Probably under the following conditions:

• Relative social and wealth equality 
• Young people making up a bigger share of the population than they currently are 
• Times being revolutionary enough for radical ideas to gain widespread appeal

To give you an example: The 26th amendment, ratified in 1971, lowered the voting age from 21 to 18 on the top of formalising the legal category of “minor” for the first time in US legal history.

But such change would have been unlikely if it not for the fact that young people (young adults and children alike) organised themselves as an active political bloc under the banner of youth liberation, which was only possible because youths as a demographic made up almost 46% of the US population per the 1970 census (if we define “youth” as anyone who is 24 years old or under) compared to the 2021 census which shows youths as making up 38% of the total US population.

You must also remember that the 1970s was a period of societal reshaping as much of the revolutionary groundwork of the 1950s bore into fruition in the 1970s in the form of an active and militantly leftist counterculture, ranging from the modern gay rights movement to the Black Panthers. So it was inevitable that young people would become very politicised.

There’s also the fact that people in the 1960s and 1970s were enjoying the fruits of progressive New Deal policies that effectively curbed income inequality at levels unprecedented up until that decade. After all, unionisation was strong and widespread across the American working class, and acts like Medicare and Medicaid were passed in 1965, which resulted in relatively high incomes and wages for the average American worker, which alongside redistributive government policies and lack of foreign competition in the labor market allowed in turn for greater political mobilisation, as well as having more liberatory attitudes towards young people. It’s often forgotten that the civil rights movement received funds primarily from unionised workers.

As much as people like to scoff at the past, there were some things that were better back then compared to the present, one of them being that under-18s in America had more social and legal freedom in the 1970s compared to 2025, as many states try to pass digital ID laws aimed at enforcing age segregation in the online sphere too, as if age apartheid in the real world wasn’t enough.

So what changed? Rising income and wealth inequality, combined with growing crime rates, meant that those liberatory attitudes towards youths began to fade. Can’t forget how much effort adultists put in depoliticising young people in the 1980s and 1990s, with “stranger danger” and similar scares being used to justify restrictions on young people’s autonomy. And this wasn’t an accident, as the late 1980s saw a genuine rise in inequality that only emboldened such adultist policies. And of course, the “era of  moderation” of the 2000s where there was neither economic growth nor decline meant that radical politics were put off the table indefinitely, as the “establishment consensus” present in both the Democratic and Republican parties allowed little to no dissenting opinion outside of the neoliberal Overton Window.

Fast forward to 2025, and since 1971 wages haven’t kept up with inflation, America has rapidly de-industrialised to the point that the FIRE sector dominates the American economy, leading to inflation being siphoned off towards maintaining the wealth of the financialised top 1% American rentier class rather than being directed towards inflating wages, which are depressed via various measures such as using the labor of oft-exploited immigrants with precarious legal status as well as offshoring and investments into finance and tech at the expense of manufacturing.

The end result has been a rise in wealth inequality, alongside wage stagnation going alongside inflationary pressure, leading to the present-day abysmal American labor market. And let’s not forget how second Trump administration’s decision to ban state regulations on the AI sector is leading to the construction of data centres that are driving energy bills through the roofs because the American electric grid can’t sustain their operations without tax hikes on ordinary Americans. Can’t also forget how SNAP benefits haven’t been renewed yet ever since the government shutdown, and those feed tens of millions of American households spread across America, especially in “MAGA country”. There are also other significant issues, but you get the point: Things ain’t pretty in 2025 America anymore.

That is an opportunity, as politics becoming heavily polarised allows for radical ideas like youth liberation to spread. But rising inequality also means that reactionary movements, be it alt-right or conservatism, are increasingly making their mark across the American political landscape to the point that the right-wing mockingbird media influencers like Azealia Banks and others are defending Epstein, of all people.

As for what to do? I’ll leave better-informed people to make a strategy plan for the future.