Youth distrust of mainstream media is more intense than ever. Forty-eight percent of people 18 to 29 say keeping up with politics is one reason they’re on TikTok. Amid the contracting and crumbling of the media industry, we’re in the era of the YouTube video essay, the talking-to-camera headline roundup, and the independently run newsletter. Welcome to Teen Vogue’s new series Logged On, where we talk to the people bringing you politics and the news in innovative and fun ways.
Before sitting down to talk with Teen Vogue, the content creator known as MattXIV was strolling through Sephora, “touching everything” without spending a dime, something he probably does every other week.
Matt Bernstein, 26, got started on Instagram by using makeup as a conduit for political messages, often featuring words scrawled in black over rainbow-hued looks. Bernstein was in college in New York during the first Trump presidency and remembers the buzz of being surrounded by people ready to resist. “It was just very exciting to me as I was [coming] into my identity as a queer person, as a feminine person,” he tells Teen Vogue. As Bernstein played with makeup in his dorm room, he started sharing his looks online.
His content is largely political now, but his early makeup looks occasionally circulate online, sometimes leaving him a bit embarrassed. “Having cared about something and then having lived long enough for it to become cringe,” says Bernstein, “is actually a beautiful thing.”
Bernstein’s Instagram account, @mattxiv, boasts over 1.7 million followers. When people encounter his content on the Instagram Explore page or via a classmate’s story, each post is easily distinguishable, with blue and pink gradient backgrounds, graphics breaking down nuanced ideas and arguments, and reflective commentary.
As sharing infographics on Instagram to provide political news and commentary became common practice among young people, Bernstein’s account grew. The fact that his content is inherently shareable means his audience doesn’t include just his followers. “A lot of the eyes that end up on my work are the families of these people,” he says. “Families living in red states, families with a trans kid who don’t understand them…. I want to reach [them].”
Bernstein has been out of college for three years now, and his platform continues to grow. “I do the internet as a job,” he says. Last year, he launched the podcast A Bit Fruity to delve deeper into everything he cares about, whether stories about the AIDS crisis or a political analysis of Wicked. Bernstein features invited guests on most episodes, including fellow podcast host and musician Eliza McLamb, video essayist Natalie Wynn (a.k.a. ContraPoints), and everyday people who join Bernstein to share their stories.
Bernstein’s following is largely made up of young people, a group that is increasingly turning to content creators for news, according to data from Pew Research and Morning Consult. Large media companies like CNN or the New York Times have investors and “expectations” for which topics they cover and how they do it. But with peer-to-peer news,“you can talk about what’s interesting to you," Bernstein tells Teen Vogue, “is that you can talk about what’s interesting to you.”
Bernstein's content does just that while exploring a variety of ideas. He examines how “pop divas frame the social landscape of America,” shares his perspective as a queer anti-Zionist Jew, comments on the hypocritical views of Trump's Cabinet, and provides his followers with new approaches for digesting news.
Because Bernstein’s content covers so many topics, he has the opportunity to introduce his followers — and their followers — to new ideas. “People who follow me tend to walk with me,” he says. Through his work Bernstein attempts to tell his supporters, “I know you maybe don’t even care about this thing… but take my hand. Let me make you.”
As a “young, closeted gay kid,” the internet helped Bernstein feel less alone. Now, with his own platform, he wants to do the same for others. “People find my content in a million ways….," he says. “Everyone arrives at my content from a different place, from a unique place.” Whether a high school freshman in a red town who feels like they’re the only person they know with progressive beliefs or a gay man in his 60s who was married and had children and is now discovering life as a queer adult, Bernstein explains, they have found his work. “Somehow a piece of content can resonate with both of them.”
Bernstein also wants his content to help people argue for their progressive positions offline, whether at school or the family dinner table. “I want to give people the language to articulate things that they think but don’t know how to express,” he says. “The best compliment ever,” he adds, is when someone tells him, “'I had these feelings, but I didn’t know how to put them into words.'”
Although more and more people are receiving their news via social media, it can still be difficult to ensure that people engage with a post. In a college marketing class, Bernstein was taught that people are on a single piece of content for mere seconds before they decide to stay or move on. That statistic is now a “guiding force” for how he creates content. For many people, social media is entertainment.
“It’s my job, but it’s most people’s free time," notes Bernstein. "They’re not going to spend their free time with your content unless you give them a reason to.” Bernstein gives those who encounter his content a variety of reasons to stick around, using everything from humor to statistics to interesting graphics to “hook” people.
Instagram content
Still, it’s important to Bernstein that the information he provides to his followers is both impactful and accurate. “The most stressful thing for anyone who’s speaking earnestly about a subject, especially a personal one, is being misunderstood,” he tells Teen Vogue, adding that he wants to communicate “effectively and clearly.”
“You have to know that people will fact check you if you don’t fact check yourself,” Bernstein says. “That alone, for me, is enough of a reason to try to really cross my t’s and dot my i’s.” Creating accurate content within a social media landscape with little regulation takes time, but it is important, he says, especially when other content creators with huge followings seemingly take no time to fact check.
Creators and media figures who have spread misinformation, like Logan Paul, Elon Musk, and others, helped Donald Trump run up margins among young male voters. In 2024, more than 50% of young men voted for Trump, according to an analysis of AP VoteCast data by the Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement. “These people are all huge news media ecosystems in and of themselves, and there's no accountability process whatsoever,” Bernstein says. “It's a problem.”
Everyone in political media brings a personal bias to their reporting, says Bernstein, adding that “some institutions have a veil of objectivity that is not real.” Many of his posts center on his opinions on news, or conversations about the way his identity is connected to what he believes.
“I like to do what, I guess, is the opposite of journalist orthodoxy," Bernstein tells Teen Vogue, "which is to be very clear about my feelings… and explain exactly why I have those feelings… and not pretend that I’m some unbiased arbiter of information — because those don’t exist.”
Instagram content
Beyond political posts – and true to his roots – Bernstein shares photos of his nail art, regularly hosts “Manifest Mondays,” where followers can swipe up with their wishes for the week, and engages with his supporters in a number of other ways. “As long as I’ve made content, I’ve always imbued [it with] some fun,” he says, pointing out that everyone has to unplug sometimes. There is a need, he says, for finding joy, smiling, and laughing. “I think that’s going to be a big part of how we deal with things moving forward.”
Bernstein continues, “I just want to keep making work that is both creatively and intellectually fulfilling to me, and that, of course, helps other people in some way or another." He explains further, “The next few years are going to be tumultuous. I think part of my place on the internet is helping people digest what’s going on…. That’s probably going to be a new challenge now that [Trump’s] coming back to office… but I’m up to the challenge.”
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