The present study investigates how students' reasoning about socioscientific issues is framed by their notion of societal structures, for the purpose to provide an image of their sense of agency and how they handle trust and security issues. Examples from gene technology were used as the subject for interviews with 13 Swedish high-school students (year 11, age 17-18). A grid based on modalities from the societal structures described by Giddens was used for analysis. Students used both modalities for ‘Legitimation’ and ‘Domination’ to justify acceptance or rejection of new technology. Doing that, they showed how norms as well as knowledge can be used to justify opposing position as they were trying to build trust in either science and technology or in democratic decisions expected to favour their norms. It was found that students accepted or rejected the authority of experts based on their having or lacking appropriate knowledge. Students were also found to have difficulty in discerning between material risks (reduced safety) and immaterial risks (loss of norms). Attention is drawn to the problem of students' using knowledge claims (Domination) to support norms (Legitimation). Furthermore, students' sense of agency appears to be dependent on either sharing norms with experts or with laymen.