Teen Voices Deserve More Than a Polite Nod

Quebec's annual youth centres week opened this week with a message teenagers keep repeating to adults: stop consulting us and start hearing us. The twenty-ninth Semaine des maisons des jeunes, running under the banner "ACTION! Ados: acteurs et actrices de société" (ACTION! Teens: agents of social change), arrived with survey results from the province's youth centres. According to the Regroupement des maisons des jeunes du Québec, forty-one point three percent of the young people surveyed feel that adults and elected representatives listen to them very little, not really, or not at all. Teen voices, in other words, are being spoken into a room with almost no listeners.

Those teen voices carry a refreshingly concrete demand about what would fix that. When the survey asked how decision-makers could engage more closely with them, the overwhelming answer was simple: come and meet us directly at our youth centres. RMJQ Executive Director Nicholas Legault said teenagers are "not just the citizens of tomorrow" but active participants in society who are directly affected by the decisions taken today, adding that newly elected officials should reach out to them, listen to them and take what they say seriously. The request is modest, but it carries a sharp edge: officials owe attention to the people living with the consequences of their choices.

The issues teens want on the agenda

The survey asked which issues elected representatives should prioritize, and mental health topped the list at forty-eight point six percent, followed by bullying and cyberbullying at thirty-four point five percent and education at thirty-two point four percent. The respondents paired those priorities with specific demands: more mental health resources, more action against bullying, schools better suited to their realities, more places to get together, and better support for youth centres. Beyond the policy list sits a cultural demand. The young people surveyed want adults to recognize them as individuals capable of thinking for themselves, contributing to debates and taking part in the decisions that affect them. What teen voices are really asking for is recognition as full participants in the debates that shape their lives.

Where young people already practice democracy

The survey suggests youth centres are already doing the work officials say they want. Ninety-two point five percent of respondents said their youth centre helps them express their opinion, ninety point five percent said it builds their self-confidence, eighty-eight point four percent said it helps them get involved in their neighbourhood or community, eighty-seven percent said it helps them understand what is happening in society, and ninety-five point two percent said it helps them respect different opinions. In short, teen voices are already organized, practiced and fluent. The RMJQ supports more than two hundred fifty youth centres across nearly three hundred forty communities in Québec, and young people help plan activities, organize events and projects, take part in decision-making and even sit on their centre's board of directors. Legault said youth centres are places where young people learn to exercise their citizenship, and that stable funding appropriate to their mission is what lets the centres keep playing that role.

The findings land in a season when young people keep demonstrating that the problem is not apathy. French students took to the streets this fall and extracted concessions from their government, as GenZNewZ reported on the French student protests, a reminder that youth mobilization still moves policy. And a Sprout Social survey reported by Campaign US found that social media is now the number one trusted source of election information for Gen Z and Millennial voters ahead of November's midterms, with nearly one in two Gen Z respondents saying a social media post had changed their opinion on who to vote for (Campaign US). Teen voices are speaking through every channel available to them. The survey suggests the breakdown is in whether anyone with power is listening. The full RMJQ survey release is available here.

That reframes a familiar adult complaint. Employers and commentators keep asking why Gen Z seems checked out, and much of the coverage treats disengagement as a generational flaw rather than a rational response, as GenZNewZ explored in the workplace readiness gap. The Quebec survey offers a simpler explanation: people stop talking to rooms that do not listen. When nearly half of teenagers say the adults in charge hear them very little or not at all, the sensible response is not another consultation panel. It is showing up where they already are.

"Supporting youth centres means investing directly in the empowerment, well-being and future of young people throughout Québec," Legault said. The week's slogan treats teenagers as agents of social change, and teen voices have named the terms of engagement. The next test is whether officials accept the invitation the teens actually made: show up at the youth centres.