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Key points
- Agency requires goal-setting, intrinsic motivation, and optimism.
- Adolescents are naturally inclined toward boosting their sense of agency.
- Providing young people with the space and opportunity to be independent can help them flourish.
I teach 12-to-14-year-olds. Older people’s impressions of this age group are usually hilariously inaccurate. They tend to imagine ogres living under bridges or some adolescent-cast version of The Walking Dead.
Sure, teens and preteens can be moody and hormonal. They can have difficulty managing emotions and navigating the transition toward adulthood.
But they can also be capable, focused, and helpful.
But that requires the adults in their lives to let go of the reins a bit and give young people responsibility, autonomy, and agency.
What Do I Mean by Agency?
Researchers whose full-time gig is parsing out the psychological definition and characteristics of agency are still sorting it out, but I think Filipa Nunes et al.’s first four traits—self-regulated goals, optimism, action planning, and self-efficacy—hit on what I mean when I talk about adolescent agency.
Self-regulated goals are intrinsic. Young people need to be able to make their own decisions to feel a sense of agency.
Optimism means young people must think that their actions will impact their future success. Agency requires adolescents to feel like their effort will be valued and impactful.
Action planning has to do with long-term planning. Once goals are set, young people have agency when they’re responsible for planning and incrementally working toward them.
Finally, self-efficacy is about overcoming obstacles and the determination to reach one’s goals.
Most of us have met young people who exhibit these traits and others who definitely don’t. It’s the difference between the activist and the couch potato, the leader and the lost.
Why Agency Is Important
In his most recent book, The Anxious Generation, Jonathan Haidt describes how parenting and societal norms around parenting have changed over the last four decades and how damaging some of those changes have been for children.
The 80s were all about free-range parenting. As a 6-year-old, I was allowed to roam anywhere I wanted “as long as I could see the house.” We lived in a farmhouse on a hill, so that meant I could go miles away while encountering dangerous equipment, terrain, and livestock.
If I had the same rules for my 6-year-old today, I’d likely be in big trouble for such extreme free-range parenting.
Haidt points out that parents today spend double the amount of time with their kids as parents 40 years ago. Helicopter parenting and micromanaging have become the norm. In a way, it’s a societal expectation now to try to prevent your kid from getting hurt or experiencing discomfort.
Haidt argues that this leash is a major part of why young people are so much more anxious and depressed. Parents aren’t allowing them to feel a sense of agency, autonomy, and competency.
So how can we help young people set their own goals and work toward achieving them, be optimistic about their future, and see themselves as capable change agents?
Boosting Young People’s Sense of Agency
After reading Haidt’s book, I showed one of his interviews to my 8th-grade class. They seemed defensive about Haidt’s condemnation of social media and smartphones, but then I reminded them that his argument wasn’t solely blaming screens for young people’s current mental health.
One student raised her hand and volunteered, “I wish I grew up in the ’80s.”
I asked why, and she described how amazing it sounded when her parents waxed nostalgic. She said they could do more things independently without being tethered to screens.
That was the lightbulb moment.
Haidt describes his Let Grow organization’s approach to building agency. Young people agree with their parents on an activity they can try independently. Maybe walking to a friend’s house, cooking dinner, or doing their laundry. Then they do that activity on their own and come back to class describing what it was like flexing their independence.
I told my students that growing up in the ’80s was lowkey awesome and that being allowed to “go anywhere as long as you can still see the house” allowed me to flex my autonomy and creativity. We decided to try Let Grow’s approach and see how filling students’ time with more independence might impact them.
As a 7th- and 8th-grade teacher, I see firsthand how driven adolescents are toward independence and agency, and I try to lean into that natural drive to help motivate and inspire young people. Below are a few ways I promote agency and how that might translate to parents and other influential adults in young people’s lives.
1. Capitalize on Intrinsic Drive
Some of my students wanted to help out with our schoolwide assemblies. As a middle school teacher, I knew this was code for “we want to be totally in charge of every aspect.” I helped them secure one assembly they could plan on their own to help them be in charge of something meaningful to them.
Listen for these intrinsic motivations of the young people in your life and figure out how to give them the space and resources to flex their independence.
2. Help Them Set Ambitious Goals
Over the last three years, I’ve spent a lot of my teacher bandwidth creating and expanding an 8th-grade capstone project at my school, thanks in part to generous grants from the McCarthey Dressman Foundation and Community Foundations of the Hudson Valley. The assignment is for students to spend a year researching an inquiry question of their choice, doing a related project that improves their community, and presenting their results to the public.
These yearlong projects help students shift from complaining to agency because the task itself is to improve their communities. This forces them toward action. I’ve seen these capstone projects motivate students to go beyond the current limits they place on themselves and push themselves to do things they didn’t think possible.
Help the young people in your life set ambitious goals, lead with their strengths and interests, and improve their communities to help them shift from ennui to autonomy.
3. Expect More
I started this article with some preconceived notions about young people. It’s important to set the record straight. Young people are incredibly capable. That’s why I don’t grumble and complain about teens being the worst. I tell the truth: Young people are inspiring and have the energy and motivation to be real change agents.
Expect more from the young people in your life. Sure, they may need some help with goal setting or logistics, but once you hear how they want to practice their agency, be the keeper of those big dreams for them. In their lower moments, remind them of their lofty ambitions and help them get unstuck when inevitable obstacles arise.
Young people are inundated with internal and external stresses and uncertainties. Instead of grumbling about the next generation, it’s our responsibility to allow them the opportunity and the space to flex their autonomy, try things out their way, and intervene only when necessary.
They’re not ogres. They’re not the living dead. They’re the ones with the energy, drive, and motivation to push us forward as a society. The least we could do is give them a little space to practice today while we’re still around to help out. But only when necessary.
References
Haidt, J. (2024). The anxious generation: How the great rewiring of childhood is causing an epidemic of mental illness. Random House.
Nunes, F., Mota, C. P., Schoon, I., Ferreira, T., & Matos, P. M. (2022). Sense of personal agency in adolescence and young adulthood: A preliminary assessment model. Personality and Individual Differences, 196, 111754.
