A teenager scrolls through their phone at the dinner table, barely looks up and answers questions with one-word replies. For many adults, that image has come to stand for a larger fear: that today’s young people are disconnected from others and may be uninterested in the world around them. Concerns about declining civic participation often deepen that worry.
As researchers who study adolescent development, we believe this picture is incomplete. Adults help shape the environments in which young people learn to contribute, or learn not to. In worrying that young people are disengaged from participating in civic society, adults may overlook both their own role in fostering engagement and the many ways young people are already contributing.
Youth civic and community engagement matters because it helps build skills, relationships and habits of participation that carry into adulthood. How do teens actually express their care for the world around them, and what helps them to do so?
What does engagement really look like?
When adults talk about “engaged” teens, they often picture a narrow set of activities: volunteering, joining clubs, leading student government, maybe attending a rally or organizing a fundraiser. Those forms of contribution to society matter. But they are not the whole story.
In two recent studies, we surveyed 723 American adolescents, with an average age of 15, to understand what predicts whether teens will contribute to society and what their contribution looks like.
In the first study, we identified four distinct patterns: Some teens were generally less engaged; this group represented 21% of our sample. Another 19% we called “Digital Advocates,” highly active online but less involved in face-to-face settings. A third group, 33% of our sample, we termed “Local Helpers,” more engaged in interpersonal and community-based helping. “Contributors” were our fourth profile type, making up 26% of our sample; they reported high engagement across all domains.
Our finding pushes back against a common adult assumption that “real” engagement has to look a certain way. It doesn’t. A teen sharing information online about where local families can access food assistance and a teen quietly checking in on a struggling friend are both contributing – just differently. Digital participation is not automatically shallow; for many young people, online spaces are where they learn about issues, form opinions and connect with others who share their concerns.
Crucially, these profiles were shaped less by demographics – age, gender or race and ethnicity – and more by whether our teen respondents had the personal and contextual supports that helped them act on what they cared about.
What supports adolescent contribution?
In our second study, we found that more-engaged young people reported higher levels of hope, purpose and critical consciousness, which together help explain why some adolescents are more likely to…
