Peak Youth Engagement

Within the last decade, there has been a groundswell of youth engagement around the world. International youth-led movements like the Arab Spring and the Hong Kong protest; and American youth-led movements like Parkland’s March for Our Lives and #BlackLivesMatters have burst into the public consciousness, with millions of young people taking action. Recently, climate activism has spurned more youth engagement, enlightening and empowering more young people to make a difference. This is a groundswell that foreshadows massive social change whose time is at hand.

What Is “Peak”?

Youth engagement happens anytime a young person choses the same thing again and again. As I’ve been teaching for decades now, youth engagement includes all the kinds of youth activism, youth leadership, some actions adults like and other actions adults frequently dismiss. Youth engagement also addresses all of the issues above and many others.

Peak youth engagement happens when more young people are choosing to become active in more activities addressing more issues than ever before. Peak youth engagement makes adults in society to pay attention to issues they would otherwise neglect or deny, i.e. drug use, sex, vaping, or gangs. This is also true within the family structure when individual kids become engaged in sports, romantic relationships or video gaming.

In recent years, peak youth engagement has happened in the issues mentioned above, including pro-democracy movements, public health crises, and racial justice. Historical peak youth engagement has been seen around these topics, and others too, including anti-war activism and economic reform. We have yet to see peak youth engagement in issues like school reform and lowering the voting age, and only time will show what comes next. That’s hard to anticipate!

Breaking the Flow

For better or worse, and perhaps more than anytime in the past 25 years, the media, politicians, community leaders, academics and others are hyping the power of young people to change the world. There are many, many local, regional, national and international organizations that say they support youth engagement, especially with the youth they specifically serve and the issues they particularly care about.

What’s Next

Advocates for youth engagement must address widespread adultism next.

“A youth revolt grows up when it reaches beyond its beginnings,” preaches the Washington Post with the now-normal posturing from well-meaning but poorly informed adults who write those articles. This type of adultism is cynical at best; belittling and demeaning, it assumes young people aren’t capable of finding the strategies and approaches that matter most to them. Adultism pervades the popular response to youth engagement in its myriad forms. Peak youth engagement invites these hyperbolic and ineffectual responses though, and with the power of youth intact, these criticisms fall to the side.

The social change at hand will see peak youth engagement reach massive proportions across all populations around the world. More adults than ever will come to support young people in active and empowering ways, and all kinds of transformations will take place. Aside from meeting basic human rights and the values enshrined in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, the emerging peak youth engagement will ensure global transformation. These changes will include:

I believe understanding this concept of peak youth engagement can help youth program workers, organization leaders, grantmakers and others consciously and specifically develop the metrics they need to ensure success. It can show the rest of us where our culture is going next.

What do you think of “peak youth engagement”? Share your thoughts in the comments below!