Nearly two-thirds of American adults fall into the two least civically engaged groups in the country, according to a sweeping new Pew Research Center study published July 16, 2026. The findings reveal a deeply uneven landscape in which a small, intensely active minority drives most public participation while the majority watches from the sidelines or tunes out entirely.
How the four groups were defined
Drawing on data from the 2025 Cross-Sectional Engagement Survey, researchers used cluster analysis to sort Americans into four engagement groups based on the ways they take part in public life. This approach identifies people who share similar engagement patterns across politics, religion, news consumption and other civic activities, with group assignment based on respondents’ answers to 19 questions.
The main data source was the Cross-Sectional Engagement Survey, fielded July 9 to December 5, 2025, among 5,393 adults. Participants were first mailed an invitation to complete an online survey, and a paper survey was later mailed to those who did not respond. In total, 2,705 respondents completed the survey online, 2,500 completed the paper survey and 188 completed the survey over the phone. People could respond online, on paper or by telephone, and researchers reached out multiple times to those who did not initially respond.
The survey was specifically designed to address a known limitation: those who are more engaged in public life are also more likely to take a survey in the first place, meaning standard surveys tend to overestimate how engaged people are.
A nation split four ways
Mobilizers, at just 9% of U.S. adults, are the most active across all the different areas. They volunteer, attend local government meetings, donate to political campaigns, follow the news closely and attend religious services at high rates. They are by far the most likely to volunteer for campaigns and contact elected officials.
Connectors, at 28%, are larger than the Mobilizers and also highly engaged in many ways, centering on community life, charitable giving and religious attendance. They vote, participate in groups, attend religious services and donate to nonpolitical causes at high rates, similar to Mobilizers. But they are much less likely to take political action.
Spectators, also 31% of adults, are much less likely than Mobilizers and Connectors to participate in civic or political activities, though they follow the news at similarly high rates. When they engage with news online, they tend to do so by privately chatting about it or liking posts rather than publicly commenting or posting.
Outsiders, at 31%, participate at relatively low levels across the activities measured in this study, including following the news. Still, they are not universally disengaged: 41% say they voted in 2024 and 24% attend religious services at least monthly.
Generational and knowledge divides
Age is closely linked with how Americans take part in public life, with older and younger Americans often taking different paths to participation. Older Americans are more likely than younger adults to be Connectors, who tend to participate in civic and community life, about four-in-ten people ages 65 and older (43%) are in this group, almost three times the share of adults ages 18 to 29 (15%). In contrast, younger Americans are more likely to be Spectators. Nearly half of adults under 30 are Spectators (46%), compared with 19% of adults 65 and older.
Older adults are more likely to participate in long-standing civic activities like voting, donating money or attending religious services. Younger adults, meanwhile, are more likely to engage online, including by liking or privately sharing news content.
The gap in civic participation also maps onto a gap in political knowledge. Half of Outsiders (50%) said they were not sure about at least one of four political knowledge questions, compared with 15% of Mobilizers and 16% of Connectors.
Only 41% of Outsiders were able to correctly answer all four questions, versus majorities of Connectors (72%) and Mobilizers (68%).
Engagement shapes trust and community feeling
More engaged groups are more likely to report positive feelings about the state of their local community. Connectors, highly involved in civic and community life but less involved in politics, are less likely than Mobilizers to say they often feel angry or fearful about the state of their community and their country.
The most engaged adults are the most likely to express negative feelings about the state of the country, even as they report relatively positive views of their own local communities.
The study is part of the Pew-Knight Initiative, which examines how Americans engage in public life across a range of activities, including politics, civic and community involvement, news consumption and religious participation, and analyzes how patterns of engagement, when clustered together, can form distinct groups within the U.S. public, and explores how these groups differ in their demographics, attitudes and levels of civic knowledge. The findings underline a recurring tension in American social life: the people most likely to shape communal decisions are the smallest share of the population, while those least connected to public institutions make up the majority.
Rather than falling along a single spectrum, U.S. adults sort into four distinct groups that reflect different patterns of participation, a reminder, researchers note, that measuring Americans’ engagement in public life cannot be done using a single metric, since some people are very active in their community or church, others closely follow the news and discuss it, and still others engage by donating to charity or volunteering for political campaigns.
For a closer look at how daily habits shape social connection, see GCN’s earlier coverage of how Americans are rebuilding friendship networks.
