The relevance of this article lies in the study of such a social phenomenon as youth policy. Especially significant are the representations of the existing practices of youth policy designing and young people participation in social programming to implement various types of social innovations. Sociopsychological support of youth policy is considered as an independent topic with the questions of the youth identity crisis and the search for models of building solidarity in the new historical realities. The purpose of the research is to study youth policy from the perspective of social programming; to identify and analyze the features of youth policy in modern conditions. Research methods: as a research method, we used survey and interview methods that allow us to identify the specifics of young people social status as an indicator of society state as a whole. Research results: the article considers constructs of youth policy used in official administrative texts - state programs in the field of youth policy and unofficial texts of these programs developers. The novelty and originality of the research lies in the fact that for the first time the context of programming youth policy in modern conditions is studied. The main components are shown: normative, language, spatial, event-time, and problem contexts. It is shown that youth policy is constructed as a network of interconnected social practices of various kinds, including practices of youth participation in programming, based on the model of representation of youth interests by its affiliated representatives. For the first time, it is revealed that the construction of social practices of youth participation occurs with the designation of the role repertoire of young people and is reduced to roles: problem bearer (predominance of problem discourse); recipient of social benefits; passive participant of events (resource-oriented attitude to the younger generation); social practice of youth participation is characterized as problematic. This article shows that the problems of human development can be solved only through the active participation of young people in the interaction of the state and civil society and should be considered as criteria for the effectiveness of youth policy implementation. Practical significance: the data obtained in this work can be used in political science, legal psychology, social psychology, age psychology, as well as for further theoretical development of this issue.