The 2026 midterms have arrived, and once again younger voters are considered a coveted bloc for candidates, as they were in 2024.

Lots of effort has been put into trying to sort out what motivates them, and trying to understand not just what they believe, but why they believe it.

A lot of the answers might lie on social media.

Poll after poll finds Generation Z and even millennial voters get more and more of their information from social media and the influencers they connect with on a regular basis. But you might be surprised by just how significant that influence can be.

“Forty percent of Gen Z is actually exclusively getting their news from TikTok,” said Romain Vakilitabar, executive director of Pathos Labs, a nonprofit that looks at how people consume information through social media influence. “That’s not counting for the many of individuals who are consuming their news or getting their information from TikTok and another source. This is exclusively from TikTok.”

He said some of the assumptions people have about younger generations are misguided.

“I think a lot of older folks think that Gen Z and millennials are not civically engaged,” he said. “But it’s wrong. I think most of the political spending is going to mediums that just frankly Gen Z and millennials aren’t really engaging with, and they happen to be very engaged.”

The central thesis of his group is that younger people are moved and influenced by emotion and connection. At the same time, he said most influencers out there on social media don’t have an understanding of journalism or how news organizations vet information.

But that doesn’t stop them from weighing in on issues as they connect with their audiences.

Overall, Vakilitabar said that while many TikTok influencers lean left politically, 26% of self-identified news influencers on the platform identified as Republican, compared to 21% who identified as Democrat.

“Young people are certainly very informed about what’s happening. However, the ways in which they’re consuming that information is coming from a very different source,” he said. “And albeit a source that may sometimes be misinformed about the information.”

Right now, he said, even those who don’t consider themselves “news influencers” have been talking about the election, reaching voters in ways traditional news media groups have struggled to replicate, and drawing on their trust to offer up information and commentary.

Some of them are doing it in a responsible way, he said, but he acknowledged that’s not always the case.

“We’ve talked to countless influencers who don’t know where to get trusted information from,” Vakilitabar said. “So there’s clearly an opportunity for connection to bridge that information from the trusted sources to the trusted messengers amongst young audiences.”

He sees that not as something to scold anyone about, but rather as an opportunity.

“The question is, how do we actually get the right information to these trusted messengers so that the information that ultimately reaches these millions of audiences downstream is accurate and responsible?” he asked. “I think there’s a big, big opportunity in traditional news to form stronger bonds, a stronger communication pipeline, training, frankly, to make sure that the influencers who are trusted amongst young people are sharing the kind of information that is responsible, that is fact-based, that has been verified. I think we’re starting to see that, but not to the extent that I think we should.”

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