How to Get Teens Out of ‘Passenger Mode'

The Atlantic

26-02-2025

Many parents are probably familiar with a certain type of teen and their approach to school: These kids turn up. They do their homework. They get good-enough grades. They comply, which in academic terms means they're behaviorally engaged. But they're not investing in what they're learning, nor are they that interested in trying to make sense of it. If you ask them how school was, their usual answer tends to be: Meh.
For as long as there have been teenagers, there have surely been kids like this. That's one reason the disaffected-teen archetype in popular culture is so rich (and relatable): Holden Caulfield, Ferris Bueller, the entire casts of The Breakfast Club and Sex Education —the list goes on. And because plenty of teens are apathetic about school, many parents and teachers are willing to give those kids a pass. They're just teens being teens, right? No big deal.
But teen apathy in school is a big deal—and the data indicate that it might be more widespread than many people realize. Here's a fact that's important to remember: Kids are wired to want to learn. And when they're younger, most say they enjoy learning. While researching our new book on teen disengagement, we partnered with the Brookings Institution and Transcend, an education nonprofit focused on how to improve learning environments. With them, we surveyed more than 65,000 students and almost 2,000 parents. We found that 74 percent of third graders say they love school. But during middle school, kids' enjoyment falls off a cliff. By tenth grade, only 26 percent of teens say they love school—although 65 percent of parents with tenth graders think their kids love it, suggesting a serious disconnect.
Again, the teens who say they dislike school may not be failing—more likely they're coasting. Think of them as the original quiet quitters, gliding along in neutral, unwilling to put the car in gear. Half of the middle- and high-school kids we surveyed reported operating this way, in what we came to call Passenger Mode. We also interviewed close to 100 teens ourselves—kids in small towns and big cities, kids from wealthy families and those with limited resources—and those in Passenger Mode told us they felt simultaneously overwhelmed and bored. A lot of them simply didn't understand the point of school. And so they checked out.
That kind of checking-out can have lasting consequences. Johnmarshall Reeve, a professor at Australian Catholic University, has been researching student engagement—the combination of how kids think, feel, act, and proactively contribute in school—for the past 20 years. He explained to us that young people in Passenger Mode are 'wasting their time developmentally' when it comes to building good learning skills. In our reporting, we found that many teens were outside what the psychologist Lev Vygotsky called the 'zone of proximal development': the sweet spot where a student does not find the material so easy that they lose interest, nor so difficult that they give up. This is part of what we identify in our book as a much broader 'disengagement crisis,' and it's affecting plenty of kids getting good-enough grades—the metric many parents rely on to gauge whether students are succeeding. But grades don't tell the full story.
Teens who don't enjoy school are unlikely to be cognitively and emotionally engaged in their learning, which means they're less likely to absorb the knowledge and skills that many of them will need to thrive beyond high school. This disengagement works on a continuum: If kids start to lose interest, then after a while, many stop doing their work; if they stop doing their work, they're likely to fall behind; if they fall behind, they might feel as if they're out of options, and soon apathy becomes the norm. Once kids check out, the hurdles to success get higher, and the emotions associated with clearing them get messier. Checked-out kids become less likely than their more engaged peers to develop an identity as a learner: someone who is curious, adaptable, and able to respond to different challenges and environments.
Many people assume that kids in Passenger Mode are lazy. But our research suggests that, in reality, much of the problem lies with the dominant model of schooling, which isn't designed to help kids feel invested in their learning. One study found that 85 percent of middle-school assignments merely asked students to recall information or apply basic skills, rather than pushing them to engage at a higher level. Similarly, the Brookings and Transcend survey found that only 33 percent of tenth graders said they got to develop their own ideas in school. Of course, we see numerous exceptions: schools that push kids to not only master essential knowledge but also think deeply and apply what they know in class to solve real-world problems. But these schools remain on the fringe. More commonly, kids see the world around them—wars, social injustice, climate change, disinformation, AI technology that can help write novels and solve complex equations—and wonder why on earth they have to, say, study the Pythagorean theorem. If little is asked of them, or if they fail to see real-world applications, they tend to give little in return.
In an ideal world, we might hope for a wholesale redesign of schools, which plenty of innovators are working toward. But changing entire systems can be an excruciatingly slow process. This means it's crucial for the adults close to teens in Passenger Mode to step in, to encourage them in ways that help them reengage within the existing system. And precisely how parents go about this makes a huge difference.
When teens check out at school, many parents respond by nagging: Pay attention; do your homework; you have to study for that test. After all, kids might get sick of the scolding and eventually do what they're told. But nagging doesn't work as a long-term motivator. Few people feel inspired to work under duress.
That holds true for teens as much as for anyone. In the 2010s, the developmental scientist Ron Dahl and Jennifer Silk, a University of Pittsburgh psychology professor, started wondering what went on inside adolescents' brains when their parents nagged them. So the two recorded a group of moms offering neutral statements, praise, and criticism. Then they put these moms' kids—32 boys and girls ages 9 to 17—into a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machine and played the recordings to see which parts of the kids' brains engaged and which tuned out. Criticism ('You get upset too easily'; 'One thing that bothers me about you') increased activity in the emotion networks of the kids' brains. It also decreased activation of the cognitive networks used to regulate their emotions, and in the systems that help a person see things from someone else's perspective. In other words: Rather than focusing on solving the problem that their parents were criticizing them about, the kids got upset and shut down.
An abundance of other research confirms that nagging backfires. John Hattie, a professor at the University of Melbourne, in Australia, examined the effects of parental involvement on student achievement as evaluated by almost 2,000 studies covering more than 2 million students around the globe. He found that when parents 'see their role as surveillance, such as commanding that homework be completed,' achievement drops and students are less engaged.
Many parents nag for what might feel like a good reason: They worry that otherwise, kids won't step up to do their homework or other tasks on their own. But nagging can send the message to kids that they are not competent, which deflates, not energizes, them. Nagging also diminishes teens' sense of autonomy, which they need for important parts of their brain to develop. When parents monitor their kids like drill sergeants, whether that impulse comes from a place of love or despair (or both), they unwittingly impede their kids' practice in exercising agency and learning to organize themselves effectively. After all: Sometimes the negative consequences of not getting work done or failing an exam are exactly what a kid needs to feel motivated. By giving teens the freedom to fail something—­a test, a quiz, meeting a homework deadline—­parents put them in control, which (over time) does feel motivating.
Moms and dads who ease off the nagging can still do plenty to get their teens out of Passenger Mode. The key, research suggests, is for them to encourage teens to develop more autonomy. Obviously, we're not suggesting that parents give teens complete independence; they're young and need guidance. But parents shouldn't default to working harder to solve a kid's problem than the kid does. And they probably should give up a little bit of control; think fewer commands and more supportive nudges. To figure out if what you're saying might gently push a teen toward autonomy, it's useful to ask: Will this help my child learn to do this on their own?
Consider the cases of the following teens and parents, whom we spoke with while researching our book. One ninth grader in New York, who spends a lot of time in Passenger Mode, told us that not being asked to study for Spanish and getting an 87 on a test felt way better than being hounded to study and then getting a 92: 'It makes me feel like I'm not even accomplishing anything when I get a good grade 'cause my mom made me study all night.'
Another teen, from Philadelphia, told us that his mother texts him four times a day to remind him of things: 'She texts me at like 11 a.m. when I am in class to remind me about homework that is due that night. She thinks I can't manage myself at all, but I think I can.'
This sort of 'command and control' mindset might feel efficient to some parents, but it can rob children of motivation. A more effective tactic, we found, is to encourage kids to make their own plans and to support them as they carry them out—as exemplified by the experience of Luis, a Denver-based high schooler, and his mom, Susan. (We changed Luis's and Susan's names to protect their privacy.) One day, Luis announced to his mom that he was probably going to fail his Advanced Placement U.S. History exam. He had taken a practice test and gotten a 1, but he needed a 3 to pass the class, and the test was in two weeks. At first, Susan panicked internally; failing history freshman year would not look good on Luis's transcript. But she remained externally calm and channeled her social-worker training. The exchange went something like this:
Susan: Well, what are you going to do?
Luis: I don't know.
Susan: Do you have a textbook? (This was not rhetorical. Susan had never once seen Luis with a history textbook.)
Luis: Umm … yeah, I guess.
Susan: Maybe you should read it?
Luis: Oh! (Luis actually seemed surprised at this.) That's a good idea. I think it's under my bed. (Luis headed to his room and returned five minutes later with a shiny, unopened textbook. He sat down at the kitchen table and opened it.)
Susan: Do you have a notebook and pen? Maybe you should take notes while you read the book?
Luis: Good, yeah. I'll do that. (Luis rummaged in his backpack for a notebook and pen.) Mom, what am I supposed to do when I take notes?
Giving your kid autonomy doesn't always mean letting go of the reins, but instead trying to see what your kid needs and what they can do, before deciding for them. Susan quickly realized that Luis had made it to freshman AP U.S. History with virtually no understanding of how to study. When Luis announced that he thought he might fail, she curbed the urge to say, 'Are you kidding me?' and instead put the onus back on Luis ('What are you going to do?'). When he was stuck, she used invitational language ('Maybe you could … '). And after their first conversation, she helped him make a plan that broke the work into manageable chunks—providing what educators call 'scaffolding.' Eventually, after buckling down for seven days of study, Luis took the exam and got a 3. He told us he was thrilled and felt pride in his accomplishment.
To get better at anything, kids need to practice—and they need to want to practice. Learning is no exception. Luis experienced the success of mastery and felt the spark of internal motivation. Although he still has Passenger moments, he's more engaged in school as a result of taking charge of his learning. Along the way, thanks to the runway his mom gave him, he developed better work habits, picked up some time-management skills, and practiced organizing himself to reach a goal.
Communicating this way isn't always easy for busy parents; 'just get it done' can feel more expedient than helping children devise a plan and having patience when the plan doesn't work. But managing teens' time for them and nagging them to do things will work for only so long. When kids are in Passenger Mode, a better way for parents to counteract their coasting is to notice when they're stuck in neutral—and then lean gently toward them, to help them find a way to shift into drive.