25 Years Later, 83% Of Americans Still Recall Exactly Where They Were On 9/11, Pew Finds Ahead Of Anniversary

WASHINGTON — Twenty-five years after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the vast majority of Americans old enough to remember that day say the memory remains vivid, according to new survey data from the Pew Research Center released ahead of this year's milestone anniversary.

Among U.S. adults born before 2001, 83% say they remember exactly where they were or what they were doing when they heard the news of the attacks, according to Pew's analysis. That figure climbs even higher, to 93%, among those who were at least 10 years old at the time of the attacks, reflecting just how deeply the moment imprinted itself on the memories of people old enough to fully comprehend what was happening as it unfolded.

Pew surveyed 5,166 U.S. adults from Aug. 24 through Aug. 30, drawing on members of the center's American Trends Panel, which is designed to represent the views of the broader U.S. adult population. The analysis was written by Jocelyn Kiley, the center's director of politics research.

Pew has tracked American attitudes toward the Sept. 11 attacks continuously since the immediate aftermath of the event in 2001, offering researchers a rare, sustained look at how a single historic moment has continued to shape public memory and opinion across a full quarter-century.

The survey also examined how younger Americans, those born after the attacks occurred, have come to learn about 9/11 despite having no personal memory of the day itself. According to Pew, roughly 10% of U.S. adults were born after 2001, meaning they know about the attacks only through what others have taught or told them rather than through firsthand memory. Among adults ages 18 to 24 specifically, 60% said they first learned about 9/11 through schoolwork or coursework in class. A smaller share, 16%, said they first heard about the attacks from relatives or friends, while 8% said they learned about the events independently through something they read or watched on their own. An additional 14% of that younger cohort said they could not recall specifically how they first learned about the attacks.

Beyond personal memory, 9/11 continues to loom especially large in how Americans assess the most significant historical events of their lifetimes. According to Pew's earlier tracking cited in the center's Sept. 10 newsletter, roughly three-quarters of U.S. adults, 76%, named 9/11 as one of the top 10 historic events occurring in their lifetime with the greatest impact on the country, in a 2016 survey, a far higher share than named any other single event during that same measurement.

A separate poll conducted by Ipsos and released around the same time as Pew's findings similarly found that roughly half of U.S. adults named the 9/11 attacks in response to an open-ended question asking them to identify the most important historic occurrences of their lifetime, according to reporting from The Washington Times. That result held even when accounting for other major historic developments since 2001, including the COVID-19 pandemic and the elections of Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump.

That same Ipsos polling found notable generational differences in how Americans rank 9/11's overall significance. For adults under age 35, the COVID-19 pandemic has emerged as a more prominent formative event, with about half of that age group naming the pandemic among the most impactful events of their lifetime, compared with roughly one-third who cited 9/11. Researchers attributed that generational gap in part to the fact that a significant share of younger Americans either were not yet born when the 2001 attacks occurred or were too young at the time to have any personal memory of the day.

Kiel, a retired secretary from Onamia, Minnesota, reflected on the attacks' lasting significance for her own generation in comments to The Washington Times ahead of this year's anniversary.

"It always seems like there's something in history that changes the way people think," Kiel said. "9/11 did it for the generation that grew up through that."

Pew's broader historical tracking of public attitudes toward 9/11 has documented shifting patterns in how Americans have processed the attacks' impact over the years. In earlier Pew research cited by NPR, then-Pew Research Center president Andrew Kohut noted that survey respondents in the years following the attacks not only remembered where they were, but also reported that the attacks had affected them personally to a significant degree, with 75% saying at the time that 9/11 had affected them a great deal. Kohut also noted a longer-term shift in public priorities, observing that foreign policy and national security concerns, which dominated public opinion in the years immediately following the attacks, had gradually given way to greater public focus on the economy and domestic issues in subsequent years.

Separate historical tracking from the Roper Center at Cornell University has documented sustained public support for post-9/11 security measures over the years, including continued strong backing for enhanced airport security protocols implemented in the attacks' aftermath, even as broader public sentiment regarding the nation's overall safety compared with the pre-9/11 era has remained mixed across various polls conducted in the years since.

With this year marking the 25th anniversary of the attacks, memorial ceremonies were held Friday at the World Trade Center site in New York, the Pentagon in Washington, and in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, where United Airlines Flight 93 crashed after passengers attempted to retake control of the hijacked aircraft. The Pew survey's findings, released just ahead of this year's milestone commemoration, underscore how deeply the events of that day remain embedded in the collective memory of the generation of Americans old enough to have experienced it directly, even as younger Americans increasingly come to understand the attacks primarily through education and secondhand accounts rather than personal recollection.