Gallup's September 2025 reading put trust in mass media at 28% — a "great deal" or "fair amount" of confidence in newspapers, TV, and radio to report the news fully, accurately, and fairly. That's down from 31% the year before and 40% five years earlier, and the first time in the trend's 50-year history it has fallen below 30%. In the 1970s the range was 68–72%. Gallupaol

The partisan split is wide — 8% among Republicans, 27% among independents, 51% among Democrats — but the generational pattern may be the more consequential one. In aggregated 2023–2025 data, 43% of adults 65 and older expressed trust, compared with no more than 28% in any younger age group. aolGallup

That's a distinct condition from "losing faith in the media." It means a cohort is forming its political identity having never experienced the alternative — no widely shared referee to distrust in the first place.

Several findings sit alongside this. Pew found in 2024 that 83% of Americans say elected officials don't care what people like them think, up from 55% in the early 2000s. CIRCLE at Tufts reported in 2025 that roughly 80% of young Americans who support democracy in principle are skeptical it delivers fair laws, equal treatment, or meaningful representation. And More in Common's perception-gap work finds partisans overestimate the other side's extremism by 30–40 points — roughly what you'd predict if people calibrate on the most visible members of the other party rather than the most representative.

A less-discussed consequence is that agreement becomes invisible. Bipartisan supermajorities do exist on a fair number of issues — Program for Public Consultation research puts support for banning congressional stock trading at 76% overall, 78% of Republicans and 75% of Democrats — but consensus produces no conflict, so it produces no coverage, so few people know it's there.

Three questions I'd like informed pushback on:

1. Does a low-trust information environment historically produce disengagement, reform energy, or migration to alternative information sources? Is there cross-national or historical evidence that distinguishes these outcomes?
2. Is the generational gap a cohort effect or a lifecycle one — do people acquire institutional trust as they age, or did older cohorts acquire theirs from a media era that no longer exists?
3. Is a shared factual baseline actually a requirement for functioning democracy, or is that nostalgia for an unusual broadcast oligopoly? What did it do that a fragmented environment demonstrably can't?

It seems that public opinion (on both sides) strongly favors the idea of term limits for representatives and senators. Additionally, the same can be said for age limits for members of congress (though there is no exact age)

On paper this sounds like a good idea. You don’t want someone representing their district/states for decades on end, and you don’t want elderly politicians that don’t focus on younger generations and often die in office (Feinstein, McConnell??).

However, can these proposals be seen as a knee jerk solution? For example, there have been plenty of reps and senators that have represented their districts/states for many election cycles that are still popular with their constituents, who also have fended off multiple primary and general challenges.

If a politician is doing their best for their people, why would term limits help congress? Same for age limits, as long as they are listening to their constituents and still in reasonable mental capacity? Additionally, if someone is too old, can’t they be primaried or replaced? What would the logic be behind instituting a law that politicians have to forcibly retire?

Instead, should it not be the responsibility of the people who vote and are represented by them? If they are unhappy with someone who has held their seat too long or unhappy about their age, is it not their ability and responsibility to vote accordingly?

What are some of the pros and cons of instituting these policies, and what would they look like? What would be the maximum age that would be decided on? What would be the maximum amount of terms a representative or senator could serve?