The article is devoted to the analysis of youth assessments of the participation of a part of youth in various protest actions. The research problem is that the wave of protest actions in various countries over the past two years, including in our country, requires new knowledge not only about the objective dynamics of these actions, but also about young people's assessments of their reasons, motives. participation of youth in actions. Young people's judgments about protest actions are not only a subjective reflection of real protest processes, but also the result of constructing their causes in the individual and mass consciousness. At the same time, mass communications, carried out to a greater extent by the Internet, play an important role in this construction. The protests in which some Russian youth took part were caused by latent (the living conditions of youth, the social problems of youth) and explicit (a desire for change) factors. At the same time, protest actions by young people are generally assessed as positive. In these conditions, the need to treat young people is actualized not as an object of informational influence and educational activities, but as a subject of positive changes both in their own destiny and in the life of society. The article substantiates the thesis of the transformation of the national development goals of the country until 2030 from goals for young people into goals of young people themselves.