The rate of girls identitying as liberal is significantly higher and unlike the conservative boys, the rate hasn't started dropping off. Probably because the girls face actual threats to their freedoms, while the conservative boys' complaints are about a bunch of imaginary nonsense.

But of course it's boys who get the headline. The hill is a right wing dumpster bin.

I suspect it’s less due to the rhetoric of Donald Trump & more due to the influence of Andrew Tate, Jordan Peterson & Joe Rogan.

The left needs to own healthy masculinity and properly address very legitimate issues that disproportionally hurt boys in our society.

Otherwise we will lose a whole generation to toxic male role models in the manosphere.

I keep feeling that there's a disaster being brewed there, the only people paying attention to young boys seems to be the alt right, and there's a need for this which everybody seems to dismiss, every single one of the old style support structures for masculinity have been dismantled over decades, and while they were right to be dismantled all these boys still need the support to actually grow into decent people, and no one is giving it, and these crazies have noticed and are using it as breeding ground for soldiers for their cause. The decent people side must create something for them even if it's to avoid them falling into these dens of craziness.

Maybe kid watching too much Andrew Turd or Lobster cult? That's why de-platforming is so important. These people are genuinely harmful to the world.

I was a "Fox News"-viewing turd in high school, too.

Conservativism mirrored what my parents viewed at the time. Seemed edgy. And offered simple solutions to all of life's problems.

Then I grew up. Five years later, I was voting for Barack Obama and terrified of Sarah Palin.

I was a card carrying Libertarian after high school, before my sense of empathy developed more fully.

They’ll grow out of it when they enter the job market. I was conservative in high school too until I moved out of mom and dads and realized that our society has created nothing worth conserving for anyone under the age of 50. Nothing will make you radical like realizing you will likely never be able afford a home and children.

In the 2022 Monitoring the Future survey, the largest group of senior boys, more than two-fifths, claimed no politics at all, answering the liberal-conservative question with “none of the above” or “I don’t know.” Nearly one-fifth identified as moderate. Only 36 percent selected liberal or conservative as an ideology, and only there did the trend emerge.

I'm not as sold on "trending conservative" as I am "undecided on political ideology" +/-60% didn't say liberal or conservative.

I partially blame the Left for not addressing mental health issues for our younger boys and men and not doing a better job at expressing what healthy, happy masculinity actually looks like. So the likes of Andrew Taint, Joe Rogan, Matt Walsh and the likes basically swooped in and took that over.

I've got a 15 year old nephew who's starting his Sophomore year in like a week. I've already heard him say some rather disturbing extremist right-wing shit, and sadly his father fucking sucks at being a father so correcting him hasn't been easy for me (I'm the aunt, his mother is not currently in the picture). And he says this shit with his little sister around too.

My first election out of high school I voted for a right wing candidate because that's what my Dad voted for, but also because I was entrenched in Christian ideaology and patriarchal propoganda.

After that I started paying a bit more attention to politics and slowly moved to the left with a few leaps along the way. Nowadays I find the Labor party of Aus to be about as conservative as I can stand. I can barely hide my disgust with anything to the right of them.

Real life experience can be far more radicalising than any immature ideas you inherent in high school.

Edit: My major leaps were: Having an employer illegally underpay me, seeing my friends lose 'stable' jobs in 2008, having a close friend come out as gay, leaving the church, volunteering with unhoused people, living in the UK, living in a rental controlled by a landlord with over 100 properties, and doing disaster relief work.

Right but 62% are neither which is more important because both parties are ass and the kids know it.

Yeah ok, but highschool boys are fucking dumb as shit too. It's probably the same bunch of idiots that followed Andrew Taint

I've been a pubescent young man once and we have all been idiots laughing at stupid shit, trying to be edgy. I guess that number will change once they'll get more mature.

I understand that self identification is more convenient than a list of policy questions, but I kind of wonder how many of them count as conservative by the standards of twenty years ago, or even by the standards of people twenty years older than themselves

Do these conservative teenagers believe that gay people shouldn't be allowed to marry? That a war against Islam is a good idea? That wives should submit to their husbands?

The trend shows identification to either label is falling. Really reads as a way to spin what is likely a move even more left by many high schoolers as a move right by pretending no other axis exist than conservative/liberal. Only 35% said either label. The overwhelming majority didnt pick a label.

That's not surprising since high school boys think they have it all figured out and think they're special. Plus they still believe the lies they've been taught in school. I was conservative around that age. When you think that the world is fair, the government benevolent, and failure a result of laziness, then conservative makes a lot of sense. When you grow up and get some real world experience, you learn just how high the chips are stacked against average people. You learn some empathy.

It's absurd, yes, but nothing new. Many of the kids at my own school are leaning to the far right, without ever stopping and wondering if it even profits them. All they see are a couple of Instagram reels and hear "global leader" and "country's decade" and decide they'll follow the government blindly even if the most harm will be done to them. Worshipping your political idols is a way of life, and anyone who doesn't see the very same line as yours is an anti-nationalist. You might have guessed by now, alas, I speak of India.

relevant video: The Alt-Right Playbook: How to Radicalize a Normie

Theory: Entertainment propaganda - like Fox News and (for the non-elderly) performative alt-right influencers/male-rights-douchebags - succeeds for the same reasons as addictive drugs. They introduce a quick dopamine rush of easy answers, validation, and a feeling of euphoric purpose.