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Their initial data, collected by students conducting individual interviews, surprised Mutz: It found that American adults ages 18-30 tend to favor isolationist foreign policy, regardless of where they fall on the political spectrum, when compared with Baby Boomers, aged 60+.

“At least for the last half of the 20th century, Americans 60 and older were more isolationist than younger adults,” says Mutz, the Samuel Stouffer Professor of Communication and Political Science and director of the Institute for the Study of Citizens and Politics at Penn. “But now things have reversed. So what happened and why?”

The students noted that the version of isolationism for Americans 18-30 is not the typical “America First” worldview of the past, although they are more likely to think the U.S. should generally stay out of world affairs. Instead, their isolationism based on the idea that imposing American-style democratic values abroad is racist and arrogant. But it also stems from their seriously low levels of trust in the U.S. government, far lower than for older Americans. For example, younger people felt that America’s efforts to “help” other countries through foreign aid were more about its own self-interest than the well-being of foreigners.

“It’s the paternalistic, condescending sense that the U.S. knows what other countries need more than the countries themselves do—that the U.S. is arrogant in their assumptions about what it means to help,” says Mutz.
https://penntoday.upenn.edu/news/asc-which-americans-are-most-isolationist-it-may-not-be-who-you-think