A recent Cato Institute survey found that 38% of Americans aged 18 to 29—and nearly one-third of those aged 30 to 44—hold a favorable view of communism. Support among Gen Z—the cohort born roughly between the late 1990s and the early 2010s—is twice as high as among people aged 45 to 54 and three times as high as among those aged 55 to 64.

For someone born in a communist country, the statistic is unsettling. It brought back memories of the economic ruin and stripped supermarket shelves of repressive, gray 1980s communist Bulgaria, as well as the power outages and hyperinflation that followed in the 1990s across post-communist Soviet bloc countries.

Communism, in my experience, means being trapped in mediocrity and silence, living under hollow propaganda about nonexistent equality and demands for self-sacrifice “in the name of all.” It means severing ties with the foundations of a fulfilling life, including truth, trust, empowerment and achievement. It means being repeatedly lied to by those in power, being denied the freedom to express yourself and suppressing ambitions to stand out from the crowd.

What, then, do so many young American adults find appealing about communism? I was fairly certain that it was not any of the characteristics I associate with communist regimes.

To explore the question, I spoke with Fenley Scurlock, 18, co-author of Down to Business and a freshman at Brown University majoring in philosophy, and Harper Bruner, 17, an Atlanta-based senior at Stanford Online High School who is focusing on history.

Despite communism’s collapse across 20th-century Soviet bloc countries, interest in communism and socialism has increased among the U.S. public and in global journalism over the past decade. Analysis by my consultancy, AKAS, found that Google searches for communism in the United States have reached an all-time high, rising 82% since 2006. Separately, an Ahrefs analysis of 684 million English-language news pages published worldwide between 2016 and 2026 found that news mentions of socialism are now roughly on par with mentions of capitalism. Mentions of communism remain lower but have reached a recent high.

Bruner said young adults are responding to the heightened communism- and socialism-related rhetoric being “thrown around” by politicians and news commentators. President Trump sharply increased his warnings about communism during the summer, mentioning the term 81 times in the two weeks surrounding July 4, according to a Reuters report. Calling his opponents “communists” appears to be one of Trump’s tactics for the midterm election campaign.

Bruner said many young people are confused by the competing terms—communism, socialism, utilitarianism and authoritarianism—and use Google and artificial intelligence tools to seek explanations. In textbook terms, socialism broadly denotes collective or state control of major industries, while communism envisions a classless society without private property—labels that are often used loosely in political debate. The concepts lack historical resonance for people who are three generations removed from the period they describe.

According to both interviewees, political rhetoric has not had its intended effect. Most young people are not frightened by the threat of communism or socialism because they associate the terms with a different, and often more promising, economic reality rather than with a political system, much less an authoritarian one. Authoritarianism is another concept that many young people do not fully understand.

“We grew up without memories of the Soviet era. We view these terms more abstractly and associate words like communism with resources rather than with authoritarianism,” Bruner said.

Scurlock argued that Republican efforts to use communism and socialism as political scare words have instead produced more favorable views of concepts that many young people do not clearly understand.

“Republicans are used to labelling measures like universal healthcare and universal basic income […] as ‘socialism’ or ‘communism’, which they use as scare words. But when you see something that looks good for people being labelled socialism, or communism, you think, ‘Well, those things seem good, maybe that means that socialism is good’,” he said.

The two interviewees said the disproportionate appeal of communism and socialism among young people is also linked to their increasingly limited economic prospects. According to the survey, 53% of U.S. adults aged 18 to 29 have a favorable view of socialism, compared with 45% who view capitalism favorably. Gen Z is also facing significant economic uncertainty, reflected in the rising median age of first-time homebuyers: 29 in 1981 compared with 40 in 2025, according to the 2025 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers.

“I think the problem is the lived economic frustrations associated with high costs of living, soaring house prices, student debt, low student wage. So, when you live under these difficult market conditions, the ideas and promises of universal equity or wealth redistribution naturally catch your attention,” Bruner said.

Bruner, who has volunteered in support of Hispanic immigrants, described the extreme economic inequality she had witnessed. “Some people don’t have access to a proper education, to a house or to technology… others don’t even have access to basic things like pens, pencils, diapers, period products and paper.”

Scurlock described what he sees as the failure of capitalism, a system to which many people in his generation are strongly opposed.

“In the last 40 years …we’ve seen large corporations become a sort of authoritarian entity in themselves. We see billionaires buying media companies and influencing their trajectory, the wealthy actively donating money to fund certain political candidates that they then can make demands of. We see monopolies, multinational corporations that are too big to fail. In other words, we see something that in one sense is not actually capitalism, something like a crony capitalism.”

He said young people also see economic unfairness in companies outsourcing labor to China, where workers may be underpaid or underage, and in what he described as extensive corporate influence over government.

“You see companies outsourcing labor to China, to underpaid and often underage workers. You see a high level of corruption in government due to corporate interference. Young people look at our current system specifically in America and see that this system isn’t working,” Scurlock said.

The conversations and research made the survey statistic less surprising. Many young people appear to be searching for alternatives to a system they see as broken. Scurlock said they want greater regulation and more influence over economic decisions.

“We want more regulation, more individual ground-level say in the economy and less of one CEO at the top throwing $100 million to secure the election of a candidate who cuts their taxes,” he said.

With the midterm campaign under way and anti-communist messaging already being tested, politicians must listen to those concerns and offer an alternative that does not leave Gen Z on the sidelines of prosperity and personal fulfillment, but places them at the center instead.

The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of Fortune. This story was originally featured on Fortune.com.