This study aims to gain a deeper understanding of motivation in social studies at the upper secondary school, and how teachers can promote this motivation. The study also seeks to gain a deeper understanding of whether motivation is intergenerational or whether motivation can be seen as something overall that is applicable to everyone regardless of generation. The study is qualitative and is conducted through semi-structured interviews with six students belonging to generation Z and who have read social studies at the upper secondary school. The results were analyzed against previous research which claims that different generations have distinctive characteristics in personality, attitudes and values ​​and in some cases biological differences to gain a deeper understanding of whether these generational differences affected motivation and how teachers could promote this motivation in social studies. The result shows that there is nothing to indicate that motivation would be generational, that the content of social knowledge promotes an inner motivation of students when they see the value of having the knowledge in themselves. The students also felt that what influenced their motivation was that it had a good relationship with their teacher. Many of the expressions provided by the respondents can also be characterized by previous research showing general characteristics of previous generations.