Woke culture: Why millennials and Gen Zers are facing a backlash from the left

Passionate young people should be celebrated, but even some liberal parents are saying woke culture has gone too far. Photo / Getty Images

Highly principled or out of touch with reality? When it comes to ‘Generation Woke, Joanna Wane discovers even some of the most liberal parents admit their kids are driving them crazy.

When Ava, a 21-year-old university student, decided she didn’t want to become a capitalist stooge and planned to volunteer for a community group after graduating, her parents gave her a swift reality check. The Bank of Mum and Dad was officially closed for business.

Lofty social values are all very well, she was told by her exasperated mother, Victoria, but you still need a job that pays the rent.

“It’s this idea that you don’t want to be part of the rat race, but you still want the privilege of the rat race,” says Victoria, a feminist Green Party supporter with socialist, centre-left views.

“Not buying into corporate life and choosing to live differently from the way your parents’ generation did, that’s great. That’s fantastic. But how do you actually get that tiny house or earth home or whatever it is you want — who’s going to pay for that?”

The mother of two idealistic Gen Z daughters, Victoria is an entrepreneur who has built her company culture on diversity, equity and inclusion.

That’s exactly the kind of wokeism pilloried by many of those with ideological views that lean harder right. But Victoria isn’t the only one of her liberal friends who thinks the pendulum has swung too far, making young people overly sensitive to other points of view and out of touch with reality.

Originally signifying an awareness of important issues, especially related to racial and social justice, describing someone as “woke” has been co-opted in certain circles as a term of both ridicule and abuse.

At the last election, Act leader David Seymour campaigned on ending “Labour’s reign of woke terror” and made headlines again in May for calling out sushi as a woke food that’s inappropriate content for a government-subsidised school lunchbox.

WokeUp NZ, a website launched last month by lobby group Family First, uses a scale of woke ratings (non-woke, woke lite and extreme woke) in its stated mission to “expose the NZ businesses promoting woke leftist ideologies”.

A profile on each company lists its official policies and public commentary related to issues such as abortion, critical race theory, gender ideology/LGBTQ, climate change and a commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion.

No room for woke foods like sushi on Act leader David Seymour's new school lunch menu. Cartoon / Rod Emmerson

Like most of the white, middle-class parents in her social circle, Victoria has little in common with either Act voters or the conservative Christian base of Family First. But even she finds herself struggling with uber-woke Gen Zers and millennials who feel “triggered” by the use of certain words or when someone merely disagrees with them.

What annoys her most is the shallowness of ”virtue signalling” on social media, where it’s important to be seen aligning with the right causes, from mental health and the trans community to Black Lives Matter and the war in Gaza.

“They’ve seen something on Instagram or TikTok and grabbed hold of it superficially without going in deeper,” says Victoria, who thinks there’s also a dissonance between good intentions and appropriating a personal experience that isn’t yours.

“Flying the flag for certain things when they’re just throwing words around and there’s no substance to it — that’s the woke response for me. And putting your signature on something isn’t activism; it’s about taking action to change things, not just clicking ‘like’ on something and boom, you’ve shared it.”

It’s the polarity of views and lack of nuanced discussion that bothers Anne, an Auckland-based manager for a social development organisation and mother of three who describes herself as so far left, she has trouble walking straight.

“My girls have incredibly strong views about Palestine, but if I asked them some hard, searching questions, I’m not sure they could answer in a meaningful way,” she says.

“As a teenager, I was very against the Springbok tour, but I was also very anti the violent approach that a lot of the protesters took, including my male flatmates. That wasn’t an uncomfortable position for me, to hold those two views.

“Now, you have to be this and therefore never that. And I think that’s incredibly dangerous because when people get caught up in conspiracy theories or extreme views, the more you don’t engage with them, the deeper down the rabbit hole they get.”

Daniel, a Gen Xer who works in the creative industries, is “definitely in the woke camp”, but the performative nature of social media posts and the latest hot takes irritate him, too. “There’s this frantic need to be seen to support the right cause and choose a side quickly,” he says. “As you get older, you realise it’s a lot more complex.

“I feel like there’s a lot of talking and not enough listening. But it’s a desperate time for young people growing up in the world right now and when you think back to the ‘youthquake’ of the 60s and 70s, you kind of want that, right? It helps engage society and makes older generations question their values.”

And despite accusations of “slacktivism”, politically and social active young people are quick to point out that even superficial support for a cause on social media is better than being apathetic and can lead to engagement on a deeper level.

Millennials, now aged 28 to 43, will soon become the biggest demographic in the workforce and they’re already wielding their power. A 2024 Deloitte study found nearly 90% considered a sense of purpose important for job satisfaction and wellbeing.

Izzy Fenwick, founder of recruitment platform Futureful, which helps connect people with organisations that align with their values.

When Aucklander Izzy Fenwick commissioned some research here, almost half the people interviewed, all aged 20 to 40 and in full-time corporate jobs, said they’d turned down a role or employment offer because it didn’t align with their ethics.

Three months ago, Fenwick launched Futureful, a recruitment platform that helps people identify organisations that are compatible with their values. She says Gen Zers (born 1997-2012) and millennials (born 1981-1996) didn’t wake up woke, but have been shaped by the world they’ve grown up in — globally connected and saturated with information, with the impact of climate change and social inequity around the world livestreamed into their pockets.

“What’s really challenging is they’re completely disempowered to do anything about it. They can’t actually reject a capitalist society or fossil fuels because they don’t have the systemic social licence or power to do that.

“I think there’s a frustration towards older generations where, yes, there are some major complexities here, but that’s also seen as a total cop-out, not wanting to sacrifice money and power that’s wrapped up in the status quo. There’s only so much they can do other than signal how strongly they feel.

“If you look at woke’s original meaning, as political slang for alertness to racial prejudice and discrimination, how can that be a bad thing?”