Abstract
Concerns about affective polarization among young people have grown in political, media, and academic debate. Yet, despite adolescence being a crucial period of identity formation and young people’s central role in shaping the future of democratic societies, little is known about when affective polarization emerges, and how it varies across adolescence and political environments. Drawing on survey data from adolescents (N = 7,031; ages 11–25) and adults (N = 9,997; ages > 25) in the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Austria, Poland, and Greece, we examine within-adolescence age differences in affective polarization, adolescent-adult differences, and temporal variation in affective polarization levels around a major political event. We find that affective polarization is already visible by early adolescence and differs remarkably little across adolescent age groups, challenging the expectation that affective polarization increases sharply around the transition to the legal voting age. Comparisons with adults in the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and Austria show that adolescents are consistently less affectively polarized than adults. Further, our longitudinal panel evidence from the Netherlands suggests that adolescent affective polarization varies with the broader political environment, increasing around the 2023 parliamentary election and declining thereafter. This illustrates that adolescent affective polarization is not fixed but varies with political dynamics, highlighting adolescence as an important period for educational efforts that foster democratic engagement and constructive political disagreement.