The Problem is Agency, Not Apathy

Young Americans are not unaware of what is happening around them. Many simply no longer believe that anything they do will change it.

I came of age in the 1960s and was in college by 1972. Politics did not feel like something happening somewhere else. The war in Vietnam, the draft, the civil rights movement, women’s liberation, political corruption and the broader rebellion against established authority were woven into everyday life. There were marches, teach-ins, campus organizations, underground newspapers, protest music and a visible counterculture that rejected much of what the older generation represented.

Richard Nixon really was a crook. The war was consuming lives. Civil rights were not an abstract matter of historical interpretation – people of color needed to ride in the back of buses and couldn't even use the same drinking fountains as whites. Women were demanding rights and opportunities long denied to them. Young people appeared to be at the center of a national struggle over what kind of country America would become.

Today, the United States is confronting political corruption, attacks on democratic institutions, threats to civil liberties, racial conflict, unpopular military actions and efforts to reverse rights that earlier generations fought to establish on an even more massive scale. Yet the people most visibly resisting often seem to be the same people who protested half a century ago.

Much of that perception is accurate. Older Americans, particularly those shaped by the political movements of the 1960s and 1970s, appear to be carrying a disproportionate share of the visible protest against authoritarianism, war and the erosion of democratic norms.

At a major No Kings demonstration in Washington in 2025, for example, the median participant was 44 years old. The crowd was disproportionately white, female and highly educated. One demonstration in one city cannot serve as a national census, but the findings support what many observers see at marches and political events: the visible opposition is often older than the youth-driven movements of the 1960s.

The easy conclusion is that young Americans do not care as much as earlier generations did.

The evidence does not support that conclusion.

The more important problem is not indifference. It is the collapse of political agency: the belief that ordinary people, acting together, can change the direction of their communities and country.

Young Americans are not unaware of the nation’s condition. Many are deeply dissatisfied, economically insecure and frightened about the future. The 2026 Harvard Youth Poll found that half of Americans between 18 and 29 believed people like them had no meaningful say in what the government does. Only 15 percent trusted the federal government to do the right thing most or all of the time. Just 26 percent felt hopeful about America’s future.

A majority opposed current military action in Iran, and 72 percent feared that it could expand into a much larger war. These are not the attitudes of a generation that is comfortable, oblivious or politically content. They are the attitudes of a generation that sees serious danger but doubts its ability to affect the outcome.

Young people are not entirely absent from civic life, either. An estimated 47 percent of eligible voters between 18 and 29 voted in the 2024 presidential election. That was below the exceptional youth turnout of 2020 but substantially higher than the estimated 39 percent who voted in 2016. Young Americans also participate in demonstrations, boycotts, petitions, issue advocacy, volunteering and political discussion.

The demonstrations following George Floyd’s murder in 2020 spread across the country and became one of the largest protest movements in American history. Young people have also organized around school shootings, climate change, reproductive rights, Gaza, immigration enforcement and labor rights.

The capacity for mobilization has not disappeared. What has weakened is the belief that mobilization will produce durable results.

That distinction is the heart of the problem.

Concern without agency does not produce sustained political action. It produces frustration, cynicism, anxiety and eventually withdrawal. People may post, argue, march once or vote occasionally, but they are unlikely to devote years of their lives to collective action if they expect the system to absorb their effort and continue unchanged.

The 1960s created a sense that action mattered

The political movements of the 1960s and early 1970s were never as unified or universally popular as memory sometimes makes them appear.

The era contained the anti-war movement, but it also contained Richard Nixon’s “silent majority.” It contained civil rights activists and segregationists, feminists and traditionalists, student radicals and politically disengaged students whose primary goals were education, employment and family life.

Those of us who participated in the movements of that period also inhabited unusually political social environments. Activists knew other activists. We attended the same meetings, read the same publications, listened to the same music and marched in the same demonstrations. From inside that world, political engagement could appear more universal than it really was.

There is a related distortion today. The Boomers who continue to attend demonstrations are not representative of all Boomers. They are the people who remained politically engaged for decades. Comparing those committed activists with the entire younger generation exaggerates the generational difference.

Even after allowing for that distortion, however, something fundamental has changed.

The movements of the earlier era created a sense that political action could have consequences.

The civil rights movement demonstrated that disciplined organizing, boycotts, voter-registration drives, litigation, direct action and moral pressure could change laws and institutions. The women’s movement opened universities, professions and public life to millions of people previously excluded from them. Labor organizing delivered measurable economic benefits. Environmental activism helped produce landmark protections. Anti-war organizing changed public opinion, disrupted institutions and contributed to the eventual end of the draft and American involvement in Vietnam. It is notable that all these gains are in the process of being reversed today.

The relationship between activism and policy was never simple. Movements suffered devastating defeats, repression, internal division and violence. Victories were incomplete and often followed by backlash. Nevertheless, participants could see evidence that action mattered.

That evidence created agency.

People are willing to accept enormous risks when they believe their efforts can produce meaningful change. They will march, organize, canvass, boycott, sit in, strike, face arrest and continue after defeat when they can see a connection between collective effort and real-world consequences.

The modern political environment teaches a different lesson.

Young Americans have watched enormous demonstrations against gun violence fail to produce comprehensive national gun legislation. They have seen millions mobilize against police violence while many of the underlying conditions remain. They have watched climate warnings become increasingly dire without an adequate political response. They have seen reproductive rights lost after decades in which those rights appeared secure. They have marched against wars that continued and voted in elections that seemed to leave the underlying structures of power intact.

The lesson many have absorbed is not that the causes are unimportant. It is that the available forms of participation do not work.

Vietnam imposed immediate and personal stakes

The Vietnam War also created a political forcing function unlike anything facing most young Americans today.

The war did not merely offend their values. Through the draft, the government could reach directly into their lives and send them to kill or be killed in a conflict they opposed. Between August 1964 and February 1973, more than 1.85 million men were inducted through the Selective Service System.

Every draft-age man, and every family that cared about one, understood the stakes.

Vietnam concentrated political attention because the danger was immediate, personal and widely shared. It also produced a demand that could be stated in a sentence: end the war and end the draft.

Today’s young adults face no shortage of serious problems, but those problems are distributed unevenly and experienced differently.

Climate change is existential, but many of its consequences unfold gradually or appear distant until disaster reaches a particular community. Housing costs are immediate, but they are experienced as millions of private struggles rather than as one centralized government action. Abortion restrictions affect people differently according to sex, age, circumstance and state. Wars fought by an all-volunteer military can remain remote even when young people strongly oppose them.

The modern progressive agenda also spans climate change, reproductive rights, racial justice, LGBTQ rights, immigration enforcement, gun violence, Gaza, Iran, student debt, housing, health care, labor rights, voting rights and the preservation of democratic institutions.

These causes are connected, but they do not automatically produce a unified movement, common organization or shared strategy.

Vietnam concentrated urgency. Today’s crises disperse it.

Fragmentation makes agency more difficult to build because people do not know where to apply their limited time or which action is most likely to matter. They are told that nearly everything is an emergency, yet they are rarely shown a credible path from their participation to a specific result.

Economic insecurity weakens political capacity

Agency is not merely psychological. It depends on material conditions.

Political participation requires time, transportation, information, social support and at least a minimal degree of economic security. A large portion of today’s young adults lacks those resources.

CIRCLE, the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement at Tufts University, found that 43 percent of young people sometimes or often struggled to meet basic financial needs. Among young adults who had never attended college, the figure was 57 percent. Among rural youth, it was 53 percent.

Financially struggling young people were substantially less likely to vote, volunteer, join organizations or participate in community life. Sixty-two percent of young nonvoters were experiencing financial hardship.

A person working two jobs, paying unaffordable rent, carrying student debt, managing an unpredictable schedule and worrying about health insurance may care deeply about democracy while lacking the time or energy to attend meetings, canvass neighborhoods or organize a campaign.

Economic insecurity does not automatically create political radicalism. Often, it creates exhaustion and isolation.

Earlier movements certainly included poor and working-class participants who accepted extraordinary risks. Civil rights workers risked their employment, freedom, physical safety and lives. Their courage should never be minimized.

But movements cannot build broad participation by assuming that moral commitment will erase every practical obstacle. Political activity based primarily on unpaid labor will inevitably favor people who possess time, money, stable employment and transportation.

A person cannot develop a durable sense of agency while being treated as a disposable volunteer whose material circumstances do not matter.

The common public arena has disappeared

The communications environment of the 1960s was comparatively unified. Americans watched a small number of television networks, read local and national newspapers, listened to the radio and gathered physically on campuses, in union halls, in churches, in coffeehouses and at concerts.

People disagreed bitterly, but they often disagreed after seeing the same images and reacting to the same events.

Young Americans today inhabit radically different information environments. Seventy-seven percent name at least one social or digital platform among their principal political information sources. Young Republican men are especially likely to obtain political information from YouTube, while young Democratic women rely much more heavily on TikTok and Instagram.

Different groups increasingly receive their information through separate platforms, personalities and interpretive communities. They do not merely disagree about solutions. They often disagree about what happened, who is responsible and whether a problem exists at all.

Social media can expose injustice, connect isolated individuals and mobilize large numbers of people with extraordinary speed. More than half of social media users under 30 say these platforms are important in helping them become involved in issues that matter to them.

But social media is much better at producing awareness and emotion than building sustained collective power.

A video can reach five million viewers without producing five people willing to attend a meeting, take responsibility for a task, and return the following week. A post can generate enormous outrage while leaving every participant physically isolated.

The earlier movements built organizations. The modern internet often builds audiences.

Audiences can express anger. Organizations can exercise power.

Political agency requires more than knowing that millions of strangers agree with you. It requires membership in a group capable of making decisions, assigning responsibilities, applying pressure, sustaining action and achieving measurable results.

Digital political participation also carries distinctive risks. Faces, names, comments and affiliations can be recorded permanently, searched, circulated and used by employers, universities, political opponents or law enforcement. Doxxing, social-media harassment, digital surveillance and facial identification create consequences that can follow participants long after a demonstration ends.

The repression faced by earlier movements was frequently more direct and physically violent. The modern form is often quieter, more dispersed and more permanent.

Young people are not politically unified

Any serious discussion of youth politics must also acknowledge that politically active young people are not all moving in a progressive direction.

Younger Americans are divided by ideology, education, race, gender, religion, geography and economic status. Some are organizing for racial justice, reproductive freedom, climate action and labor rights. Others are being mobilized by nationalist, anti-immigrant, anti-feminist or religious-right movements.

Young men, in particular, are being offered something by the populist right that progressive politics often fails to provide: identity, belonging, purpose and an explanation for their frustrations.

It may be a destructive explanation. It may blame immigrants, women, minorities or imagined conspiracies. But it gives adherents a role, a community and the sense that they are participating in a struggle that matters.

That, too, is a form of agency.

Progressive organizations cannot counter it by treating alienated young men as irredeemably ignorant, privileged or morally defective. Condemnation without an alternative form of belonging will push them further toward movements that welcome them.

A democratic politics must speak credibly about wages, housing, useful work, dignity, loneliness, family formation, community and the possibility of building a decent life. Economic justice cannot be separated from civil rights or democratic survival. For millions of young adults, material security determines whether they have the capacity to engage with any larger cause.

The task is to rebuild agency

The central challenge is not to convince young Americans that the country is in trouble. Most already know it.

The challenge is to demonstrate that collective action can still produce results.

That begins with concrete, achievable objectives. “Save democracy” may be morally urgent, but it does not tell a person what to do on Tuesday evening or how success will be measured.

Registering 2,000 voters in one district is concrete. Defeating a voter-suppression proposal is concrete. Electing two school-board members, winning a tenant-protection ordinance, organizing a workplace, protecting a reproductive-health clinic or obtaining funding for a local climate-resilience project creates a visible relationship between effort and outcome.

Political efficacy is built through victories.

Those victories need not be enormous. A movement develops confidence the same way an individual does: by taking action, seeing a result and acquiring the capacity to attempt something larger.

Organizations must also give younger members real authority. Young people will not develop agency while serving as decorative evidence of generational diversity. They need control over strategy, communications, budgets, candidate endorsements and campaign priorities.

A movement led entirely by people in their sixties, seventies and eighties cannot solve its youth-participation problem by creating a youth advisory committee. Advice is not authority.

Older activists possess experience that should be preserved and transferred. They understand coalition building, fundraising, meeting discipline, organizational conflict, political setbacks and the long periods when public attention moves elsewhere.

That experience is invaluable, but it should be offered as institutional memory rather than as a claim to permanent leadership.

Participation must also become materially possible. Young organizers should be paid whenever resources permit. Organizations should provide transportation, food, child care, legal assistance, training and schedules compatible with work and family obligations.

These are not peripheral accommodations. They are part of building agency because they communicate that participants’ labor matters and that the organization is prepared to invest in their success.

Digital communication must lead somewhere beyond expression. Every viral post, video or petition should provide a path from awareness to personal contact, from personal contact to a meeting, from the meeting to a specific responsibility, and from that responsibility to continuing membership in a durable organization.

Posting is communication. Organization begins when people become responsible to one another.

Demonstrations must also connect to institutions capable of exercising power. A march should recruit participants into unions, tenant organizations, local campaigns, civil-liberties groups, voter-protection networks, mutual-aid organizations and sustained nonviolent resistance.

A demonstration is not successful merely because a large number of people attended. It succeeds when participants leave with stronger relationships, clearer objectives and greater capacity for the next action.

The objective is not to recreate the 1960s

Young Americans do not need another lecture about the supposed courage, idealism or superior political awareness of their grandparents. We did have all the cool music, but that's not enough. 

Every generation receives a different political inheritance. Today’s young adults inherited weakened unions, expensive education, unaffordable housing, fragmented media, declining institutional trust and political parties dominated by people decades older than they are.

Nostalgia is not a strategy.

The goal should not be to recreate the clothing, language, music or political culture of the 1960s. It should be to recreate something more fundamental: the conviction that collective action can change laws, institutions and lives.

Young Americans are not politically empty. They are politically stranded.

They have causes but few common institutions. They have information but little confidence that it is trustworthy. They have anger but limited time, money and organizational support. They can reach millions online while remaining isolated in their communities. They are repeatedly warned that democracy is in danger but are rarely shown how their participation can alter its course.

The crisis is not simply that young people are failing to act.

The crisis is that too many no longer believe action will matter.

Older generations can help provide experience, resources, persistence and protection. They can teach what they learned about organization, coalition building and surviving defeat. But younger people must be given the authority to define the language, priorities and strategies of their own movement.

Concern may bring people to a demonstration. Fear may persuade them to vote. Anger may cause them to share a post.

Only agency will keep them involved.

The task before us is to rebuild the connection between concern and action, between action and organization, and between organization and visible results. Young Americans must be able to see not merely that change is necessary, but that change is possible—and that they possess the collective power to bring it about.

The objective is not to revive the 1960s.

It is to restore the belief that ordinary people can still make history.