Quietly, trust in nearly every major American institution – from Congress and higher education to religion and the media – has collapsed. Communal life has frayed, and civility is a relic. One of the least-discussed contributors to the unraveling of American trust hides in plain sight: the constant stream of performative affluence saturating our digital lives – a stream of content that poisons our younger generations.
Wealth porn, a phrase popularized by NYU professor and entrepreneur Scott Galloway, describes the glorification of private jets, luxury homes, designer lifestyles, and hyper-curated presentations of success and material achievements in life across social media. On social media, users are bombarded with images of 25-year-olds showing off beachfront condos, fast cars, and “quiet luxury” routines, all projected with a polished, algorithmically friendly smile. These displays aren’t just aspirational – they are moral signals. They tell young people what matters, what success looks like, and imply rules about who belongs and who doesn’t.
The result is not just envy or exhaustion. It’s disillusionment. It’s a slow-burning cynicism that hollows out belief in shared institutions and the possibility of common life. Most importantly, it’s hurting our youth.
In decades past, young Americans may have looked to professions, faith communities, political movements, or service as the path to meaning. Today, too many look to lifestyle influencers or real estate “entrepreneurs” who sell access to their keys to the good life and comfort. This shift from character to optics – substance to surface – undermines the civic norms we desperately need to rebuild.
As a college professor, I see this up close. Students today are not lazy or entitled. They’re working multiple jobs, paying down debt, and trying to make a future for themselves in an economy that feels rigged. But when they open their phones and see peers projecting million-dollar lives built on drop shipping or monetized aesthetics, it doesn’t inspire. It humiliates, distorts, makes civic life – slow, imperfect, collective – feel like a fool’s errand.
This is not an argument for austerity or against ambition. The American dream has always included upward mobility. But something has changed. What social media sells today isn’t just wealth, it’s the illusion of effortless superiority. The curated image of a person above the fray: above debt, above institutions, above others.
That’s dangerous.
Institutions depend on trust, on buy-in, on people believing that participation matters and that rules are worth following. Community requires mutual recognition and the sense that we’re in this together. Civility flourishes when people feel seen and respected, not when they feel like failures compared to someone else’s highlight reel.
But “wealth porn” doesn’t cultivate any of these virtues. Instead, it accelerates atomization. It reduces politics to a game, community to a stepping stone, and life itself to a brand. And it teaches young Americans that they’re either winning or invisible.
There’s data to back this up. The University of Chicago’s long-running General Social Survey shows a steep decline in trust in institutions among young adults since the rise of social media in the early 2010s. Pew Research Center finds that Gen Z is the least religious generation in American history. A growing number of young people say they feel anxious, alienated, and unsure of where they belong. A 2024 Pew survey found that nearly 60 percent of young adults feel “disconnected from meaningful community,” and a majority believe that “most people who succeed in life do so through luck or manipulation.”
Nowhere is this more salient than in New York City, where young adults face soaring rents, a hyper-competitive job market, and shrinking public services – all while scrolling past endless social media posts of influencers and entrepreneurs flashing wealth they cannot hope to reach. For many, the city that once symbolized possibility now feels like a showcase of exclusion and spectacle. It’s no surprise that NYC millennials and Gen Zers report some of the highest rates of anxiety and hopelessness nationwide.
Los Angeles offers a similar picture. The glamor of Hollywood and tech startups coexists with deep economic insecurity. The allure of “making it” is amplified by digital culture, yet structural barriers to real advancement remain stubbornly high. Young Angelenos often feel caught between the dazzling illusion of instant success and the crushing reality of precarity.
This is not just a coastal phenomenon. A 2023 national survey by Public Religion Research Institute reveals that Gen Z adults across the Midwest, South, and rural communities report similarly low levels of trust in major institutions – police, the federal government, and media – as their urban counterparts. For example, only 41 percent of Gen Z say they trust the federal government, compared with 56 percent of baby boomers, and just 37 percent trust the news media, versus 58 percent of the Silent Generation. A 24-year-old from Ohio told PRRI researchers he felt like “we’re hardly part of anything – everyone’s just doing their own thing online.”
National polling reinforces this disillusionment. A Wall Street Journal–NORC survey found that over 75 percent of voters under 30 believe the country is heading in the “wrong direction,” the highest of any age group. A Gallup–Walton poll reported that 51 percent of Gen Z have “very little” trust in the presidency, more than any other generation.
These data make it clear: wealth porn’s corrosive impact is not confined to expensive urban hubs. It’s a national crisis of belonging and institutional collapse.
Stepping into the void are figures like Zohran Mamdani, a New York State Assembly member representing Queens and the Democratic nominee for Mayor of New York City.
Mamdani’s rise reflects a yearning among younger progressives for representation that acknowledges not only economic struggle but also the cultural disillusionment that wealth porn and institutional failure have fueled. In a recent interview featured in The Nation, he said:
“Young people aren’t just angry about their paychecks or rents. They’re angry because the institutions that promised us stability, dignity, and belonging have failed us… We need to rebuild trust by being honest about that failure and fighting for real community.”
Mamdani’s message taps into the frustrations of a generation demoralized by spectacle and eager for authentic connection and systemic change.
He is not alone. In Tucson, 25-year-old Deja Foxx has drawn national attention with her daring candidacy for Congress, running on a platform of bold progressive reforms and rejecting “out-of-touch” establishment politics – often deploying social-media-fueled, uncompromising rhetoric. Across the country in Illinois, 26-year-old Kat Abughazaleh is mounting a primary challenge against veteran Democrats using unapologetic leftist messaging and a strong online presence to galvanize youth.
These young figures share Mamdani’s core playbook: amplified disillusionment meets radical politics. They speak not just of reforms, but of systemic overthrow, wrapped in the aesthetics of digital rebellion and moral certainty. Their rise is emblematic of a broader generational shift – one that amplifies anger, indignation, and impatience.
These shared messages and views tap into the frustrations of a generation demoralized by spectacle and eager for authentic connection and systemic change.
What’s needed is a cultural correction – one that re-centers shared responsibility, public engagement, and institutional trust. That starts with rethinking what we elevate and reward. Schools, parents, media platforms, and teachers must help young people develop the resilience and moral imagination to see beyond the filters.
We should be telling a different story: that a good life is one built in connection with others. That dignity doesn’t come from going viral. And that the most meaningful kind of wealth is civic and relational, not just financial.
That message is harder to hear when so many young Americans feel like the ladder is broken. For millions, the promises that once defined the American Dream – homeownership, upward mobility, a dignified career – feel increasingly out of reach. Wages haven’t kept up with inflation. College debt weighs heavily. Housing costs have exploded. And for Gen Z and younger millennials, the path to security feels steeper and lonelier than it did for their parents or grandparents.
This isn’t just economic – it’s psychological and political. When hard work feels futile, when institutions feel inaccessible or rigged, frustration sets in. And frustration too often curdles into distrust, tribalism, or demands for radical transformation. It’s no accident that many young Americans are turning away from capitalism, embracing zero-sum politics, or seeking belonging in ideological extremes. When earned success seems impossible, performative success – on TikTok, in protests, in aestheticized rage – fills the vacuum.
The challenge for conservatives and civic-minded liberals alike is to meet this moment not with scolding or nostalgia, but with principled solutions rooted in freedom, responsibility, and belonging. That means defending the cultural value of earned success, but also reforming the systems that have made it so elusive. It means expanding vocational and community college pathways that lead to meaningful work. It means zoning reform to lower housing costs, fiscal prudence to tame inflation, and de-bureaucratizing the licensing and credentialing regimes that trap young workers.
It also means reasserting the moral foundations of a free society – foundations that wealth porn erodes. The health of a republic depends on citizens who see one another as neighbors, not rivals; who value contribution over image; and who understand that real status doesn’t come from clicks or capital, but from how you live, what you build, and who you serve.
This message isn’t as flashy as a beachfront condo on Instagram. It’s harder to market than outrage or instant success. But it’s the only one that endures. In an age when anger goes viral and cynicism sells, the quiet work of building trust and meaning may feel like a tough pitch—but it’s the only one with the power to renew hope, repair institutions, and restore a sense of common purpose.
At a time when democracy feels brittle and polarization runs deep, we can’t keep peddling the lie that private success is a substitute for public virtue. If we’re serious about rebuilding trust in our institutions, in each other, and the future, we need to turn down the wealth porn and turn up the volume on everyday acts of service, solidarity, and civic responsibility. That’s the currency of a flourishing society.
