say their lives are completely aligned with their values, priorities, and sense of purpose. Only a small share describe their lives as fully aligned (7%), while many more say they are only somewhat aligned (51%). Those who say they are “very happy” lately are the only ones who feel that their life is either completely or very aligned with what matters most to them (71%). Even among Americans who are “mostly happy”, just 41% say their lives are completely or very aligned.

Moreover, people can be happy and still feel constrained. They can have moments of joy while sensing that the life they are living is not quite the life they would choose. And, just as we found in our recent analysis on belonging and connection, financial comfort plays an important role.

Americans who are financially comfortable are significantly more likely to report happiness, a sense of alignment, things to look forward to, and the ability to be present and enjoy life’s positive moments. They are more likely to pursue hobbies, spend time learning, engage in creative activities, and feel that their lives reflect what matters most to them.

Those who are struggling financially report a very different experience. They are substantially more likely to say finances prevent them from doing things they enjoy. They are less likely to have something to look forward to, less likely to feel aligned with their priorities, and less likely to experience the everyday conditions that support joy. Notably, financial constraints appear to weigh more heavily on happiness than stress or responsibilities alone. Among Americans who say they have been very unhappy lately, 62% report that money is always preventing them from doing things they enjoy, compared with 49% who say the same about stress and responsibilities.

Three posts into this series, the pattern is becoming difficult to ignore. Financial comfort is shaping more than material well-being. It appears to dramatically influence whether people have the freedom to pursue the relationships, activities, and experiences that make life feel meaningful.

Final Thoughts

Much of the American story is built around the pursuit of happiness. Yet these findings suggest that what people are seeking may be something slightly different.

What many Americans appear to want is the ability to spend more of their lives doing the things that matter to them. To learn. To create. To care for others. To contribute. To spend time with people they love. To feel that their daily lives reflect their values and priorities.

The findings leave us with fundamental questions about what it means to flourish in modern America:

• If Americans know what brings them joy, what keeps them from pursuing it?

• What would change if more people had the time, stability, and resources to live in closer alignment with what matters most?

• And what kind of society are we building if joy becomes something reserved for the moments left over after everything else is done?

Belonging, connection, and joy are often treated as personal choices or personality traits. But the data increasingly suggest they are also shaped by material conditions. People need more than good intentions to thrive. They need enough stability to put down roots, enough connection to feel supported, and enough time and opportunity to fully participate in their own lives.

A good life should feel good, too.

Leave a comment

As America marks its 250th anniversary, this State of Us series looks beyond nostalgia and national myth toward the future we still have the chance to build—one grounded in belonging, connection, dignity, and the everyday realities of American life.

Murmuration is a non-profit that organizes a network of partners and equips them with the insights, tools, and services needed to help communities build and activate the power to transform America into a nation where everyone thrives. murmuration.org

The desire for connection remains everywhere. People still long for the kinds of relationships and routines that make life feel shared: the friend you call first with good news, the familiar faces at a local coffee shop, the weekly ritual that gives shape to your life, the neighbor who notices when you’re gone.

What we found in our new data is more complicated than the conventional story of isolation. Americans are not as disconnected as often claimed. Most still have people they can rely on, places they gather, and neighbors they help. At the same time, many worry that the communities around them are becoming more fragmented, withdrawn, and divided.

The challenge facing America may not simply be a lack of connection. It may reflect a difference between the connections people experience firsthand and the social fabric they believe exists around them.

The Connections We Still Have

For all the concern about loneliness, the data reveal a country that remains surprisingly connected in everyday ways.

Most Americans report having meaningful conversations with someone outside of work or family at least a few times a week (54%). More than half say they have about the right amount of connection in their lives (53%). When asked how many people in their community they could rely on if they needed help, only a small share said they have no one at all (13%). Most can identify at least a few people they could turn to in a time of need.

When asked who they first tell good news to, 44% named a partner or spouse, 17% a parent, 11% a child, and 10% a friend. Only 3% said they tell no one. Of course, life stage changes these connections. Among Gen Z, a third named a parent, while only 8% of those 55+ did so. Those older adults most often name partners (48%) or children (18%).

A majority of Americans also seem to have social rituals they enjoy. Roughly two-thirds of people described at least one ritual, including shared meals (18%), get-togethers with friends (18%), outdoor activities (13%), among others.

Perhaps most strikingly, nearly seven in ten Americans say they helped a neighbor or someone nearby in the past month (69%). Many report doing so multiple times. These aren’t grand gestures. They are favors, errands, check-ins, rides, meals, and moments of support. And they’re even more common among those who say they completely trust their neighbors (81%). Among those who say they don’t trust or only somewhat trust their neighbors, those numbers are lower: 52% and 65%, respectively. We can’t say for certain which comes first, but trust and neighborly acts of support clearly go hand in hand. Communities where people help one another tend to be more trusting, and that trust may encourage even more helping in return.

The data also suggest that connection is tied to place. Most Americans say they have at least a few places in their community—outside of home and work—where they enjoy being around other people (72%). Most spend time in these spaces at least a few times each month (78%).

Whether it’s a church, library, coffee shop, park, volunteer organization, community center, or local business, these third spaces create opportunities for the repeated interactions that allow relationships to form.

Alone Together?

While Americans generally describe their own relationships positively, they are far less positive when describing the broader communities around them. Most people say they have the right amount of connection in their lives. Most people have people they can rely on. Most people have meaningful conversations and regularly help others.

Yet only about a third describe the people in their communities as connected (35%). Similar shares describe their communities as cohesive (33%) or engaged (38%). Large numbers instead see their communities as isolated, divided, or withdrawn.

This discrepancy appears throughout the data. Americans seem considerably more confident about their own relationships than they are about the connections and cohesion within their communities. But here again, we see a critical role for interpersonal trust to play. Among those who completely trust their neighbors, 55% see their broader communities as connected, 47% as cohesive, and 55% as engaged, rates that are +39pp, +34pp, and +40pp higher than those who say they don’t trust their neighbors.

Connection Has an Economic Gradient

Just as financial comfort shaped whether people felt rooted in our belonging data, it also appears to shape whether people feel connected.

Across nearly every measure, financially comfortable Americans report being more likely to trust the people who live near them (63% of Prosperous vs. 34% of Struggling). They are more likely to report daily meaningful conversations outside of work and family (41% vs. 18%). They are more likely to feel they have the right amount of connection in their lives (66% vs. 34%). They are also more likely to have places in their community where they enjoy spending time around other people (81% vs. 55%), more likely to have multiple people they could rely on for help (89% vs. 70%), and more likely to feel confident they could build new relationships if they needed to start over (66% vs. 30%).

The same pattern appears when people evaluate their communities. Americans who are financially comfortable are substantially more likely to describe their communities as connected, cohesive, and engaged. Those who are struggling are far more likely to describe them as isolated, divided, and withdrawn.

Final Thoughts

The story in these data is not that connection has disappeared. Americans are still helping neighbors, relying on one another, and finding places where community can take root. But those connections are not as secure or widely shared as we might hope.

Throughout the data, a paradox emerges: people remain confident in their own relationships while believing the broader social fabric is fraying around them. Many continue to build trust and connection in their daily lives while worrying that those same bonds are weakening in society at large.

And, much like belonging, these perceptions are closely tied to financial stability. Americans who feel financially secure are more likely to describe their communities as connected, trustworthy, and engaged, while those facing financial strain are more likely to experience disconnection—not just in their own lives, but in the places around them.

The findings point to several tensions worth exploring:

• Why do Americans remain confident in their own relationships while losing confidence in the social fabric around them?

• What conditions help transform individual relationships into a broader sense of community trust and cohesion?

• As more of life moves online, what kinds of places and experiences still create the shared bonds that hold place-based communities together?

Our findings on belonging and connection suggest that community is not a single feeling. It is a web of relationships, routines, and opportunities that help people feel rooted in both the places they call home and the people around them.

Community doesn’t happen by accident.

Leave a comment

As America marks its 250th anniversary, this State of Us series looks beyond nostalgia and national myth toward the future we still have the chance to build—one grounded in belonging, connection, dignity, and the everyday realities of American life.

Murmuration is a non-profit that organizes a network of partners and equips them with the insights, tools, and services needed to help communities build and activate the power to transform America into a nation where everyone thrives. murmuration.org

Most Americans are not spending their days thinking about semiquincentennials or constitutional originalism. They’re thinking about whether they belong where they live. Whether they can build a meaningful life. Whether they feel connected to other people. Whether joy, dignity, purpose, safety, and hope still feel attainable. Whether democracy can still deliver something human.

Over the coming weeks, in this seven-part series, we’ll explore the themes that lie beneath politics, yet shape civic life every day: belonging, connection, joy, identity, change, nationhood, and hope.

Together, these questions point toward something larger. What are the conditions that allow people not just to survive, but to thrive? What helps people build meaningful lives, contribute to their communities, and imagine a better future?

Welcome to America 251.

Americans move more than almost anyone else in the world. We leave hometowns for opportunity, reinvent ourselves in new places, and often build lives far from the people and communities that raised us. Mobility has long been celebrated as a hallmark of freedom and success. But it comes with a tradeoff: many people are left searching for a sense of belonging.

Belonging is more than identity. It is rootedness—a feeling that you know a place, are known by others, and matter to the community around you. Yet many Americans describe their communities as fragmented, transient, or isolating. Third places are disappearing, housing instability disrupts roots, and more interactions are taking place online than they are in person.

As America approaches its 250th anniversary, belonging is not just a personal question. It is a civic one. Democracy depends not only on institutions but on people feeling connected to the places and communities they call home.

Belonging Starts With Stability

Americans often talk about belonging as a feeling. But our data suggest it may begin with something more concrete: stability.

Most Americans say they feel at least some sense of belonging where they live, and many have lived in the same community for years. Yet beneath those toplines, belonging looks very different depending on whether people feel financially secure.

As shown above, those who are financially comfortable are far more likely to report strong roots in their communities than those who are struggling. They are also dramatically more likely to say they completely belong where they live, know many of their neighbors by name, and feel they have a lot in common with the people around them.

The pattern extends beyond relationships. Financially secure Americans are more likely to say the place they live is “very important” to their identity (42% of Prosperous, 18% of Struggling), that their community provides outdoor spaces “very well” (57% versus 30%), and that “all or most” of the things they need in daily life are located nearby (72% versus 44%). Those who are struggling are more likely to say they have no roots at all (30%) and know few or none of their neighbors (73%).

But stability alone does not appear to create belonging. Relationships also play a big role. Among those who say they completely belong where they live, 70% report having a lot in common with their neighbors. Among those who do not feel they belong at all, that number falls to just 5%. Similarly, people who feel they belong are much more likely to know their neighbors by name. More than half know most or all of their neighbors, compared with just 16% of those who do not feel they belong.

We Stay for People, Not Places

When we asked people why they live where they do—and why they would stay—the answers were remarkably consistent.

The most common reason Americans live where they do is simple: family (30%). Another large share say they remain where they grew up (22%). Fewer cite lifestyle (18%), work (14%), or affordability (11%) as their primary reason for being there.

And when looking toward the future, relationships become even more important. The leading reason people would choose to stay in their community long-term is that family and friends are there (31%).

That connection to place matters more than it might seem. Among Americans with strong roots in their communities, nearly four in ten say they live where they do because it is where they grew up. Among those with no roots at all, only 8% say the same. The importance of social ties becomes even clearer when we look at who feels most rooted. Among Americans with strong roots in their community, 44% say family and friends are the primary reason they would stay long-term. Among those with no roots at all, that figure falls to just 16%.

Interestingly, people who feel a strong sense of belonging are also more likely to say they stay because they value the lifestyle or environment where they live. Those who do not belong are much more likely to say they stay because they lack better options elsewhere.

Final Thoughts

For generations, mobility has been one of America’s defining features. We celebrate the freedom to move, reinvent ourselves, and pursue opportunity wherever it leads. But belonging asks something different of us. It asks us to stay long enough to know our neighbors, build relationships, and become part of a shared story.

What this data makes clear is that belonging is not evenly distributed. Some people feel deeply rooted in the places they call home, while others feel disconnected from the communities around them. The biggest differences are not about who people are. They are about the conditions of their lives: whether they feel financially secure, know their neighbors, have roots in a place, and see themselves as part of a community.

That raises important questions about the future of civic life.

• If financial security is one of the strongest predictors of feeling rooted, what does that mean for communities facing rising housing costs, displacement, and economic uncertainty?

• As families become more geographically dispersed, where will future generations find the relationships that anchor them to place?

• And what does belonging look like in an era when finding connection may be broader than ever, but less deeply rooted?

The challenge is that belonging depends on conditions that feel increasingly fragile: stable housing, economic security, welcoming public spaces, and strong social ties. When those foundations are present, people put down roots. They invest in their neighborhoods, build relationships, and see themselves as part of something larger than themselves.

When those foundations are absent, community can begin to feel temporary—even when people never leave.

Find your place. Find your people.

Leave a comment

As America marks its 250th anniversary, this seven-part State of Us series looks beyond nostalgia and national myth toward the future we still have the chance to build—one grounded in belonging, connection, dignity, and the everyday realities of American life.

Murmuration is a non-profit that organizes a network of partners and equips them with the insights, tools, and services needed to help communities build and activate the power to transform America into a nation where everyone thrives. murmuration.org