ARTICLE Youth, activism, and social movements Jennifer Earl 1 | Thomas V. Maher 1 | Thomas Elliott 2 1 University of Arizona, USA 2 California State University, Channel Islands, USA Correspondence Earl, Jennifer, University of Arizona, USA. Email: jenniferearl@email.arizona.edu Funding information John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation; Research Network on Youth and Participatory Political. Abstract There has been considerable debate over the extent and role of young people's political participation. Whether considering popular hand‐wringing over concerns about declines in young people's insti- tutional political participation or dismissals of young people's use of online activism, many frame youth engagement through a “youth deficit” model that assumes that adults need to politically socialize young people. However, others argue that young people are politi- cally active and actively involved in their own political socialization, which is evident when examining youth participation in protest, participatory politics, and other forms of noninstitutionalized politi- cal participation. Moreover, social movement scholars have long documented the importance of youth to major social movements. In this article, we bring far flung literatures about youth activism together to review work on campus activism; young people's politi- cal socialization, their involvement in social movement organiza- tions, their choice of tactics; and the context in which youth activism takes place. This context includes the growth of movement societies, the rise of fan activism, and pervasive Internet use. We argue that social movement scholars have already created important concepts (e.g., biographical availability) and questions (e.g., bio- graphical consequences of activism) from studying young people and urge additional future research. 1 | INTRODUCTION Public distress over the level of youth civic and political engagement is common, whether one considers Putnam's (2000) exaltation of the “greatest generation” and his concerns about the relative disengagement of young people, or Gladwell's (2010) indictment of online activism, which is so popular among, and associated with, youth. In fact, around the turn of the century, a range of scholars began to worry that youth political engagement was at an unhealthy low (Delli Carpini, 2000; Mann, 1999; Putnam, 2000; Wilkins, 2000). Surveys found that youth were less interested in politics, less likely to keep up with the news, and less likely to be members of advocacy organizations (Delli Carpini, 2000). 1 A number of scholars reacted by arguing that youth engagement was not declining, just changing form. 2 Dalton (2009), and others, argue it is not that youth are disengaged, but rather that they do not engage in the same way that “dutiful” generations have. Instead, youth have shifted to an “engaged citizenship” model by volunteering (Shea & Harris, 2006), protesting, and embedding politics in their daily lives (Schlozman, Verba, & Received: 11 October 2016 Revised: 18 January 2017 Accepted: 19 January 2017 DOI: 10.1111/soc4.12465 Sociology Compass. 2017;11:e12465. https://doi.org/10.1111/soc4.12465 © 2017 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/soc4 1 of 14