Mattering—the experience of being significant, valued, and consequential to others—has emerged as a central construct in youth development, with strong associations to mental health, engagement, and adaptive functioning (Flett, 2022). Despite this growing literature, mattering is most often conceptualized as a relatively static perception or outcome of supportive relationships, offering limited insight into how experiences of mattering emerge, fluctuate, and are sustained across developmental contexts. In this paper, we advance a process-oriented understanding of mattering by integrating it with salience and adolescents’ capacity for active balancing, as articulated in the Active Balancing Framework (ABF) (Juneja et al., Citation2024). This integrative understanding clarifies why adolescent engagement shifts across contexts and developmental moments and offers a developmental explanation for behaviors such as disengagement and risk-taking. We conclude by discussing implications for research and youth-serving programs, emphasizing the importance of supporting adolescents’ capacity for active balancing within everyday contexts.
Juneja et al. (Fri,) studied this question.