Youth empowerment is a fundamental part of equitable participation in citizen science and citizen social science (‘CS/CSS’). Empowerment occurs through the creation of a collective, critical consciousness, but this creation requires complex structural and social considerations. During our Engaging Citizen Science Conference workshop in Aarhus, Denmark in April 2022, we collectively explored some of these considerations, specifically thinking about youth empowerment. Through the stages of planning, running, and sustaining a CS/CSS project and the question of why we should empower youth, we built important insights together into the challenges and opportunities facing citizen science practitioners.