Meanwhile, the architects of reform – the commissioned studies, the expert panels, the policy overhauls – move forward often with minimal input from those they intend to serve. Young people remain largely absent from conversations that will shape their lives. Ask them directly, though, and what emerges isn’t a manifesto of demands but a catalog of permissions – the ordinary allowances that make development possible, the same freedoms most adults claim or take for granted but that young people must negotiate daily.
The work of becoming who I want to be shouldn’t require an apology tour.
-Sage, 17
Permission to be Complex
In a world eager to define them, young people are pushing back – against confining trends, reductive headlines, and narratives built on recycled stereotypes. They ask simply to be seen as themselves, not treated as case studies in contemporary youth pathology.
Honoring their complexity requires unlearning the instinct to fix and strengthening our capacity to witness. This includes making room for emotions that overwhelm without immediately pathologizing distress, and offering clear, calibrated information to help them distinguish ordinary turbulence from conditions that warrant intervention. It means allowing young people to process experiences at their own pace, make intentional choices, and build the necessary resilience to carry them forward.
Such environments require a collective reset – where trope gives way to truth, experience outweighs assumptions, and flattened stories expand to hold the breadth, depth, and multiplicity of young lives.
Complexity isn’t a problem to solve—it’s the reality to honor.
We will inherit your world—let us leave our mark.
-Ren, 16
Permission to be Consequential
There is a vast distance between being heard and being heeded, between performance and participation, between invitation and collaboration. Young people are not asking for permission to speak – they’re claiming the right to reshape the world they will inherit.
The stakes are immediate. Gun violence recasts schools into crime scenes; climate futures will arrive on their watch; and economic structures have already priced many of them out of stability. Worn down by symbolic gestures, they demand infrastructures of influence – real channels to transform concern into action and care into consequence. They seek opportunities to demonstrate capacity without suffocating oversight. They call for recognition as citizens now, not citizens-in-waiting – their votes and voices treated as instruments of change, not deferred potential.
Even under the weight of burdens that preceded them, young people continue to roll up their sleeves and step boldly into action.
Youth are not a future resource – they are a present force.
And what if I said, I’m not broken–I’m just not finished yet.
-Mel, 17
Permission to inhabit uncertainty
If young people describe one shift that could ripple outward, it would be this: to lean into being a work in progress, to venture into uncharted territory, and to learn without fearing that detours signal failure. They are committed to defining “a good life” on their own terms – often making choices earlier generations may not have recognized or valued.
The shift begins with normalizing mistakes as part of learning – reflected in adults approaching struggle with steadiness and care, fully aware that the quickest way to lose access to a young person’s inner world is to respond with alarm when they offer a glimpse of it. This lays the groundwork for young people to claim agency in how and what they learn, moving from absorbing knowledge to constructing it, and from being taught to becoming teachers of their own understanding.
Within that space, young people may lean on adults: for tangible support with planning, organization, and time management; for guidance in weighing options and anticipating consequences; or simply for perspective and encouragement as they make decisions with real stakes – not because they are deficient, but because executive function and life experience are still under construction. Too often, we build timelines that assume readiness arrives on schedule. In reality, being positioned for major life transitions and feeling prepared for them are distinct.
Beyond developmental support, young people need practical fluency in adult systems – how to navigate bureaucracies, manage finances, and access resources. They need exposure to possibilities beyond the four-year-degree script and mentorship that illuminates opportunities rather than prescribing them. Adults may be navigating uncertainty themselves but at minimum young people deserve honest engagement, rather than vague assurances that it will work out.
What young people recognize – and what many adults may have forgotten – is that we did our “becoming” with less scrutiny and more grace. They seek similar latitude, not because they are more fragile, but because societal terms have changed while developmental expectations remain rigid.
Uncertainty isn’t the obstacle to their becoming – it’s the condition for it.
I don’t want to be replaceable. I want to know there’s a me-shaped space only I can fill.
-Casey, 14
Permission to Matter
Mattering begins with spaces that acknowledge young people exist. This means environments where they feel genuinely rooted: education systems that recognize them as irreplaceable rather than interchangeable, peer networks that are built on authentic connection rather than social currency, and adults who choose presence over surveillance.
They seek assurance that they are significant to specific people in specific places, that their absence would register as loss. They search for evidence that their actions have impact – confirmation that they are both valued and that they add value.
They are hungry for depth – meaningful connection that penetrates beyond the surface-level interactions. This often centers on the complex territory of friendship: learning who to trust and how to be trustworthy and navigating the tension between needing others and being needed by them.
They know when connection is curated for appearance, when interactions are transactional, when being together is about proximity rather than significance. They search for something more honest: relationships where care and contribution flow in both directions, where they are valued for being and trusted with doing.
Mattering transcends being seen—it’s being searched for.
What young people ask for is not radical. It’s fundamental.
Complexity – because humans are never singular.
Consequence – because participation requires influence.
Uncertainty – because growth is nonlinear.
Mattering – because without it, nothing else holds.
These four conditions interweave: complexity makes space for uncertainty; uncertainty reveals what matters; mattering paves the path to consequence; consequence deepens complexity. Together, when honored, they turn permission into possibility and unlock each young person’s inherent power to shape the world.