Amish theology holds that baptism must be a fully voluntary adult commitment rather than an inherited status conferred on an infant who cannot consent to it, and rumspringa exists precisely to make that voluntariness real: Amish young people are not baptised as children, so the years of adolescence, beginning around sixteen, are lived under looser community supervision specifically so that the eventual choice to be baptised into the church, or not, is a genuine decision rather than a formality.
During this period Amish youth gain greater freedom to socialise with peers, and depending on the specific community's conservatism, greater exposure to aspects of the wider non Amish world, from cars and telephones to, in some more permissive communities, alcohol and popular culture, than they would have had as younger children or than they will accept again once baptised into the church's ordnung, the community's specific code of discipline and conduct. The practice is not uniform across the many distinct Amish church districts and affiliations, which range considerably in how much latitude they extend during this period, and outside sensational media portrayals notwithstanding, most Amish young people do not undergo a dramatic break from community life during rumspringa, spending the period primarily within Amish or Amish adjacent social circles rather than immersed in the outside world.