It has been claimed that the Arab Spring is a youth-driven phenomenon characterized by rising economic and political grievances which eventually translated into large-scale protest. This paper seeks to describe and analyze the youth cohort that is said to have been behind the downfall of several Arab regimes. In doing so, it asks which types of individuals were likely to participate in protests: were the protesters generally unemployed, more educated, and younger, or were other factors driving citizens to the streets? Using newly-available data from the second wave of the Arab Barometer—collected during the Arab Spring—we evaluate many of the commonly-held claims about the nature of these protests. We compare the results of this survey with earlier surveys in the Arab World in order to determine: a) if the Arab youth have truly become more politically engaged; and b) to what extent the recent wave of protests that has swept across the Arab World is distinct from earlier patterns of mobilization.