Gen Z And The Search For Objective Truth In A Subjective Age

“I didn’t expect such an intense question,” a young woman said. “I don’t know. I guess that’s just so subjective.”

This was one of the responses my team and I received while we conducted man-on-the-street interviews asking Gen Z what truth means. The young woman explained that even defining what is right feels difficult, because what is right and what is true can depend on the person.

Another young person told us that truth is “whatever you believe it is in your own opinion.”

None of these young people sounded angry. Their responses seemed sincere. They were trying to make sense of truth through what they know best: their feelings, experiences, relationships, and what they are being taught in classrooms or online.

What we are hearing on the street lines up with what national data is finding. In the American Worldview Inventory 2025, 61% of Gen Z said multiple conflicting moral truths can all be correct at the same time, and 67% agreed that accepting different views of truth is a sign of maturity. Forty-two percent said truth is a social creation rather than an absolute reality unaffected by culture.

A separate 2024 American Worldview Inventory found that 66% of Gen Z considered it morally acceptable to do anything they desire as long as it does no harm, compared with 55% of Millennials, 40% of Gen X, and 29% of Boomers.

I can see why that way of thinking makes sense to many people. It begins with things that are genuinely important: our experiences, what we are being taught, our relationships, and our feelings. But none of them can define truth. These things may affect how we understand truth, but they do not create it.

The problem is that what we believe is right or wrong never affects only us.

We often talk about truth and morality like they are just ideas people argue about. But they are not. Gen Z is already showing up at the polls and will help decide future elections, including who leads the country. This generation is already entering courtrooms as jurors and witnesses, and some will eventually serve as judges. They are moving into classrooms, hospitals, government offices, and positions of responsibility in their communities, where decisions about truth, justice, and right and wrong can affect other people’s lives.

Those decisions cannot be guided only by whatever feels true to each individual. If right and wrong are determined entirely by personal opinion, what gives us a basis for calling anything objectively wrong? What standard do we use when two people’s moral convictions directly conflict? What keeps justice from becoming the opinion of whoever has the most power or influence?

Facts still matter, and courtrooms must establish facts through evidence. But facts alone do not tell us why justice matters, why guilt should carry consequences, why the innocent should be protected, or why every human life has value. Once morality enters a courtroom, a classroom, a hospital, or a voting booth, it is no longer merely personal.

The real question is: What do we trust when “my truth” changes?

Young people may say morality is subjective, but they are still vocal, especially on social media, about cruelty, discrimination, and injustice. But applying those convictions consistently can become more difficult when real situations involve people they follow on social media, people they care about, or opinions they strongly hold.

Every time we call something truly unjust, we are assuming justice is more than a feeling. We may not always agree on how to define it, but our own moral outrage reveals that we do not actually live as though morality is entirely relative.

One young man we interviewed offered a very different understanding of truth.

“Truth is like a reflection of objective reality,” he said. He described it as something that exists apart from individual or collective perspective. “It just exists outside of all those things. It’s kind of like how God does also.”

His answer recognized something our culture increasingly resists: truth does not become true because we agree with it. It exists independently of our feelings, preferences, and group consensus. That does not mean we understand everything perfectly. That means we don’t get to decide what is real simply by how we feel about it.

The same young man described his generation as experiencing “a lot of higher highs and lower lows,” with some people able to have meaningful conversations and others struggling to connect. When we asked what might be contributing to that divide, he pointed to social media.

“We’re exposed to these tactics of division at a younger age before we’re actually able to develop our own opinions,” he said.

That stood out to me. Young people are hearing strong opinions about identity, morality, relationships, and faith before they know how to sort through them. When personal feelings are treated as the highest authority, the people and platforms shaping those feelings gain enormous power.

From a Christian perspective, our moral compass should always be the Word of God. It is not determined by our feelings, experiences, political beliefs, or whatever a culture happens to approve. The Bible gives us a standard outside ourselves for understanding what is true, what is right, and what is wrong. As Psalm 119 says, “Your word is a lamp for my feet and a light for my path” (Psalm 119:105).

People have lived in different cultures, under different governments and held different opinions for thousands of years. Yet the truth Scripture proclaims has remained consistent through them all. Jesus Christ does not change with every generation. He is “the same yesterday and today and forever” (Hebrews 13:8).

Jesus said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life” (John 14:6). He did not present truth as a private opinion or a personal preference. He presented Himself as the truth.

That is why the question of truth matters. It is not only about what we believe in our own minds. It is about the kind of society we build and what we will call right or wrong when the decisions become difficult.

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Naomi Anderson is the co-founder of Verity Collective, a movement reaching this generation with the unchanging truth of Jesus.