Beyond the four Ps: reframing purpose development through an ecological lens Free

Research consistently shows that purpose develops through meaningful relationships. Kashdan and McKnight (2009) argued that young people learn purpose by watching and imitating role models. Extensive research has since supported this claim, highlighting the crucial influence of parents (Liang et al., 2017a, b), mentors (White et al., 2021) and peers (Lund et al., 2022). Purpose is also deeply connected to belonging or the sense that you matter to your community and have something valuable to contribute (Allen, Kern, Rozek, McInereney, & Slavich, 2021). Historically, mentorship, role modeling and belonging developed primarily through face-to-face relationships within families, schools and neighborhoods. Now they increasingly occur in fragmented, one-way online spaces. Today’s adolescents are forming their identities and aspirations through curated digital interactions (algorithmic feeds, constant social comparison, parasocial relationships with influences) rather than through the kind of stable, reciprocal, in-person relationships that have traditionally cultivated purpose.

What is happening here represents a fundamental shift in Bronfenbrenner’s model. These developmental processes used to unfold primarily at the micro and meso levels, through family dinners, classroom discussions and neighborhood mentors. Now they are increasingly shaped, and sometimes completely displaced, by macro and chrono-level factors. Youth today are more digitally connected than ever (Faverio & Sidoti, 2024), yet this connectivity has not led to stronger, closer relationships. Instead, as Haidt (2024) argues, adolescents drift through fragmented online networks that lack the lasting membership, shared norms and mutual accountability that once characterized real communities. While Haidt (2024) offers a useful account of how digital environments may be reshaping adolescents’ social worlds, developmental research cautions against treating adolescence as a single, biologically driven stage. Adolescence is not defined by puberty alone. It is a socially structured period of development, shaped by culture, institutions and access to relational support (Arnett, 2004; Steinberg, 2014). Young people enter adolescence under very different conditions, with uneven resources and constraints, and these differences matter for how identity and purpose take shape. From this perspective, the central question is not only how technology affects adolescent behavior, but how contemporary contexts reorganize the developmental work of purpose and belonging. When viewed through this developmental lens, many digitally mediated interactions fail to provide the stability young people need for identity formation or sustained purpose development.

Paradoxically, as access to others has expanded, many young people report feeling more chronically disconnected and lonely (Weissbourd et al., 2023). The rise of parasocial relationships (one-way emotional relationships with celebrities or influencers) offers a clear illustration of this shift (Hoffner & Bond, 2022). While these figures can offer inspiration, they are a fragile substitute for real, developmentally supportive relationships. These influencers also expose youth to a culture that increasingly celebrates personality over character. Here, personality means “the ability to be attractive to others, to stand out in a crowd” (Cushman, 1996, p. 64), often overshadowing deeper virtues. We celebrate celebrities more for their visibility than their integrity, service or sustained commitment. Cushman (1996) notes that young people don’t aspire to emulate celebrities’ characters. They want the “fame and fortune” instead. This shift reshapes how purpose develops and raises critical questions about identity formation among today’s youth. When role models and mentors are increasingly distant or parasocial, young people may orient toward visibility and recognition rather than toward integrity, service or sustained contribution, reshaping how purpose and moral identity take form over time.

Haidt (2024) argues that this shift from communities to networks has contributed to feelings of meaninglessness among youth. Yet surprisingly little research has explored how social media use and virtual relationships actually affect purpose development. The studies that do examine technology and purpose tend to focus on potential benefits like how virtual tools might enhance mentorship (Patel et al., 2023; Bronk et al., 2019). We need more robust research that does two things: identifies the specific harms of digital displacement and explores how technology might actually be leveraged to strengthen purpose development rather than undermine it.

Viktor Frankl, a foundational figure in purpose research, asserted that “self-actualization is possible only as a side-effect of self-transcendence” (1963, p. 133). In other words, we find ourselves by looking beyond ourselves. Self-transcendence (rising above self-interest to serve a cause, community or belief system) sits at the heart of genuine purpose (Bronk, Reichard, & Qi Li, 2023). Research consistently shows that lasting purpose requires weaving together personal goals with a genuine desire to help others (e.g., Bronk & Finch, 2010; Liang et al., 2017a, b). Yet most studies focus on micro-level influences like family, often missing how broader cultural and historical forces shape this crucial dimension.

This shift complicates how self-transcendence is understood and practiced in contemporary contexts. As purpose has entered public discourse, it has become increasingly commodified. Scholars have raised concerns that, in an attempt to “sell” purpose as a pathway to individual happiness, we’ve diluted what self-transcendence actually means (Colby, 2020). Young people now face pressure not just to find purpose, but to package it strategically, in ways that enhance their college applications, social media profiles and career prospects (Colby, 2020). In today’s hypercompetitive college admissions world (Sechopoulos, 2022), this often translates into logging volunteer hours and writing personal statements that sound meaningful but don’t reflect what students actually care about.

Instead of engaging in the slow and often uncomfortable work of living a meaningful life, young people may feel pressure to present a version of purpose that looks polished but is not true to who they are. The goal shifts from becoming purposeful to looking purposeful. In the process, they may miss out on ordinary acts of helping others or making a difference – experiences that can both positively impact the world and shape a deeper sense of direction. Colby (2020) puts it this way: “I worry, at times, that an overemphasis on individual benefits could potentially debase the purpose idea…. The world, not just the purposeful individual, needs this kind of contribution and commitment” (p. 27).

This performative climate is further complicated by the rapid rise of generative AI tools, which are increasingly employed to write college essays and personal reflections. These tools can be helpful for brainstorming, but they also risk flattening a process that is meant to be vulnerable and effortful. When students outsource the work of reflecting on (and articulating) who they are and what they value, they may skip past the harder work of actually figuring it out. In a culture that rewards speed and productivity, even something as intimate as purpose can start to feel like just another assignment to complete (Liang & Klein, 2022).

The broader social context reinforces this pattern. Consumerism and individualism send constant messages that success is about standing out, not about showing up with integrity. The US civic engagement (e.g. voting, community advocacy) has been declining for decades (e.g. Putnam, 1995; AmeriCorps, 2024), while young people are pushed to brand themselves instead of belonging to something larger. Social media accelerates this shift, rewarding visibility and self-promotion over real-world contribution. The result is a generation deeply confused about who they are and why they are here, in a culture that rarely gives them the space to ask those deeper questions.

As local civic life erodes, young people are simultaneously exposed to overwhelming global crises. They are highly aware of issues like climate change, racial injustice and gun violence (Weissbourd et al., 2023). Today’s college graduates worry not only about landing their first job but also about whether the world will be livable in twenty years. On the one hand, this awareness is necessary. We need young people to take action on serious problems. But constant exposure to suffering and crisis has left many feeling overwhelmed rather than empowered (Van Tongeren & Van Tongeron, 2021).

In this evolving context, many important aspects of purpose may be missing from current research. For example, the ability to stay focused on a specific, meaningful direction may offer more protection than endless exploration. The quiet, inner work of discernment – the ability to tell what truly matters – might be as important as taking action. Likewise, purpose today may require staying engaged with the world while also protecting one’s mental and emotional well-being (Moran, 2009). These are understudied but urgently needed skills in a noisy, demanding world.

A vital but underexamined challenge to purpose development lies in the disruption of longstanding cultural timelines. Historically, young people developed long-term goals with clear, intergenerational social structure (e.g. careers with clear ladders, family traditions, stable civic and faith institutions). Today, these scaffolds are fractured or gone entirely. This loss leaves many youth in an extended moratorium (Arnett, 2004), characterized less by exploration than by anxiety and constraint.

The chronosystem, once a source of intergenerational stability, has become a source of volatility. Economic precarity, declining institutional trust and shifting cultural norms have eroded the temporal anchors that once helped young people envision and plan for their futures. Youth today must navigate purpose formation without clear narratives about what adulthood entails or how to sequence life’s major decisions. Consider how family-centered narratives of purpose (the idea that each generation builds something better for the next) are breaking down. Millennials are the first generation in recent American history to carry more debt, earn less income and be less likely to own homes than their parents (Choi, Zhu, Goodman, Ganesh, & Strochak, 2018). Many are having fewer children, citing financial hardship and fears of raising children in today’s political and environmental climate (Medaris, 2024). As trust in traditional sources of guidance, such as religion and government continues to weaken (Pew Research Center, 2019, 2024), the very narratives and pathways to purpose are being rewritten.

Without stable social scripts, many youth face what Mische (2009) calls a breakdown in projectivity (the ability to imagine a future that makes sense). Lacking this scaffolding, they experience a kind of developmental dizziness: too many choices, too few anchors. Building the skills and support needed to life’s transitions becomes nearly impossible in such a fragmented, competitive environment (Côté & Levine, 2000).

Career has traditionally been one meaningful vehicle for purpose, but the professional world has become far less predictable (Blustein et al., 2023). Members of Gen Z are expected to change jobs up to 10 times before they turn 35 (Beckman, 2018), and many future jobs don’t even exist yet (Institute for the Future, 2017). In response, youth often feel unsure of what they want to do and of what is even possible.

In sum, not only are macro/chrono factors more immediate than in prior generations, but the dominant narratives around purpose are shifting. We tell young people to discover who they are becoming and make a difference that is personally meaningful. But the old roadmap no longer works. That world is vanishing, and the stories they have inherited do not match the world they are entering. As a result, many young people attempt to form purpose amidst uncertainty about whether their commitments will endure or be supported within systems they experience as unstable or misaligned with their values.

Taken together, the shifts described above (digital disruption, economic precarity and weakening institutional pathways) shape not only how young people experience purpose, but what forms of purpose feel realistic and sustainable. An ecological approach to character education must therefore attend not only to students’ internal development but also to the place-based conditions that support or constrain meaningful commitment over time.

These arguments carry important implications for character education efforts that aim to support youth purpose development. If place, as the fifth P of purpose, shapes how young people understand what is meaningful and possible, then purpose cannot be cultivated solely through intrapersonal reflection or individual goal-setting. Character education programs must also attend to the contextual conditions that shape students’ moral commitments and aspirations.

One implication concerns how educators frame reflection. Rather than focusing only on students’ interests or strengths, character education can invite reflection on how social, cultural and institutional contexts influence what young people see as viable forms of contribution. This situates purpose within lived experience and aligns with character education’s emphasis on moral awareness and practical wisdom.

A second implication involves opportunity structures. Schools play a powerful role in shaping students’ moral imagination by signaling which forms of contribution are valued and supported. When access to role models, civic participation or meaningful responsibility is uneven, students’ sense of purpose may narrow accordingly. Purpose-oriented character education can expand this horizon by fostering relational, community-engaged experiences that connect values to action.

Finally, these insights invite a reconsideration of developmental expectations around purpose. In contexts marked by uncertainty, purpose may function less as a fixed commitment and more as an evolving orientation toward meaning and contribution. Character education efforts that allow for exploration and responsiveness to context may therefore be better aligned with young people’s developmental realities. Taken together, these implications point toward an ecologically grounded approach to character education, one that takes place seriously as a formative dimension of moral and purpose development.

Table 1 provides illustrative examples of how place, as the fifth P of purpose, can be integrated into common character education practices, including advisory programs, mentoring relationships and service learning.

The research directions outlined below are intentionally grounded in place as the fifth P of purpose development. Each area attends to specific macro- and chrono-level forces that now shape young people’s developmental contexts, including digital disruption, economic precarity and the erosion of stable institutional pathways. By linking future research questions to these contextual conditions, we aim to clarify how place operates not as background but as an active dimension of purpose formation across adolescence and young adulthood.

Numerous macro and chrono-level factors continue to shape the building blocks of purpose development. Given this reality and the rising rates of disconnection and meaninglessness among young people (Weissbourd et al., 2023), we call on researchers to more explicitly consider contextual factors in their study of purpose development. Table 2 delineates four key research directions, each accompanied by sample questions to further advance the field. These are not exhaustive but represent starting points we believe are particularly important. Broadly, we call for research to more clearly examine how context shapes purpose development, to explore both positive and negative impacts, to investigate microlevel experiences unique to this generation and to use these insights to inform more equitable, impactful interventions. To bring these questions to life, we elaborate on several examples for future research.

We acknowledge that our discussion focuses exclusively on American culture. This was intentional as it allowed us to explore cohesively how purpose interacts with macro- and chrono-level factors within our area of expertise. However, research exploring purpose development across diverse global contexts is urgently needed. Moreover, while some cross-cultural purpose research exists (e.g. Damon & Malin, 2020), we need more studies that examine how purpose is shaped by different cultural norms, values and societal structures.

Beyond exploring if context impacts purpose development, scholars are also encouraged to consider how alignment (or lack thereof) between individual purpose and contextual factors may impact individual and collective experiences. Given the increasing turbulence and fragmentation in macro and chronosystems, the need for grounding in close relationships and local communities becomes more urgent. Relationships are the soil in which purpose takes root. Yet paradoxically, the very forces that make these relationships necessary (e.g., social media, political polarization) are also eroding them. For instance, a young person who is driven to mitigate global environmental injustices may feel disconnected or demoralized if their family does not share those values, creating tension between personal purpose and social environment.

In light of this tension, our understanding of purpose must expand beyond individual pursuits to include shared, communal dimensions. The construct of collective purpose has thus gained promising, though nascent, traction. Bronk et al. (2024) define collective purpose as “an ongoing intention shared among group members for how they seek to contribute to the world beyond their group” (p. 662). This goes beyond temporary cooperation; it reflects an enduring, shared motivation to impact the broader world, rooted in common values, identities and moral commitments.

Examining the impact of collective purpose on individual purpose development could offer valuable insights into understanding how community-level factors may promote, hinder or even exploit individual purpose development and expression. For example, research has shown that pursuing a highly altruistic purpose within a for-profit context can lead to individual burnout and other detriments (Bunderson & Thompson, 2009). Alignment between individual and community purpose and/or values remains largely understudied despite its likely significant impact on purposeful living.

Researchers should also explore contemporary micro-level purpose development experiences that are distinct to this generation. Consider the experience of a high school senior who stares at a blank page, trying to write a college essay that answers the question, “What is your purpose?” She has never had a mentor ask her that in real life. Her social feed is filled with polished narratives of overnight success and self-branding. She types, deletes and rewrites. This is not because she lacks direction, but because she knows the story she tells has to be both personal and performative. The essay becomes less about discovery and more about demonstrating worth.

At the same time, adolescents may develop purposeful identities through parasocial relationships with social media influencers or activists, which shape both their aspirations and sense of self. Youth now form virtual communities, follow curated models of success and navigate social causes through digital engagement – all of which may offer new forms of inspiration or distortion.

Finally, purpose interventions have offered promising tools and strategies for promoting purpose among youth (Bronk et al., 2019). To increase impact, these interventions must move beyond personal reflection exercises and include structural support. For example, schools can integrate place-aware purpose pedagogy into advisory programs, service learning or culturally responsive mentoring models that acknowledge systemic inequities and encourage critical consciousness. We call on those developing interventions to more deeply consider how their programs interact with their larger socioeconomic contexts and to better support youth in navigating purpose within systems that may be misaligned with their values. For instance, a school-based purpose program that encourages students to “follow their passion” may be insufficient or even damaging if it fails to acknowledge student debt, labor inequities or structural barriers to entry.

Research shows that strong relationships with parents and mentors deeply impact purpose development (Liang et al., 2017a, b; White et al., 2021). But helping youth connect to inner drive and pursue long-term goals is not enough anymore. Those working with young people must have honest conversations about pursuing purpose in a culture driven by consumerism and scarcity thinking. Mentors and parents need to acknowledge the macro-level forces shaping purpose formation, and we need better guidance to help them do this effectively. Liang and Klein (2022) offer language toward this when they describe playing growth games in fixed settings. Supporting young people in developing historical and cultural awareness may be an important way to help them become agents of purpose who can engage critically with, and seek to improve, their own contexts. Culture provides narratives about what constitutes a purposeful life (Rogers et al., 2023), but many traditional pathways to purpose may be outdated or insufficient. Supporting purpose development today therefore requires helping young people critically engage with inherited narratives while also developing the capacity to reimagine purpose in response to changing social, economic and institutional realities.

A 24-year-old nurse we spoke with described purpose as the reason she chose her field. She wanted to care for people in their most vulnerable moments. But two years into her job, she finds herself speeding through patient rounds and skipping lunch to catch up on charting. “I still believe in what I’m doing,” she said quietly, “but I don’t feel it anymore.” What began as a calling now feels like a grind. Purpose is still there, but the system makes it nearly impossible to live out. Her story is not unusual. Across sectors, from education to healthcare to social advocacy, young people are entering fields with the desire to help others, only to confront environments that undercut the very values that attracted them. The problem is not a lack of purpose. It is the absence of structures that protect, affirm and sustain it.

Purpose is often understood as a deeply personal pursuit – an inner calling or meaning that guides one’s life. Yet, as we have argued in this paper, purpose doesn’t develop in a vacuum. It is shaped by a host of relational, cultural, historical, economic and political forces that interact with one’s inner life. As we become more aware of these contextual forces, our models for understanding purpose must shift. Theories and interventions that frame purpose as a wholly individual achievement risk ignoring the lived realities of today’s youth. They may misrepresent the challenges young people face or offer solutions that are far too simplistic. To truly support purpose development, we must account for the conditions that allow purpose to develop, as well as those that undermine it.

We therefore propose a revised ecological framework for understanding purpose that integrates Bronfenbrenner’s foundational model with the realities of contemporary development. The four Ps of purpose (people, passion, propensity and prosociality) have long offered a useful lens for understanding how purpose takes shape, but one dimension has remained implicit and is now unavoidable: place. The contexts in which young people grow (culturally, institutionally and historically) have always mattered. What has changed is that, as macro- and chrono-level forces operate with greater immediacy, purpose can no longer be sustained by individual motivation alone; it depends on contexts that can absorb uncertainty and support commitment over time. Naming place makes visible how these conditions directly shape how young people see themselves, relate to others and imagine their futures, with clear implications for how purpose must be cultivated and supported.

As researchers, educators and practitioners, we are called not only to study purpose but to help create the ecosystems in which it can flourish. This means moving beyond technical solutions toward more holistic, justice-oriented and contextually grounded approaches. If purpose is a seed, context is the soil and the climate. Both must be tended.

We thank our colleagues at Boston College and the Purpose Lab for their valuable insights and feedback. We also appreciate the support of our research assistants and the reviewers for their helpful suggestions.