Engaged and Active: The Social Issues That Mobilize Adolescents

Background and Purpose

Young people today are coming of age during a period of rapid social change and facing evolving national and global challenges. This generation of adolescents is the most diverse in U.S. history, with nearly half identifying as nonwhite and about a quarter identifying as LGBTQ+. Understanding which social issues mobilize these young people is critical for comprehending their political profile and civic engagement.

This study contributes to the scientific understanding of adolescents' social issue engagement by analyzing a survey of 888 teenagers from spring 2024 to address three key research aims: (1) assessing differences in engagement across 33 issues by sociodemographic factors, (2) examining how intersections of race/ethnicity, gender, and sexual orientation shape specific issue involvement, and (3) investigating patterns of cross-issue engagement.

Methods

Participants were presented with a list of 33 distinct issues and asked to indicate which they had engaged with over the past year. These issues were systematically developed based on youth advocacy frameworks to ensure balanced representation across the political spectrum. We employed post-stratification weights based on the 2020 Census and 2023 YRBS data to ensure national representativeness. Using R and Stata software, we conducted weighted logistic regression analyses to examine main effects, interaction effects between demographic variables, and cross-issue associations. Models controlled for political orientation, age, and socioeconomic status.

Results

Results revealed mental health as the most prevalent issue youth actively participated in (54.02%), followed by human rights (45.79%), youth rights (45.42%), women's rights (43.22%), LGBTQ+ rights (41.3%), and racial justice (41.18%). Youth engagement typically aligned with salient aspects of their identity: Black youth prioritized racial justice, Latine youth emphasized immigrant rights, and women focused on women's rights. Interaction analyses showed how multiple identities shape engagement. For example, cisgender girls of color were more likely to engage justice in Palestine efforts, while trans and nonbinary youth across race/ethnicity showed higher mental health involvement than cisgender youth of color and cisgender white boys, but not cisgender white girls.

Cross-issue analysis identified 112 positive and 44 negative issue relationships, with engagement patterns around institutional authority/nationalism and anti-discrimination, plus unexpected overlaps. For example, national security engagement correlated with higher involvement in LGBTQ+ rights, voting rights, and several other issues. Strong associations emerged between seemingly contrasting issues like gun violence/gun rights and immigrant rights/border security.

Conclusions and Implications

The findings consistently demonstrate that youth gravitate toward issues directly connected to their lived experiences and identities, suggesting that identity may serve as an entry point to social activism. Further, the extensive cross-issue associations challenge conventional assumptions about ideological issue alignment and suggest more complex, non-binary perspectives on social issues among today's youth.

This research advances our understanding of how intersecting identities influence youth civic engagement and challenges the notion that young people primarily engage with single issues, instead highlighting the multifaceted nature of their social change efforts. These insights can inform more responsive and inclusive youth programming, policy development, and social work practice with adolescents.