When I joined Plugged In a few years ago, I think Adam and Paul took one look at my relative youth and thought to themselves: This guy’s young. He knows YouTube. In a flash, they stuck me on the YouTube beat, where I published my very first review for the ministry. It’s a beat for which I’ve since written over 150 reviews.
Well, that bold assertation I’ve personally hoisted upon Adam and Paul holds true: I do know YouTube, and yes, it is because I’m young. I’m part of Gen Z, which encompasses kids born from about 1997-2012. YouTube is also “Gen Z.” It launched in 2005, and the website’s been around for the vast majority of my generation’s conscious life.
I don’t want you to miss how strange that last sentence is for a member of Gen Z: In our experience, things don’t often stick around long. We grew up in a world that was changing faster than ever before. I watched as the world went from landline to smartphone, from CD players to Spotify, from VHS to DVD to Blu-Ray to digital. The Internet has been a constant in my life, and it’s only facilitated the speed at which we consume, toss and move onto the next fleeting pleasure.
And as technology came and went like the sun in the sky, change affected other aspects of our lives, too. Take the economy, for instance. Many Gen Z kids witnessed their parents struggle through the economic pains of the Great Recession. Then, as the first of us became college graduates, we had to find economic footing as COVID-19 caused global marketplace havoc.
Gen Z’s moral views, likewise, became just as fluid as the rest of our childhood experiences: In a mere 30 years, from 1996 to 2025, support for legal same-sex marriage rose from 27% to 68%. Views of pornography went from “degrading,” “damaging” and “exploitative” to “normal” and “empowering.” The prevalence of cohabitation before (or instead of) marriage rose despite evidence showing the choice leads to higher rates of marital instability. And even ideas that there are more than two genders skyrocketed amongst Gen Zers in the last decade.
It comes as no surprise, then, that as the technological, economic and moral landscape changed around Gen Z, so too did the generation’s beliefs on truth.
Forgetting Objective Truth
Gen Z largely embraced the postmodern thought in which it was raised—a thought that challenged universal truths and objectivity, instead advocating that truth is socially constructed and, therefore, relative.
Gen Z grew in tolerance for other worldviews under the guise of allowing others to “live their truth”—even if those ideas directly clashed with reality. Truth was found by looking inward at what seemed good to the individual rather than looking outward at reality itself. Pontius Pilate’s dismissive question to Jesus, “What is truth?” (John 18:38) might as well have been the subheading to Gen Z’s personal introduction.
Of course, changes in the technological, economic and moral landscapes aren’t necessarily unique to Gen Z. Such things have been debated, built and experienced long before our time. But these fast-changing issues are nevertheless pivotal in the development of the Gen Z worldview. We’ve been conditioned to see these things as the ever-changing mist. We are, as a generation, fundamentally unfamiliar with lasting truth.
Depressing as it is, the picture I’ve painted above is a reality for Gen Z. And it’s tragically supported by a variety of studies and polls, all of which say the same thing: Members of Gen Z are far more likely to be depressed than previous generations, and no amount of self-care techniques are fixing the issue.
This postmodern, increasingly secular culture in which we were raised—this belief that happiness comes from every person being allowed to live his or her “truth”—isn’t working. And whether we choose to admit it or not, the rising rates of hopelessness prove it.
But that culmination, I think, leads us into what some may see as the natural consequence for a generation stuck grasping and chasing after the wind: the ache for a great unchanging truth.
The Gospel According to YouTube
In recent years, that ache for truth is compelling some members of Gen Z to investigate Christianity.
Several reports suggest that Gen Z’s interest in Christianity is rising—particularly among Gen Z men, a subject we discuss in Episode 292 of The Plugged In Show, “Are Youths Finding Faith Again?” A 2025 Barna study found that “Millennials and Gen Z have shown significant increases in commitment to Jesus,” with interest among Gen Z men rising by 15% between 2019 and 2025.
Another analysis revealed Gen Z’s weekly church attendance had risen higher than those born in previous decades. That report is echoed by The Quiet Revival, a U.K. study which found that the church attendance of Gen Z members aged 18-24 increased from 4% in 2018 to 16% in 2024, making them the second most likely demographic to regularly attend church (only 3% behind those aged 65+). The same report also noted that younger churchgoers outshined their older peers in weekly Bible reading.
Perhaps to no one’s surprise, these digital natives are being spurred on by social media. And that brings us back, full circle, to the one constant from the Gen Z childhood: YouTube.
Gen Z is finding faith online, particularly on platforms such as YouTube and TikTok. According to the American Bible Society’s most recent State of the Bible report, whereas Millennials, Gen X and Baby Boomers all agree that they interacted most often with Bible content when it was in text format, Gen Z’s preferred medium was video content.
On video platforms, Gen Zers are engaging with Wes Huff, Redeemed Zoomer, Red Pen Logic, Mike Winger, The BEAT by Allen Parr, Alisa Childers and a plethora of other Christian content creators who are answering questions about faith, grappling with difficult issues and, especially, providing comfort to viewers by sharing the lasting truth of the gospel.
“For I, the LORD, Do Not Change”
If trends continue, Gen Z may very well be the first generation in history wherein the majority’s first interaction with the gospel is via video rather than text. Christian apologetics has found a footing on YouTube, in part, because Gen Z is a generation that’s desperately searching for truth—and not the relative kind that changes with the seasons.
Gen Z is not blind to the dangers of YouTube or the Internet. Their general openness to hearing other ideas makes them a prime target for spiritual deception—and there’s plenty of it on any social media platform you visit.
But their openness also makes them willing to have theological conversations—and you’ll find plenty of those on platforms like YouTube, too. (You can even check out a list of Christian channels Plugged In has reviewed here.)
Gen Z is in desperate need of a foundation that can’t be shaken, one that won’t fade away. They are aching for the One who is the truth and from whom all immutable truth flows, which is found only in Jesus Christ.
Because, unlike the fleeting wisdom of culture, our God does not change (Malachi 3:6).
