In order to stay in the sport, young people need to feel accepted by their social environment consisting of parents, coaches and peers. Young athletes are strongly related to their social environment which makes them more motivated to continue doing sports. The goal of this research was to show the relationship among social environment (parents, coaches, peers) and levels of satisfaction, intrinsic motivation, dedication to the sport and young athletes in three martial arts (judo, taekwondo, karate). In a sample consisting of 472 young athletes from the three mentioned martial arts, the Croatian version of the following questionnaires was applied: Questionnaire of dedication to sport (Scanlan et al., 1993), Scale of total satisfaction in sport (Scanlan et al., 1993) and Scale of social orientation in sport (Stuntz and Weiss, 2003), which were adapted for those martial arts that showed very good metric characteristics. The Questionnaire of intrinsic motivation (Stimac, Horga and Jurinić-Matos, 1999, according to Stimac, 2000) and Questionnaire of parental support for children in sport (Bosnar, 2003) were used in the research. Regression analysis showed that the coaching support was associated with pleasure in the sport, perceived competence and pressure / tension. Results of canonical correlation showed that young athletes with a high level of social orientation towards peers (peer acceptance and friendship groups) were more committed and more satisfied in their sport and had a greater level of intrinsic motivation (they had a greater interest, effort and higher levels of perceived competence and felt less pressure). Discriminance analysis showed that the young judoka, taekwondo and karate athletes were the most distinguished in the social aspects of motivation such as coaching praise and peer friendship and subdimension of intrinsic motivation pressure/tension. Within the qualitative part of the research 15 interviews were completed (five in every martial art). The results of qualitative research confirmed the quantitative results, and gave us even better insight into the social aspects of motivation in young judoka, taekwondo and karate athletes. Beside the variables of social orientation, future research should investigate the impact of other factors of social motivation, such as the quality of close friendship, group dynamics, personal investments and their impact on satisfaction in martial arts, and be able to find motivational patterns that keep young people in sport.