Every teenager is asking who they are — the question is who gets to answer it.

Aloha Friends,

Do our young people feel safe bringing their tough questions to us?

There is a question living inside every teenager that they may never say out loud but are answering in a hundred quiet ways every single day. They find those answers in the accounts they follow, the communities they drift toward, the language they begin borrowing, and the places where they finally feel like someone truly sees them.

Who am I?

Long before a teenager will sit down for a formal conversation about identity or faith, they are already forming conclusions about whether their questions are welcome, whether the complicated parts of them are safe at home, or whether they need to take those parts somewhere else. As someone who has privately navigated gender identity issues as a teen, I am grateful that I did not have access to the information, deception and knowledge available to young people today. I don’t know where I would be if I did. Here are some concerning statistics.

• According to a 2023 Common Sense Media national survey, 73 percent of teenagers ages 13 to 17 have already watched pornography online. More than half were first exposed before the age of 13, often before a single meaningful conversation about identity or worth had ever taken place at home. 

• Barna research reveals that nearly two-thirds of young adults who grew up in church have walked away from it by their twenties, with relational disconnection and the absence of genuine belonging woven consistently through their stories. 

Belonging and identity are not separate conversations. 

They are the same conversation.

A teenager who does not have a settled sense of who they are will search for belonging in whoever offers them the most compelling answer, and those answers are arriving around the clock in ways that feel deeply personal and profoundly affirming to a young person who is hungry to be seen.

Which is why we want to offer three simple ways to begin closing that gap this week.

Pay attention to the language they are borrowing. The words a teenager begins using often reveal the communities quietly shaping their identity long before anything else becomes visible. Rather than responding with alarm or correction, approach it with genuine curiosity. You can ask what a word means to them and where they first encountered it. That single question, asked without an agenda, can open more than hours of structured conversation ever could.

Ask identity-forming questions, not just check-in questions. Try weaving in questions that reach a little deeper, ones like "What do you think you are really good at that most people don't notice?" or "What kind of person do you want to be known as?" These communicate something powerful, showing that you are interested in their soul, not just their schedule. Click Here are additional sample questions.

Share your own story of identity struggle honestly. Selective and honest vulnerability has a way of unlocking something in a young person, because it signals that uncertainty is not shameful here and that the complicated parts of being human do not have to be hidden or carried alone.

When Jesus encountered people in the middle of their deepest identity confusion, He opened with presence, asked questions, and stayed long enough for something real to happen. That is the same invitation we carry as parents, not to have every answer ready, but to remain present and willing.

In our next email, we are going one layer deeper into something that quietly lives beneath most identity struggles, something that once you begin to see it, you will recognize nearly everywhere.

With love,

The Explicit Movement ʻOhana