On a bright, clear and cool Tuesday morning in New York City in 2001, two Boeing 767 jets whizzed low through the skies and barrelled into the World Trade Center. Around 50 minutes later, about 320km southwest, on a similarly crisp September morning in Virginia, a Boeing 757 plunged into the Pentagon. The cultural, financial and military nerve-centres of the United States were torn apart within an hour of each other.
The attacks by Al-Qaeda rattled the very institution of America, sent shockwaves rippling through the planet and reshaped every bit of the world's geopolitical fabric. The trouble is, about 25 years later, a growing number of Americans have no memory of 9/11 at all — not because they've forgotten, but because they weren't yet born.
About 104 million Americans, or 31.1% of the country's population, were born after the attacks, according to a Social Explorer analysis of 2020-24 Census data published on September 8.
The slide is stark enough that a new Netflix documentary, Turning Point: Generation 9/11, is built entirely around it. Its director, Brian Knappenberger, said the US is nearing a point where more than half of Americans were either born after the attacks or too young to remember them.
A quarter century after 9/11, the shrinking number of people who remember the 110-storey tall towers collapsing into a heap of rubble prompts questions about memory, history and shifting generational perspectives about one of the world's defining moments.
It's textbook
{{/usCountry}}A quarter century after 9/11, the shrinking number of people who remember the 110-storey tall towers collapsing into a heap of rubble prompts questions about memory, history and shifting generational perspectives about one of the world's defining moments.
It's textbook
{{/usCountry}}Memory does not switch off at a generational line. It fades gradually, age by age. Among Americans who are 30 today — who were five when the towers fell — only 54% say they remember exactly where they were when they heard the news, Pew found. By 34, that number is 84%. By 38, it touches 93%. It remains at or above 90% for every older cohort. Overall, 83% of adults born before 2001 remember the moment clearly, rising to 93% among those who were at least 10 at the time.
But for everyone born after, the attacks were a matter of a lesson in class or a video on YouTube. Sixty percent of Americans aged 18 to 24 told Pew they first learned about 9/11 in class or through schoolwork. Sixteen per cent heard it from family or friends. Eight percent came across it on their own.
That makes school the primary channel carrying 9/11 forward in the US. This in itself has triggered unease among a clutch of academics, who are now working to keep the stereotypes and discriminatory tropes that seized America in the wake of the attacks from flowing into younger generations.
Jeremy Stoddard and Diana Hess at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have tracked how American secondary schools teach the attacks since 2002. They found a fairly fixed classroom narrative – an unprecedented attack, first-responder heroism, a world rallying behind the US. This, they argue, can end up reinforcing suspicion of Muslims. Their pitch now is for schools to teach the effects and repercussions of the attacks, apart from the terror strikes themselves.
The generational pattern moves when people are asked if 9/11 changed their own lives. Gallup polled 1,200 adults and found 64% believe Americans permanently altered how they live because of the attacks. Only 28% say the same about their own life. In combined 2021 and 2026 polling, Millennials and Gen Xers are the most likely to report a personal change — 36% and 33% respectively, as against 16% of Gen Z.
Also read: Where was Donald Trump on September 11, 2001? What he said about that morning as 9/11 marks 25 years
Less fear, harder party lines…
Broadly, fear has eased among the general American. A Gallup tracker shows that 37% of Americans are worried today about becoming a victim of terrorism, down from 58% on the night of the attacks. But on the flip side, trust in the administration remains middling. Confidence in the government's ability to protect citizens has fallen to 55%, from 88% in the days after 9/11 — and it is split sharply by party: 78% of Republicans are confident under a Republican president, against 29% of Democrats.
The country's overall verdict has soured with time, too. Washington Post-ABC News polling found the share of people saying 9/11 changed America for the better fell from 55% in 2002 to 39% in 2011 to 33% in 2021. The share saying "for the worse" rose from 27% to 46%.
A new Ipsos poll, out September 8, found 88% of Americans say the attacks had a major impact on the country and 71% say the same of the world. Only 29% say the same of themselves.
…and a growing irreverence
Rolling Stone reported in 2024 that 9/11 memes, once limited to mocking conspiracy theorists, have gone mainstream on TikTok and X, a boost largely by people who didn't live through the day.
To be sure, researchers cited in that report trace it to distance from the event and to platforms that reward pushing past boundaries of social acceptability rather than any malice toward the dead.
Also read: 9/11, 25 years on: The terror threat is not gone and US is struggling with the lesson
The more complex legacy
Pew's companion report, 25 Years After 9/11, a Portrait of Muslim Americans, published on September 3, tracks a harder legacy. FBI data shows reported anti-Muslim hate crimes jumped to 481 in 2001 from just 28 the year before. The number has never returned to pre-2001 levels.
But political representation has swerved in the opposite direction. There were no Muslim members of Congress in 2001. There are now five – the fifth was sworn in on September 2. Earlier this year, Zohran Mamdani was sworn in as New York City’s first Muslim mayor.
Even how to mark the day remains unsettled. A YouGov survey published August 31 found 51% of Americans favour making September 11 a national holiday, 26% oppose it. Republicans back the idea more than Democrats do, 62% to 43%.