The 2024 presidential election was among the most consequential — and divisive — in recent American history. The election set a precedent for numerous campaign strategies including AI-generated photos and videos, memes, and humorous content. The 2024 election marked a structural shift in how political campaigns reach young voters — one that favors emotionally charged, platform-native content over substantive policy communication, with lasting consequences for democratic literacy.
During a recent conversation at a campaign event where I was working, Sean Spicer, a writer who was once Donald Trump’s first White House press secretary, told me that social media is the biggest advantage Gen Z has that his generation did not. Trump’s embrace of social media in 2024 was not gradual — it was a full-scale strategic pivot. Instead of relying on traditional, outdated models such as television and radio ads, Trump pitched to youth.
On TikTok, you could see a rise not just in Trump’s followers but also in his followers’ videos. Even today, one can constantly see edits, stitching, and people discussing the Trump administration. This peer-to-peer amplification mimics modern marketing, giving organic engagement far greater reach than paid promotion. In a Fieldston News article discussing Trump’s campaign social media usage the Fieldston Republican Club President, Beckett Shaftel, stated, “[Trump’s] direct style, like short videos, makes him feel more like an influencer…” This raises a pressing question for democratic discourse: how can citizens distinguish between authentic political communication and algorithmically optimized performance?
This shift was not exclusive to the Republican Party. The Democratic Party launched its own TikTok presence, frequently appearing in the comment sections of conservative videos and directly challenging MAGA messaging. The strategy revealed a notable gender divide: according to a 2024 Pew Research Center survey, young men shifted toward Trump at significantly higher rates than in 2020, while young women tended more strongly toward the Democratic Party — a polarization that played out visibly in the content each side produced and consumed.
The divide also ran along racial lines. According to a Pew Research Center study of validated voters, Trump won 48% of Hispanic voters in 2024, up from 36% in 2020, and his share of Black voters nearly doubled, from 8% to 15%. The jump was largest among men: about one in five Black men voted for Trump. His share of white voters held flat at 55%, so most of his gains came from voters of color. This lines up with his social media strategy. Appearances on podcasts and livestreams popular with young men, like Theo Von’s show and Adin Ross’s stream, reached a younger and more diverse audience than cable news ever did.
Platforms like TikTok also reward Trump’s social media emotions, such as his consistent trade to stir up controversy.Trump excites the viewer, enrages the audience, and makes sure the viewer interacts with it as much as possible. Whether a viewer shares the content in support or floods the comments in opposition, the result is the same: the algorithm interprets both as engagement and pushes the video further. Trump’s social media strategy did not need to persuade everyone — it only needed to provoke them.
Examining the social media use of 18-to-29-year-olds is imperative for understanding the rise in Trump’s social media use. According to Walden University, “64% of 18- to 29-year-olds use Instagram.” This statistic would be a very important turning point for the Trump campaign for President, as they knew Republicans typically lose the young adult vote. Still, they wanted to introduce the change themselves.
To understand the political differences of young adults, one must also look at the election results from previous elections. This way, one can isolate changes in the political environment and closely examine what happened during those years. According to AP VoteCast exit poll data, turnout was estimated at 52-54% among eligible voters aged 18-29. In that 52-54% range, about 60% voted for Biden , and 36% voted for Trump. In this case, you could imagine this was a win for Biden, with nearly +24 points nationally among young voters.
In the 2024 election, however, the Republican Party saw a dramatic reversal of this trend. After proving that the Trump campaign invested in social media, we can now see the results. For the same youth vote (18-29), an estimated 47% of eligible voters turned out to vote. About 51-52% of those voters voted for Harris(the Democratic candidate), while the remaining 46-47% went straight to Trump. This resulted in a +4- to +5-point win for the Democrats, a roughly 20-point swing toward Republicans compared to 2020. So what changed?
Reliance on social media is skyrocketing, while cable news has become so unpopular that it has triggered red flags across news organizations nationwide. Young adults have largely decided to skip mainstream media and look at the content provided to them on Instagram or TikTok. A 2024 Pew Research Center report on news consumption found that only 16% of adults under 30 say they “often” get news from television. People who watch social media have a source right at their fingertips, so it can be the obvious choice to opt for more social media news.
But these news organizations are businesses that want to generate revenue, so they know about these studies and have made the obvious choice. Many news organizations, on both sides of the political aisle, started their own TikTok and Instagram accounts a while ago, but they didn’t gain much traction until the last 4 years. You can see a spike in followers, likes, and comments per video, which shows clear interest in a “quicker social media content news source.” This is often due to the limited attention spans of Gen Z voters, who do not want to sit down and watch the news as often as baby boomers or their parents do.
The implications of this shift extend beyond national campaigns. The 2024 election set a precedent for modern-day campaigns and media companies. I reached this conclusion by examining the Democratic and Republican campaigns on social media. But something very special to Fieldston is the Representative in Congress – 12th Congressional District Democratic Primary. This district covers the Upper West Side, a very common location for Fieldston families. Beyond its appeal to Fieldston families, this election exemplifies how Trump’s social media use has trickled down into local elections.
When we examined the three biggest candidates in the Democratic primary for New York’s 12th Congressional District—Alex Bores, Micah Lasher, and Jack Schlossberg—we looked at each candidate’s social media presence. On X (formerly Twitter), Jack Schlossberg brought a content-creator energy. Alex Bores focused on policy and framed himself as a tech-minded reformer. Micah Lasher came across as competent but conventional, with more attention coming from poll coverage than from his own posts. It was important to note, though, that only 40% of young adults ages 18–29 used X, making it the least-used social media platform in that age group.
Now, let’s examine Instagram as the most popular social media site. Bores has the largest raw IG footprint and the most built-out campaign presence (high follower count, consistent content, CTA-heavy). Schlossberg has a smaller sample, but more personality and national attention; he’s better using his “content creator energy.” Lastly, Lasher is functional but still relaxed, focused more on showing ground game than building a social brand.
The switch from cable television to social media isn’t a trend that will fade away in two years; it is something that we will need to adapt to. Gen Z has realized they can consume information faster by watching a 45-second TikTok clip. Trump was among the first to turn his campaign into a social-media-bred unit, rewriting the playbook for modern electoral politics. The more pressing question is what comes next — whether future candidates across both parties will follow suit, and whether voters will develop the critical literacy to engage with platform-native politics on their own terms.
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