Liberty Expose: Dude, Where’s My American Dream?

For some, it’s still a white-picket fence, a two car garage, a loving spouse, and a handful of rugrats. For others, it’s the financial freedom of not living paycheck-to-paycheck, a job that fulfills more than just gas tanks or utility bills, and leaving the world better than you found it. For a different kind of crowd, it’s a mentally and physically sound life, devoid of stress while relaxing with a beloved pet and escaping the constant chaos of news cycles and media outrage.

Since its literary debut in 1931, the idea of the American Dream has enshrined itself as a dogmatic element of our shared national ethos. Ask any student in elementary school and more likely than not they’re bound to have some cursory understanding of the concept. Even those from outside the continental borders of the United States know what the phrase promises and the sentiments which it invokes. After all, the allure of the American Dream is arguably what once attracted millions of immigrants to our shores and still does to this day.

What the pursuit and obtainment of the American Dream entails means something entirely different depending on who you ask. It’s a vision without a set standard, varying across demographics and worldviews. Not everyone may agree with someone else’s conception of the ideal, nor are they expected to. That’s the beauty of the freedom inherent in our American Experiment. The freedom to chart one’s own destiny amidst the high seas of unknown fate.

But while no two American Dreams may ever be 100% alike, there are two things that younger Americans across the board agree on wholeheartedly: the American Dream is still something worth achieving, it’s just increasingly out of reach.

A Dream Deferred

“You see people struggling, working their butts off, and still barely getting by. It’s like you’re told you can achieve anything, but then the world keeps putting up walls, making it harder to reach that dream. It’s hard to believe in something that feels so far away.”

The American Dream of younger citizens, specifically within the cohorts of Gen Z, has a framework seemingly alien to that of their parents and previous generations. Not limited to traditional cornerstones, such as homeownership and marriage, younger Americans have redefined the American Dream for themselves, placing a higher premium on aspects such as physical and mental health or social, career, and personal fulfillment.

A departure from orthodox conceptions of the American Dream isn’t the only outlook that separates younger Americans from their predecessors. They’re also more pessimistic. Although 86% of younger Americans surveyed by researchers from the Center for Scholars and Storytellers at UCLA viewed the pursuit of their own American Dream as something worthwhile, 60% believed the actualization of their ideal future would be impossible, if not challenging at best. Nor is this an even spread, with the percentage of younger Americans who have faith in the realization of their American Dream decreasing from 41% among those who are “financially free” to a mere 25% of those who “meet basic expenses with little or nothing left over”.

Consider a few quotes derived from the aforementioned study: “The American Dream was something we used to tout as a reason for living in this country, but now it’s so hollow it’s almost non-existent”, or even the abysmal “In this economy? Just being able to afford a house and food” and “A giant hallucination that you believe while you are still young.” For these younger citizens, the American Dream seems to be more wishful thinking than anything else.

Their widespread pessimism is not without good reason either. Financial hardships, lack of support, social and political barriers, and health and education-related hurdles were cited as the most pressing obstacles younger Americans are met with on the journey towards realizing their American Dream.

It’s easy to understand their frustration. Rent and housing costs have outpaced income over the past two decades and the “average age to purchase a first house has increased around 10 years.” Debt is a further hindrance, with younger Americans having “higher rates of student loan debt and more mortgage debt.” A volatile and at times drought-like job market has also dampened the already withering embers of the spirit of upwards mobility within younger Americans. Of 2025 college graduates, only 30% acquired entry-level positions in their respective fields of study, and a 2024 report discovered that 52% of college graduates are still “underemployed a year after they graduate.”, or in layman’s terms, working a job that never required a degree in the first place. Recent insights from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York indicate that the unemployment rate for 2025 college graduates rose to 5.7%, while financial analysts and industry professionals warn that the influx of Artificial Intelligence (AI) agents could compound the problem. ServiceNow CEO Bill McDermott recently stated that AI automation could push unemployment rates for recent graduates “into the mid-30s in the next couple of years.”

Per a 2023 study conducted by the Sine Institute of Policy and Politics, happiness and fulfillment were considered “absolutely essential” by 87% of younger Americans for their own American Dream. It is clear that not just any job will suffice for their criteria of a fulfilling career, given that a report from the Independent Center found that 70% said that “personal fulfillment is more important than material success in today’s American Dream.”

Researchers in the previously mentioned UCLA study were told by 74% of surveyed Gen Z members that it’s “harder for their generation to achieve happiness compared to previous generations”. An array of burdens, both financial and otherwise, has undoubtedly fostered this perspective. But social media has also played a leading role in convincing younger Americans that the American Dream is either a remnant of our storied past, or something so inaccessible it isn’t even worth dreaming over.

Comparison has always been the thief of joy, and the advent of social media has made the act of comparison a serial occurrence. Unlike their parents or grandparents, Gen Z is inescapably bombarded by countless posts, videos, and pictures of their peers living “their best life” on a daily basis. 50% of Gen Z individuals surveyed by the UCLA study admitted that social media has the “biggest influence on how they view the American Dream.” In an age of Dubai-vacationing influencers, lifestyle coaches who promise millions overnight, and prophets of instant passive income, it’s commonplace for any twenty-something’s American Dream to be lost amidst such an algorithm. It should come as no surprise that one 20-year old conceptualized the American Dream as, “To live like a Kardashian.”

Such relentless social media content has instilled in younger Americans an inflated picture of what the American Dream actually entails. Not because it challenges some sort of nuclear family narrative, because such a life is understandably not for everyone, but because it glorifies a lifestyle that typically takes untold hours of behind the scenes dedication and perseverance. Everyone has the ability to be a rockstar, or a blockbuster actor, or even the president of the United States, but it takes far more than what is displayed in a thirty second TikTok post.

A Promise Renewed

“A dream of a social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position.”—James Truslow Adams

Younger Americans don’t doubt that the American Dream can be sought after, and although the battle may be hard-won, the light of a brighter tomorrow still remains on the horizon. All it takes are the tried and true American virtues of stick-to-itiveness and “pulling yourself up by your bootstraps”. But what about those who never had any bootstraps to begin with? If Gen Z believes that support is crucial to delivering their American Dream, what happens to the American Dream of those who find such a support system vividly absent from their lives?

The challenge of restoring younger Americans’ confidence that the American Dream is a living, achievable concept falls to both state and federal legislators. However, such an undertaking will be no easy task as only 19% trust the federal government to do the right thing “most or all the time”, and a mere 15% believe that the country is heading in the right direction according to a 2025 Harvard Youth Poll.

But just because something is difficult doesn't mean it isn’t worth following through. Roadblocks to vehicles of the American Dream must be deconstructed by our government if younger Americans are to receive the same steady-footing that older generations had on their road to the American Dream.

To its credit, the Trump administration is already working towards such a goal. Proposed legislation, such as the bipartisan 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, would potentially restore homeownership as a viable dream for millions of younger Americans. Other government initiatives, such as provisions within the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that expand Pell Grants to workforce training programs and restructure repayment for potentially dream crippling student loan debt, are the necessary first steps the government must rightfully undertake in order to aid younger Americans in their lifelong pursuit of the American Dream.

Without our government taking an active role in helping younger citizens realize their ideal future, the American Dream may be relegated to history textbooks and fireside conversations with the old timers who had it better “back in their day”. The youth of today shouldn’t believe that they are living in the twilight of what was once a great nation of limitless possibility.

Whether through birthright, or naturalization, the American Dream is something that should be accessible to every young American, because the inheritors of today are the leaders of tomorrow.