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Essay on Youth Culture Today for Students and Children

January 20, 2020 by Sandeep

500+ Words Essay on Youth Culture Today

What is Youth Culture? Youth Culture is the term used to describe the ways teenagers lead and conduct their lives. It can refer to their interests, styles, behaviours, music choices, beliefs, vocabulary, clothes, sports preferences and dating relationships.

The concept behind youth culture is that adolescents are a subculture with norms, behaviours and values that differ from the main culture of older generations within society.

Youth culture, especially in the western world, is more about what they wear, the lifestyle they support, the electronic gadgets they own, as a majority or group. There are even competitions for higher ranks, wherein the high ranking ones are the most beautiful, richest, own a wider array of gadgets, and have the most amount of cool friends.

It isn’t that much about who you are but more about what you have. Reality television shows, magazines and the newest gadgets are what rules the youth and the world at large today. It is getting quite out of hand, and because of the new life-stage as ‘teens’, young people don’t realise the big importance they have on the future.

Development of Youth Culture

Youth culture was first developed in the 20th century when it became more common for adolescents to gather together in groups or fandom. Historically, prior to this time, many adolescents spent a large portion of their time with adults or with their siblings. But the introduction of compulsory schooling and other societal changes made the joint socialisation of adolescents more prevalent.

Psychologists such as Erik Erikson have theorised that the primary goal in the developmental stage of adolescence is to answer the question, “Who am I?” If this is the case, it is natural to assume that in finding out one’s own identity, one would seek others within the same age group and generation to grow and learn together and understand the social norms and values of society.

Theorists such as Adele M. Fasick agree that adolescents are in a confused state of mind and that identity development happens during this time as they exert independence from parents and have a greater reliance on their peer groups.

Characteristics of the Youth Today

The youth of today are not like any other preceding generations. They are stronger, more united, and far more understanding. One of the main characteristics of the youth of today is their firm determination. Some might misunderstand this trait for stubbornness, which is also true.

However, our youngsters set their sights very firmly on a certain goal, and do everything in their power to achieve it, sometimes going even beyond what is in their hands to do extra.

This gives them stamina and immense courage to accomplish their target on time with utmost perfection. If we closely observe their behaviour, we notice that their dedication and sincerity towards the work increases day-by-day.

Our young generation also has a very good capacity to withstand stressful situations. They can manage any and every circumstance in a patient manner. Gender is no bar to the withstanding ability. Everyone is equally tested and treated in the world of employment and performance, and the parameters are very competitively met by our charming youth.

The ability to manage stress is also one of the primary investigators in the field of psychoneuroimmunology, which is the study of the relationship between psychological factors and working of the immune system. Seeing as our youth ward off stress not just by ignoring it, but working around it, the youth are also constantly in good health .

One of the down factors is that the blood of the youth gets heated up much too frequently. The youth lacks patience in some areas, and they all need their tasks to be completed as and when required and that too immediately. The loss of patience and the hot temper is often the cause of violence and rage. This is evident from the new-fangled tradition of cursing horrendously at the littlest of things.

Our youthful generation is also extremely tech-savvy. They can complete every task in a single click. The cyber world has given them a life of ease and comfort, in comparison to the long hours that used to be spent at offices. However, this has a downside too. The tech savvy youth have lost the values of physical exercise.

Running games are now played virtually on a gaming screen. These factors are landing the youth into poor health conditions at a tender age, especially due to factors such as obesity. We have reached an era where our youth are unable to perceive anything without the Internet. They have become completely dependent on technology.

Probably the most defining characteristic of the youth of today is their strong rebellion. Now, this might be taken as a bad quality by a lot of people, but in my opinion, this is an excellent thing. The youth do not simply rebel against anything and everything.

They pick and choose their battles carefully and the only rebel against the wrong things in our society. For example, the youth are standing up for the rights of women. They have taken up the fight against racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, and many other problems.

The older generations often criticise the youth for being lazy and not being outdoors all the time. But I believe that that is a wrong notion. They may not be as active as the earlier generations in terms of playing games, but the important thing is, they are keeping themselves busy doing something.

The youth don’t just sit back, relaxing. When they see a problem, they devise methods to overcome it, instead of sitting and gossiping about it. They hold protests, strikes and marches in support of their demands.

The youth are currently the only people working towards saving of our planet from climate change , seeing as no one else is taking it seriously. Contrary to popular belief, there are many other sides to this new youth culture than just sex and teenage pregnancy.

The youngsters are well aware of the balancing equations of life. The general IQ and social awareness cause them to help in the upliftment of the rural segments of the world. They are the ones who plan and promote the development of the under-developed nations. They are passionate about their nations, and sometimes, even more, passionate about the world as a nation together.

Reasons for the Youth Culture of Today

The youth of today are unlike any before in all of history. This is because of several factors. The world is ever changing, developing in certain fields and regressing in others.

The previous generations, when they were youth, never had to experience the kinds of difficulties and pressures today’s youth go through almost every day. Of course, no one means to undermine the difficulties of past generations.

Some of the factors that are responsible for the youth culture of today include the school shootings, the rising paedophilia, easy access to narcotics, the dark web, graphic sexual images on billboards and magazine covers, ever rising racism, and several others. Imagine going to school every day, innocently, and yet never knowing whether you will be coming back home or not.

Young people are being challenged in their everyday lives by the media, their peers and by the school. They are challenged to go beyond their own personal and familial boundaries. Modern technology and advancement have given everyone invaluable tools for communication: cell phones , e-mail, pagers, computers , instant messaging and text messaging, all for the purpose of improving our communication skills.

But very often, although parents are very quick to supply their children with all these communication tools of our modern age, they don’t spend more than fifteen minutes a day speaking to their children on a one-on-one basis.

It is crucial to understand that the youth culture is a type of stereotype wherein we are trying to fit in all the youth of the world. This is not realistically possible. The youth are from all over the world, they glorify in their diversity.

Trying to fit them all into one culture is the same as saying that the lion, dolphin and ostrich are all the same simply because they are all in the animal kingdom.

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How Teens Today Are Different from Past Generations

Every generation of teens is shaped by the social, political, and economic events of the day. Today’s teenagers are no different—and they’re the first generation whose lives are saturated by mobile technology and social media.

In her new book, psychologist Jean Twenge uses large-scale surveys to draw a detailed portrait of ten qualities that make today’s teens unique and the cultural forces shaping them. Her findings are by turn alarming, informative, surprising, and insightful, making the book— iGen:Why Today’s Super-Connected Kids Are Growing Up Less Rebellious, More Tolerant, Less Happy—and Completely Unprepared for Adulthood—and What That Means for the Rest of Us —an important read for anyone interested in teens’ lives.

Who are the iGens?

Twenge names the generation born between 1995 and 2012 “iGens” for their ubiquitous use of the iPhone, their valuing of individualism, their economic context of income inequality, their inclusiveness, and more.

She identifies their unique qualities by analyzing four nationally representative surveys of 11 million teens since the 1960s. Those surveys, which have asked the same questions (and some new ones) of teens year after year, allow comparisons among Boomers, Gen Xers, Millennials, and iGens at exactly the same ages. In addition to identifying cross-generational trends in these surveys, Twenge tests her inferences against her own follow-up surveys, interviews with teens, and findings from smaller experimental studies. Here are just a few of her conclusions.

iGens have poorer emotional health thanks to new media. Twenge finds that new media is making teens more lonely, anxious, and depressed, and is undermining their social skills and even their sleep.

iGens “grew up with cell phones, had an Instagram page before they started high school, and do not remember a time before the Internet,” writes Twenge. They spend five to six hours a day texting, chatting, gaming, web surfing, streaming and sharing videos, and hanging out online. While other observers have equivocated about the impact, Twenge is clear: More than two hours a day raises the risk for serious mental health problems.

She draws these conclusions by showing how the national rise in teen mental health problems mirrors the market penetration of iPhones—both take an upswing around 2012. This is correlational data, but competing explanations like rising academic pressure or the Great Recession don’t seem to explain teens’ mental health issues. And experimental studies suggest that when teens give up Facebook for a period or spend time in nature without their phones, for example, they become happier.

The mental health consequences are especially acute for younger teens, she writes. This makes sense developmentally, since the onset of puberty triggers a cascade of changes in the brain that make teens more emotional and more sensitive to their social world.

Social media use, Twenge explains, means teens are spending less time with their friends in person. At the same time, online content creates unrealistic expectations (about happiness, body image, and more) and more opportunities for feeling left out—which scientists now know has similar effects as physical pain . Girls may be especially vulnerable, since they use social media more, report feeling left out more often than boys, and report twice the rate of cyberbullying as boys do.

Social media is creating an “epidemic of anguish,” Twenge says.

iGens grow up more slowly. iGens also appear more reluctant to grow up. They are more likely than previous generations to hang out with their parents, postpone sex, and decline driver’s licenses.

Twenge floats a fascinating hypothesis to explain this—one that is well-known in social science but seldom discussed outside academia. Life history theory argues that how fast teens grow up depends on their perceptions of their environment: When the environment is perceived as hostile and competitive, teens take a “fast life strategy,” growing up quickly, making larger families earlier, and focusing on survival. A “slow life strategy,” in contrast, occurs in safer environments and allows a greater investment in fewer children—more time for preschool soccer and kindergarten violin lessons.

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Explore how to help teens find purpose .

“Youths of every racial group, region, and class are growing up more slowly,” says Twenge—a phenomenon she neither champions nor judges. However, employers and college administrators have complained about today’s teens’ lack of preparation for adulthood. In her popular book, How to Raise an Adult , Julie Lythcott-Haims writes that students entering college have been over-parented and as a result are timid about exploration, afraid to make mistakes, and unable to advocate for themselves.

Twenge suggests that the reality is more complicated. Today’s teens are legitimately closer to their parents than previous generations, but their life course has also been shaped by income inequality that demoralizes their hopes for the future. Compared to previous generations, iGens believe they have less control over how their lives turn out. Instead, they think that the system is already rigged against them—a dispiriting finding about a segment of the lifespan that is designed for creatively reimagining the future .

iGens exhibit more care for others. iGens, more than other generations, are respectful and inclusive of diversity of many kinds. Yet as a result, they reject offensive speech more than any earlier generation, and they are derided for their “fragility” and need for “ trigger warnings ” and “safe spaces.” (Trigger warnings are notifications that material to be covered may be distressing to some. A safe space is a zone that is absent of triggering rhetoric.)

Today’s colleges are tied in knots trying to reconcile their students’ increasing care for others with the importance of having open dialogue about difficult subjects. Dis-invitations to campus speakers are at an all-time high, more students believe the First Amendment is “outdated,” and some faculty have been fired for discussing race in their classrooms. Comedians are steering clear of college campuses, Twenge reports, afraid to offend.

The future of teen well-being

Social scientists will discuss Twenge’s data and conclusions for some time to come, and there is so much information—much of it correlational—there is bound to be a dropped stitch somewhere. For example, life history theory is a useful macro explanation for teens’ slow growth, but I wonder how income inequality or rising rates of insecure attachments among teens and their parents are contributing to this phenomenon. And Twenge claims that childhood has lengthened, but that runs counter to data showing earlier onset of puberty.

So what can we take away from Twenge’s thoughtful macro-analysis? The implicit lesson for parents is that we need more nuanced parenting. We can be close to our children and still foster self-reliance. We can allow some screen time for our teens and make sure the priority is still on in-person relationships. We can teach empathy and respect but also how to engage in hard discussions with people who disagree with us. We should not shirk from teaching skills for adulthood, or we risk raising unprepared children. And we can—and must—teach teens that marketing of new media is always to the benefit of the seller, not necessarily the buyer.

Yet it’s not all about parenting. The cross-generational analysis that Twenge offers is an important reminder that lives are shaped by historical shifts in culture, economy, and technology. Therefore, if we as a society truly care about human outcomes, we must carefully nurture the conditions in which the next generation can flourish.

We can’t market technologies that capture dopamine, hijack attention, and tether people to a screen, and then wonder why they are lonely and hurting. We can’t promote social movements that improve empathy, respect, and kindness toward others and then become frustrated that our kids are so sensitive. We can’t vote for politicians who stall upward mobility and then wonder why teens are not motivated. Society challenges teens and parents to improve; but can society take on the tough responsibility of making decisions with teens’ well-being in mind?

The good news is that iGens are less entitled, narcissistic, and over-confident than earlier generations, and they are ready to work hard. They are inclusive and concerned about social justice. And they are increasingly more diverse and less partisan, which means they may eventually insist on more cooperative, more just, and more egalitarian systems.

Social media will likely play a role in that revolution—if it doesn’t sink our kids with anxiety and depression first.

About the Author

Diana Divecha

Diana Divecha, Ph.D. , is a developmental psychologist, an assistant clinical professor at the Yale Child Study Center and Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, and on the advisory board of the Greater Good Science Center. Her blog is developmentalscience.com .

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Who are the youth of today generation unlimited, we have approached several young people to understand their vision and how they look at the society they live in and make it their own, from each one perspective.

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Being young is a synonym of change, progress and future. Being young is, ultimately, facing challenges and creating or recreating a space for future full development. It means turning problems into opportunities and solutions and being the driving force of society. 

Today, on the International Youth Day 2020 , we celebrate their visions and their choices, we celebrate “Youth Engagement for Global Action”, a slogan that seeks to highlight the ways young people engage at the local, national and global levels. 

Global challenges, like the coronavirus pandemic or climate change, as well as local issues, will have an effect on the future. It is time to see the extent to which this affects the youngest population and to advance solutions. People aged 14 to 29 years represent the largest generation in history.

We reached out to several Cuban youngsters to know about their visions, their roles in society as individuals and part of the population. From their individuality’s point of view, these young people look at the society in which they have to live and how to make it their own. They were posed with two questions, to which they had shared responses. What do you think is the role of young people these days? What are you doing from your position to help young people?

The group of people that goes from 14 to 29 years of age constitute the largest generation in history

Magdany Acosta Gallardo, 18 years old

Young people not only represent the future of our country, we are one of society’s main agents of change and progress. We have a great effect on economic development too. In this stage of our lives, we build many social relationships and develop a personality that defines us as a new generation. What we do when we become adults depends on how we think and act today. 

Yaicelín Palma Tejas, 27 years old

Young people only have one role and is the same they have always had. It does not change, because their role is actually changing everything, doing things better than before and injecting them with joy and energy.  

Being a journalist, I think my contribution as a champion of young people is to highlight our role as agents of change. As a young citizen, I join every call for autonomy and emancipation, which are challenges for everyone across the globe.

Carlos Alejandro Sánchez, 22 years old

I think young people play a crucial role today no matter the society they live in. We are the ones transforming, consciously or not, our reality, either at the university, at our workplace or in other spaces, and we do it by contributing with a new and updated vision to daily activities. It is our responsibility to make society evolve and stand up for our opinions in the best possible way.   

The opportunity of appearing in the media through radio or television every day, in addition to my presence in social networks, which are so popular nowadays, has undeniably helped me to convey messages and show my way of thinking to many more people than usual. Being able to have a positive influence on my generation and on others through my words and actions makes me very proud. For example, hosting a news programme or a show aimed at a young audience is a huge responsibility, but it has allowed me to prove that no matter how young you are, if you want something and are willing to fight for it, you can do it because everything in life is about perseverance and attitude.

Roxana Broche, 25 years old

Young people are the cornerstone of society and represent a generational renewal. This is something that has been said so many times, but the reality is that young people are the ones in charge of building a legacy.

As an actress, I think I can share my life and professional experiences to help and inspire young people, without saturating them with the message. The more one talks about life experiences, the more knowledge one can offer, and I think that is a key element, sharing knowledge so that other people can reuse it.

Anthony Bravo, 20 years old

I am lucky to be a young singer, but you also have a big responsibility when you have a voice; that is why my work at this time has been focused on conveying messages of wellbeing and trying to reproduce behaviours that contribute to personal growth which, in turn, drives a collective creation based on principles that put the fate of society before the fate of individuals. The best way to contribute with something positive to the community is to ensure our own wellbeing; humanity starts with the family.

Through my music, my lyrics, also as a design student and even as an active subject in our country, I’ve taken on as my duty to be a spokesman for ideas that I think are useful. I have put my time and ideas at the service of my generation.

Luis Daniel del Riego Carralero. 16 years old

At our age, our role in the world is to carry out some important functions for our society and eventually become responsible adults, committed to our time. For example, there are young people who are leading and paralyzing the world in a long fight against the lack of action of some to avoid global warming. We have proven that we can offer a better future and that we are willing to fight against all odds to achieve that.

Leslie Alonso Figueroa, 27 years old

Young people have the challenge, without forgetting the past, to fight for a fair world. Phobias and discrimination, male chauvinism, gender violence and racism are some of the challenges to overcome. Young people, from their area of actions, study or workplace must fight together in the ultimate pursuit of societies of rights, with everyone’s help and for everyone’s good.  

My job as a communicator and a professor is marked by the challenges of the world’s youth which are our challenges as well.  We are all living and coexisting in the same place where forces such as climate change or the new coronavirus make us rethink our strategies and roles to build the future we need.

Harold Naranjo, 20 years old

In my opinion, the role of young people nowadays is to be very productive and, even though there are some who may not find a specific purpose, I’m sure there are many who are able to fulfil their dreams, accompanied by music, dance, performing, communication and other artistic manifestations. All that is what I can see in a place like the Centre A+ Espacios Adolescentes, a programme that provides the opportunity to explore creative capacities and to which I feel lucky to belong!

In my case I had the chance to host radio shows as a way to reflect the different concerns of boys and girls who feel identified with the contents because we address topics of interest and skills that are useful to adolescents, young people and families in general to build together the society we want.  

Randol Betancourt Milian. 16 years old

Young people represent an important human resource within society since they act like agents of social change, economic development and progress.

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In This Article Expand or collapse the "in this article" section Youth Culture

Introduction, theoretical interventions.

• Life-Cycle Shifts
• Socialization
• Language Use and Identity
• Subcultures
• Linguistic Style and Slang
• Schooling and Education
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• Gender, Sex, and Sexuality
• Race and Racialization
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• Migration, Immigration, and Transnationalism
• Activism and Politics
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Youth Culture by Shalini Shankar LAST REVIEWED: 28 May 2013 LAST MODIFIED: 28 May 2013 DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199766567-0081

The anthropological study of youth began as part of broader inquiries about life cycle, ritual, personhood, and generation (e.g., Margaret Mead’s 1952 classic Coming of Age in Samoa ). Such early studies were generally interested in childhood and adolescence insofar as they offered further insight about a society and adult notions of personhood. “Youth culture,” the term widely used in academic and popular circles today, emerged in the 1950s and 1960s as a post–World War II phenomenon in the United States, Canada, and western Europe. A product of extended secondary schooling, delayed entry into the workforce, and the proliferation of consumer culture, youth culture has taken multiple forms with unique trajectories. Youth culture studies now include children, teenagers, and young people in their twenties, and have placed these individuals at the center of the inquiry, rather than as a liminal period before adulthood. This shift has led to productive understandings of broader anthropological questions of interest—such as race, gender, sexuality, class, globalization, modernity, education, and cultural production—while it also shows how youth action is a site of agency, resistance, identity construction, and social change. Scholarship examining style, adornment, and identity construction has made excellent use of the concept of subculture, while practice-based models have further considered the significance of leisure activity, such as consumption of media, commodities, and digital technologies, in young lives. Several other prominent areas have emerged, including childhood and socialization; psychologically informed approaches to child development; schooling as a lens to dynamics of race, gender, and class formation; and language use, identity, and subjectivity. In the past two decades or so, increased emphasis on the ways in which youth mediate globalization, modernity, migration, and transnationalism have come to the fore, as have studies that foreground issues of activism and politics. The potential of youth to be the initiators of social change, however measured, has been productively explored; so too have the struggles of youth as they cope with racism, poverty, abuse, violence, armed conflict, and other social ills. Methodologically, anthropological work on youth is marked by long-term, rigorous fieldwork using ethnographic and sometimes sociolinguistic approaches, and this in situ fieldwork has led to substantive insights about identity and subjectivity, while also attending to history and political economy. Such research has enabled youth to be regarded as significant contributors to the social worlds in which they operate, as well as how they may be poised to inherit and transform these worlds.

The shift to move youth from the margins to the center of anthropological inquiry has been a slow process. Still somewhat sidelined in the discipline overall, as Hirschfeld 2002 notes, theoretical interventions via review articles that define youth as a field of study help give it more of a presence. For instance, Bucholtz 2002 looks at youth culture with a practice-based approach that also considers language use. Korbin 2003 considers childhoods with violence, and Levine 2007 covers numerous contours and debates of this field. Revising approaches to theorizing youth, such as Durham 2004 , and considering issues of methodology and representation as shown in Best 2007 , keep critical focus on this field of inquiry. Sloan 2007 turns a focus on minority youth in particular (see also Shankar 2011 cited under Linguistic Style and Slang ). Undoing misconceptions about the ways that youth have been assessed in schools is also of major concern, especially to those working on the anthropology of education (see McDermott and Hall 2007 , as well as the citations under Schooling and Education ).

Best, Amy, ed. 2007. Representing youth: Methodological issues in critical youth studies . New York: New York Univ. Press.

A thoughtful collection of essays that examine the benefits and challenges of doing ethnographic fieldwork with children and youth.

Bucholtz, Mary. 2002. Youth and cultural practice. Annual Review of Anthropology 31:525–552.

DOI: 10.1146/annurev.anthro.31.040402.085443

This review article offers in-depth coverage of about three decades of youth culture studies. It establishes the work of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies in the 1970s as setting the stage for a practice-based approach, and draws in more recent work from anthropology and related fields.

Durham, Deborah. 2004. Disappearing youth: Youth as a social shifter in Botswana. American Ethnologist 31.4: 589–605.

DOI: 10.1525/ae.2004.31.4.589

Argues that youth should be considered less as a fixed category and more as a set of shifting relationships, and thus as a “shifter” in the indexical sense of indirectly pointing to broader social meanings.

Hirschfeld, Lawrence A. 2002. Why don’t anthropologists like children? American Anthropologist 104.2: 611–627.

DOI: 10.1525/aa.2002.104.2.611

Those working on youth culture may find the title question to ring true, as anthropology has largely marginalized youth as a legitimate field of inquiry and instead considered them primarily as a precursor to adulthood. This article offers reasons for these theoretical and ethnographic gaps and critiques anthropology’s overwhelming emphasis on adults.

Korbin, Jill E. 2003. Children, childhoods, and violence. Annual Review of Anthropology 32:431–446.

DOI: 10.1146/annurev.anthro.32.061002.093345

An overview of numerous types of violence children face and are recruited into, including armed conflict, bullying, abuse, violent rituals, and neglect. Also considers the violent behavior of youth as a form of agency.

Levine, Robert A. 2007. Ethnographic studies of childhood: A historical overview. American Anthropologist 109.2: 247–260.

DOI: 10.1525/aa.2007.109.2.247

A survey of approaches from Mead and Malinowski to twenty-first contemporary ethnography of children, with an emphasis on developmental and psychological perspectives.

McDermott, Ray, and Kathleen D. Hall. 2007. Scientifically debased research on learning, 1854–2006. Anthropology & Education Quarterly 38.1: 9–19.

This intervention documents problematic classroom practices, testing, and teacher training brought about by the No Child Left Behind Act, and calls for less standardized testing and more individual case studies.

Sloan, Kris. 2007. High-stakes accountability, minority youth, and ethnography: Assessing the multiple effects. Anthropology & Education Quarterly 38.1: 24–41.

DOI: 10.1525/aeq.2007.38.1.24

Illustrates the value of ethnography in offering a counterpoint to dominant perspectives on minority youth schooling, including curriculum, pedagogy, and student experiences.

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1 Introduction: A Kaleidoscope of Youth Cultures

The author, editor, or co-editor of more than twenty books, James Marten taught at Marquette University for thirty-six years, where he is now Professor of History Emeritus. He was a founder of the Society for the History of Children and Youth (SHCY) and served as the Society’s president from 2013 until 2015. He is a former editor of the Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth.

• Published: 23 February 2023
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This chapter provides an overview of youth culture, which represents multiple communities and values. It begins by considering the difference on how historians and social scientists examine youth culture. While social scientists are consciously trying to find solutions to perceived problems, historians are more interested in explaining why particular aspects of youth culture are perceived as problems. The chapter then explores how histories of youth culture can be divided into several categories of inquiry: juvenile delinquency, child labor, child soldiers, youth activism, girlhood, and popular culture. It also outlines the subsequent chapters, which, taken together, demonstrate that youth culture has developed out of efforts by adults to shape coming of age and the efforts of youth themselves to find their own paths. Throughout, the authors distinguish between the histories of youth and the histories of youth culture.

The phrase “youth culture” brings together two of the easiest and most difficult words to define. We all know what a “youth” is, and we all have at least a sense of what “culture” is, even though it is a fungible kind of word, related to literature, performing arts, and music, of course—but also to ethnicity, belief systems, and socioeconomic class. But the challenges and opportunities that scholars face in writing about youth and culture come from the fact that these words are highly elastic and relative; used together, they create an almost impossible-to-define concept. Yet youth is one of the most fascinating, rewarding, frightening, and fraught passages in a person’s life, and the way young people experience and describe that passage—and the way parents and society try to narrow the possibilities of that passage—makes up much of what we know about youth culture.

In his 1985 sociological overview, Comparative Youth Culture , Mike Brake writes that sixty or seventy years of scholarship on youth cultures had coalesced around the theme “that if the young are not socialized into conventional political, ethical and moral outlooks, if they are not programmed into regular work habits and labour discipline, then society as it is today cannot continue.” These perennial, age-old fears lend urgency to the need to understand youth culture, and they provide hints as to why social scientists—in the fields that developed late in the nineteenth- and early twentieth centuries, such as psychology, sociology, and social work—studied youth culture for decades before historians took it seriously. Brake goes on to write,

What is central to any examination of youth culture is that it is not some vague structural monolith appealing to those roughly under thirty, but is a complex kaleidoscope of several subcultures, or different age groups, yet distinctly related to the class position of those in them.

The historians who contributed to this handbook might not use precisely the same language, but they would certainly agree with the notion that there is not one “youth culture.” And, although it may stretch the metaphor to say so, youth culture is similar to a kaleidoscope in that it represents multiple communities and values, and that it can be seen differently depending on the perspective from which it is being viewed. 1

Societies have often focused on youth culture as a series of problems: delinquency, illicit sex, loud music, protest, and countless other forms of behavior often viewed as threats to social order that demand solutions. This reductionism is reflected in the titles found on the shelves of the Library of Congress’s HQ subsection in any academic library: Fitting In, Standing Out ; Youth Crisis ; My Son Is an Alien ; Search for Identity ; All Grown Up and No Place to Go ; Lost Youth in the Global City ; Teenage Wasteland ; Growing Up Absurd ; The Vanishing Adolescent ; Strangers in the House ; Pathways through Adolescence ; Not Much, Just Chillin’ ; Re/Constructing “The Adolescent” ; Goth’s Dark Empire ; Super Girls, Gangstas, Freeters, and Xenomaniacs .

Although the specifics have varied, the general concerns have not much changed since the early twentieth century. In a recent collaboration with Scientific American , the journal Nature devoted much of a 2018 issue to “Coming of Age: The Science of Adolescence.” Its introduction states that

It’s widely accepted that adolescents are misunderstood. Less well known is how far we still have to go to understand adolescence itself. One problem is that it is hard to characterize: the concept of puberty does not capture the decade or more of transformative physical, neural, cognitive and socio-emotional growth that a young person goes through. Another is that science, medicine, and policy have often focused on childhood and adulthood as the most important phases of human development, glossing over the years in between.

The rest of the issue examines contemporary health and social issues: brain development, generational relationships, use of media, alcohol, obesity, and antisocial behavior. 2

In some ways historians have followed the lead of psychologists, political scientists, social workers, activists, and policymakers in exploring youth culture through the lenses of pathologies, failures of society, or attempts to solve perceived problems. Yet historians by their very nature do not see themselves as solvers of problems; rather, they step back to study the actions and desires that seem to feed those problems along with the institutions, organizations, and laws intended to control them. In the introduction to their excellent anthology, Joe Austin and Michael Nevin Willard write that “the practices of young people become occasions for moral panic … resulting in calls for social renewal and action.” Drug use, sex, crime, sexuality and teen pregnancy, and shortcomings in our educational systems have all taken their turns, some several times—as sources of community anxiety and increased supervision and regulation. The more than two dozen essays that Austin and Willard assembled tend to focus more on youth agency than on attempts to control it, highlighting music, art, dress, cars, zines, and other forms of self-expression. 3

The difference, perhaps, between historians and social scientists examining youth culture is that, while the latter are consciously trying to find solutions to perceived problems (and, of course, there are problems that need to be solved), the former are more interested in explaining why particular aspects of youth culture are perceived as problems. Historians seek to understand the motivations behind the youth forming those cultures and the adults expressing their anger, fear, or dismay.

In Paula Fass’s Encyclopedia of Children and Childhood: In History and Society , Austin offers a useful overview of the historiography and history of youth culture. The first line of his entry is instructive: “Culture is among the most complicated words in the English language.” He goes on: “It refers to the processes by which … traditions and rituals” and “frameworks for understanding experience … characteristically shared by a group of people” are “maintained and transformed across time.” Some, he points out, are “distinctive from those of their parents and the other adults in their community.” Another useful point he makes is that, even if the institutions and concrete evidence of culture do not appear in the historical record, it does not mean that youth culture did not exist. For him—and for many of the authors in this handbook— behavior is as much a product and signifier of youth culture as are institutions, organizations, and movements. 4

Defining a Historical Youth Culture

The essays in this volume explore the development and diversification of youth culture around the world from the medieval period to the present. Although global in scope, this is not a comprehensive history of youth culture. It does , however, address a comprehensive set of issues related to youth culture. Throughout, authors distinguish between the histories of youth (in other words, the experiences of youth and the conditions in which they live) and the histories of youth culture (the cultural and emotional products of youths’ interaction with one another and with their larger community or communities). For instance, an essay on youth and work provides an overview of the nature of the work experience, but it emphasizes the ways in which youth responded to work, and the ways in which greater autonomy, access to spending money, and relationships to other youth contributed to the formation of youth culture.

Taken together, the chapters demonstrate that youth culture has developed out of efforts by adults to shape coming of age and the efforts of youth themselves to find their own paths. It encompasses the aspects of “culture” that we are familiar with—art, literature, drama—as well as the less tangible but perhaps more important organizations, associations, customs, and styles that draw youth together and separate them from others. The ways in which youth spend their leisure time has figured prominently in the ways that parents and policymakers have worried about youth culture, even as leisure activities provided structure to that culture, and a significant segment of youth culture has also been almost inseparable from popular culture—music, movies, and television, especially—since at least the 1950s and 1960s. Normal biological, emotional, and intellectual development naturally intersect with youth culture, especially in the contexts of emerging sexuality, mental health issues, and the relationship of youth to authority figures and institutions.

Studying the history of youth culture in any society provides a crucial lens for understanding that society’s value systems, educational and economic structures, gender relations, and virtually every facet of cultural expression and human development. This is particularly important during the modern period, which saw the development of economies that required less labor from adolescents while at the same time offering—and requiring, in most places—more opportunities for formal education, both of which encouraged the development of a separate youth culture. Although these conditions emerged first in the United States and then in Western Europe, they gradually expanded to most of the world, although specific forms of youth culture varied greatly by place, ethnicity, and religion, among other factors. Moreover, societies around the world have periodically experienced crises in the behavior of adolescents (the “boy problem” in the United States in the early twentieth century, for instance).

The Search for a Definition of Youth Culture

Humans have for many centuries recognized “youth” as a separate phase of life. It appeared in many early demarcations of the “stages of man,” although the exact ages at which it began and ended could vary from the mid-teens to late twenties. But the important point is that virtually all societies recognized some distinct facets of youth, from legal responsibility to the ability to articulate thoughts and feelings to being physically ready and mature enough to consider courtship. As a recent brief survey of adolescence says, one definition is disarmingly simple: the “period of transition between life as a child, and life as an adult.” The author goes on to state that puberty has normally been a fairly safe starting point for thinking about adolescence, but a paragraph later he writes that although the teenage years are generally considered identical to adolescence, some researchers consider ages ten to eighteen as more accurate, and the World Health Organization identifies it as ten to nineteen. 5

Looming large over any study of youth or youth culture is the work of G. Stanley Hall, who earned the first doctorate in psychology in the United States and published Adolescence in 1904. This two-volume tome set the stage for much of what we think about adolescence and youth, although thinking about adolescence has become more complex since its publication. His borrowing of the German phrase Sturm und Drang —storm and stress—to describe the transformations and tensions that adolescents experience still resonates today. Indeed, many of the essays in this collection could be organized around three of the primary ways in which Hall’s work is still found useful: adolescents’ changing relationships with their parents and peers, with the former receding in importance and the latter increasing in importance; their increased willingness to take risks, and their emerging sexuality. 6

One of the issues facing historians of youth culture is the difficulty of separating youth from children in the past. The study of children and youth as a field of history emerged from the 1960s’ interest in social history, specifically in family and women’s history. The history of children is, at least on the surface, easier to define than the history of youth. Although individual historians often focused on children or youth, they were often lumped together, at least partly because of the variable nature of the social construction of both categories and the extremely subjective coming-of-age markers that attended the transition from one to the other. The fields are often combined, as the names of the flagship journal and one of the leading professional associations indicate: the Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth and the Society for the History of Children and Youth. But even children’s historians understand that they are dealing with a construct that has varied and does so considerably from time to time, place to place, and community to community. By the same token, we rarely write about a culture belonging entirely to children; they lack the agency, independence, and resources to create a truly separate culture. 7

It may be something of an artificial distinction to try to determine where those categories of age begin and end, and historians have placed more importance on understanding young people’s interactions with society no matter their age. Although a brief entry on “Youth Culture” in Adolescence in America: An Encyclopedia now seems outdated, the final paragraph of the entry offers an appropriate call for a deeper understanding of youth culture: “Culture is a prevalent and powerful presence in the lives of youth. We cannot understand today’s teenagers without attending to, studying and understanding their culture.” Youth culture can be found in the internal and external tension created by the push toward adulthood and the pull back toward childhood. 8

Most studies of youth culture focus on modern history—by its very nature, social science research used living subjects, and historians rely on written sources, which for youth are extraordinarily rare before the nineteenth century. Moreover, suggesting that youth formed a culture suggests that they had the freedom and space in which to create it, and except for the most elite families, that was rarely the case for premodern youth, who were normally integrated tightly into family economies, rarely had any kind of personal privacy, and had no or very little access to institutions devoted to young people. The primary evidence of youth culture from premodern eras often comes out of descriptions of their behavior, including participation in religious rituals and rowdyism among apprentices, rather than of institutions or self-conscious groupings. Schools provided some of that space, as educational opportunities slowly expanded from small academies and cathedral schools to various forms of local and even public education. Apprenticeships and guilds also provided a different kind of social group in which a kind of youth culture could flourish.

Perhaps the key transformations for the development of youth culture were industrialization and urbanization, with their attendant creation of large groups of ethnically and economically homogenous youth, a middle class with smaller families and greater resources, and a selection of pastimes and amusements. Although many factors could speed or slow the development of youth culture, by the twentieth century, many different youth cultures had emerged, along with many different responses to nurturing or controlling them, but the rise of consumerism and mass entertainment opportunities provided even more impetus to the formation of youth culture. Those developments would lead to periodic “scares” about delinquency, sex, and substance abuse. The primary innovation in the study of the history of youth culture over the last twenty years has been its expansion into non-western countries and more securely into gender studies, especially the burgeoning field of girls’ history.

Sampling the Historiography of Youth Culture

Because the authors of the chapters in this handbook have provided case studies rather than a comprehensive history of youth culture, it would be well to sample some previous scholarship on youth in general and youth cultures in particular, starting with a few broad studies.

A History of Young People in the West , a two-volume anthology first published in English in 1997, provides eighteen essays on the history of youth, mainly on continental Europe. Like many scholars prior to the twenty-first century (indeed, like many reformers and policymakers), the authors focus primarily on males. None write about “youth culture” as such, but their work shows that it is difficult to avoid youth culture when researching the things that are important to youth and the ways in which society tries to deal with youth. Many of these essays foreshadow the topics that appear in this handbook, including youth in early modern warfare, as sources of menace and disruption, and as members of socioeconomic classes. Some focus on youth exerting agency and some semblance of control over their lives, while others examine efforts to limit their control and to mold them to meet society’s needs. Perhaps the most important contribution to our understanding of the history of youth culture is the book’s demonstration that youth itself is a social construction, whose parameters and assumptions vary greatly over time and space. The lack of a single definition of either “youth” or “culture” provides historians with a great amount of freedom to explore myriad forms of expression or repression, but it also burdens them with the responsibility of defining for themselves what exactly they mean when they explore youth culture. 9

A much more tightly organized study is Youth Culture and Social Change , edited by a team of scholars interested in the ways in which music, especially, has reflected and influenced protest, rebellion, and even violence in late-twentieth- and early-twenty-first-century Great Britain. The salient feature of the book is its insistence that youth culture matters, and not simply to youth. “In this book we go further than documenting the sounds of dissent,” the editors write. “We explore how music worked as a way of making a difference” in issues including labor strife, race relations, student protests, courtship and sex, and gang culture. Each of the essays connects a form of popular music—usually a specific song or band—with a particular time, place, and issue. Its importance to this volume has less to do with its subject matter and more with the weight that it gives to youth culture in general. 10

Historians who have tried to offer broad overviews of youth and youth culture have usually placed them in tension with the history of childhood or of adult culture. Most of the broadly framed books deal with youth as a period of life rather than with the culture it produces. Joseph Kett’s Rites of Passage: Adolescence in America 1790 to the Present was the first major effort by an American historian to provide such an overview. He argues that in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries “youth” could mean anyone from the ages of ten to twenty-five; one of the major developments as attitudes about childhood, education, and work changed was the narrowing of that age range. Although Kett spends more time on efforts to shape and control youth than on the creation of a youth culture, his book was a first step toward understanding the history of youth culture in America. 11 Although the term “teenager” is a decidedly modern construct (even as it is also a simple descriptor), Grace Palladino’s history of this population associates nearly universal attendance in high school with the building of a “teenage culture” that she describes as “a story of institution building, market expansion, racial desegregation, and family restructuring” after the Second World War. 12 Although not purporting to be a history of youth or of youth culture, a number of the essays in a recent anthology edited by Corrine T. Field and Nicholas L. Syrett touch on issues related to American youth culture, particularly political participation and voting, sexuality, work, and drinking. 13 Finally, David Pomfret’s and Richard Ivan Jobs’s collection of essays show youth as a “historical force” in the twentieth century, with case studies on such topics as the modernization of rural Japan, male scouting in Mexico and female scouting in Malaya, youth travel, youth displacement, political protest, and popular culture. 14

The generation that, in America at least, provided the most grist for the study of youth culture was that of the “baby boomers” of the 1940s–1960s; an excellent introduction on their impact on the larger culture and, in the 1960s, the creation of their own is Victor D. Brooks, Boomers: The Cold War Generation Grows Up . Although not limited to youth, as such, but providing a deep understanding of the twentieth-century globalization of the contours of youth culture is Paula S. Fass, Children of a New World: Society, Culture, and Globalization . 15

More narrowly conceived histories of youth culture can be divided into several categories of inquiry, which follow.

Delinquency and Control

One of the oldest traditions in the study of youth culture is the history of juvenile delinquency—although the original scholars would not have couched their work in that way, focusing more often on ways of combating the problem rather than on the points of view of the youth themselves. Two recent examples of transnational investigations into delinquent behavior and policy are Jean Trepanier and Xavier Rousseaux, eds., Youth and Justice in the Western States, 1815–1950: From Punishment to Welfare , and William S. Bush and David S. Tanenhaus, eds., Ages of Anxiety: Historical and Transnational Perspectives on Juvenile Justice. A number of books published over the last twenty years have explored the particular ways in which notions and biases related to race and gender contributed to the behaviors identified as delinquent, including Mary E. Odem, Delinquent Daughters: Protecting and Policing Adolescent Female Sexuality in the United States, 1885–1920 ; Tera Eva Agyepong, The Criminalization of Black Children: Race, Gender and Delinquency in Chicago’s Juvenile Justice System, 1899–1945 ; and Jenifer S. Light, States of Childhood: From the Junior Republic to the American Republic, 1895–1945 . 16

The efforts by most societies throughout history to raise youth into productive citizens run through many of these essays and throughout the literature; this becomes even more imperative in times of crisis. Just two of several excellent works on this effort are Sayaka Chatani, Nation-Empire: Ideology and Rural Youth Mobilization in Japan and Its Colonies , and Sian Edwards, Youth Movements, Citizenship and the English Countryside: Creating Good Citizens, 1930–1960 . 17 These books and others focus on the work of organizations—village-level youth associations in the far-flung reaches of the Japanese empire, and the Boy Scouts, Girl Guides, and other such organizations in Britain and the West—in obligating youth to their current or future civic duties.

Youth and the Economy

Work is one of the more confusing elements of the history of youth; the major campaigns to set limits on the work of young people attacked “child labor,” rather than “youth labor,” and the laws that were eventually passed to regulate age in the workplace usually set the point at which employers could legally hire young people squarely in the middle of what would commonly be considered “youth.” Yet studies of child labor can tell us a lot about the ways in which work could contribute to the development of youth culture at the local level by creating pride in the ability to do a day’s work, a sense of belonging to a community, and a sense of contributing to their families’ well-being. One of the most useful books on the legal as well as community facets of child and youth work is James Schmidt, Industrial Violence and the Legal Origins of Child Labor. 18 Related to the issue of work is the issue of how youth spend their own money—whether received as allowance or earned as wages. Elizabeth Chin’s Purchasing Power: Black Kids and American Consumer Culture shows how that agency among older children and youth in underprivileged families is not necessarily governed by acquisitiveness, but by numerous other factors, including the welfare of other family members. 19

Armed Conflict

One of the confusing elements of studies of children and war is that they virtually always include people we would call “youth,” although the word rarely appears in titles. David M. Rosen , one of the contributors to this volume, is perhaps the leading authority on the history of child soldiers—who are usually, of course, youth, and for whom defending their country, protecting their family, or promoting a certain political view can often shape their identity as youth. 20 The experiences of young people on the home front are often difficult to separate from those of younger children, but among the books that investigate the ways in which war can create opportunities for youth—by providing more room for developing their own cultures and contributions, narrowing possibilities by requiring them to work or by depriving them of family and government support, or by causing governments to pay more attention to them—is Nazan Maksudyan, Ottoman Children & Youth during World War I . James Marten’s The Children’s Civil War shows the development of proto–youth cultures during the American Civil War through literature, home front hardships, work, and familial sacrifice. Although dated, Victoria Sherrow’s Encyclopedia of Youth and War: Young People as Participants and Victims provides brief summaries of hundreds of events, policies, and people related to the ways in which youth were forced or chose to engage in war, mainly in the twentieth century (although a few entries extend back into the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries). 21

Political Awareness and Activism

The essays in Mark Roseman’s anthology, Generations in Conflict: Youth Revolt and Generation Formation in Germany, 1770–1968 , offer a long view of the ways in which conflict between generations shaped class relations and political movements, including Nazism and especially in East Germany. 22 Although youth contributed greatly to the protests that led to the end of apartheid in South Africa, for decades before that the frustration and generational tension sparked the creation of sometimes violent and criminal gangs. 23 More typical accounts of youth activism—one challenging the existing power structure, one being enthusiastically socialized into it—appear, respectively, in Louie Dean Valencia-García, Antiauthoritarian Youth Culture in Francoist Spain: Clashing with Fascism , and Anne Luke, Youth and the Cuban Revolution: Youth and Politics in 1960s . 24 Perhaps even more central to their nation’s political and social development were the youth of Argentina, whose culture helped modernize the nation even as it engaged its authoritarian government; see Valeria Manzano, The Age of Youth in Argentina: Culture, Politics, & Sexuality from Peron to Videla . 25 Although we commonly associate the political activism of the 1950s and 1960s with college campuses, Gael Graham pushes that narrative back to the high school years in Young Activists: American High School Students in the Age of Protest , and the thirty essays in Student Revolt, City and Society in Europe begins in the Middle Ages and runs all the way to the present, covering everything from riots to strikes to protests on issues ranging from town/gown conflicts and curricula to political radicalism and oppression. Sampling activism from every part of Europe through the ages, the book collectively shows the importance of action, resistance, and group formation (even temporary group formation) to the creation of youth culture. 26

A flurry of recent books on “girlhood” captures the ambiguity of age as a category of analysis, as “girl,” “youth,” “young girls,” and “young women” can all be identifiers of female youth. The title of Sherrie Inness’s 1998 anthology Delinquents and Debutantes: Twentieth-Century American Girls’ Culture suggests the dichotomy that girls faced as they reached sexual maturity and in the ways that historians have analyzed that segment of youth culture. 27 But these books often capture the intersections of sexual coming of age and the transition from economic dependence to at least partial independence in ways that separate the experiences of female youth from male youth. Abosede George’s Making Modern Girls: A History of Girlhood, Labor, and Social Development is an excellent example of this genre of study and adds the all-important colonial aspect to the issue of “girl-saving.” 28 Ann Kordas’s recent overview of Female Adolescent Sexuality in the United States, 1850–1965 covers the typical proscriptive efforts by adults throughout the twentieth century to regulate girls’ sexuality, but it emphasizes the ways in which girls reappropriated the message of the larger society in creating their own girls’ culture, while Nicholas L. Syrett’s American Child Bride: A History of Minors and Marriage in the United States tackles the complicated problem of how local and regional attitudes and politics have influenced thinking about the rights of youth and gender relations. 29

Popular Culture

The study of popular culture often intersects with the study of youth culture, as shown in a recent spate of books on Irish youth in the twentieth century, most recently Eleanor O’Leary’s Youth and Popular Culture in 1950s Ireland . O’Leary also shows that the study of youth culture can revise common assumptions about a time and place; the films, comics, clubs, and other leisure activities—including illicit ones—are a counterpoint to the traditional narrative of hardship and stifling traditionalism that usually dominates the Irish narrative. 30 Similarly, in Machines of Youth: America’s Car Obsession , Gary S. Cross tackles a seemingly well-worked subject but makes larger points about how working-class male culture often created a community that revolved around autonomy, masculinity, technical know-how, and rebellion. 31 Devorah Levenson’s well-received study of gangs in Guatemala City goes well beyond the usual account of juvenile gang activity to explore poverty, class, and the failure of a revolution to live up to its promise. 32 In Stalin’s Last Generation: Soviet Post-War Youth and the Emergence of Mature Socialism Juliane Fürst shows how even as the Cold War heated up after the Second World War, the youth who had grown up during the last years of Stalin produced a youth culture that looked to the West for style and popular culture and began to challenge Soviet assumptions and hegemony. 33 Chinese youth culture since the 1960s has been shaped by both local and global currents, argues Paul Clark. While the Cultural Revolution dominated youth culture in the 1960s, by the late 1980s sports and rock music had begun to influence Chinese youth, and by the twenty-first century the Internet became both a source of information about the wider world and an outlet for frustration with their sometimes constrained lives. 34

Spaces of Their Own

Youth have often developed their own cultures by taking over certain locations and spaces. The young in these books range from the newsboys (actually youth and young men) of David Nasaw’s Children of the City: At Work & at Play , to the youth claiming places to work, consume, play, court girls, and form gangs in Simon Sleight’s Young People and the Shaping of Public Space in Melbourne, 1870–1914 , to Joe Austin’s young graffiti artists in Taking the Train: How Graffiti Art Became a Crisis in New York City . 35 Jason Reid examines a more literal physical space in Get Out of My Room: A History of Teen Bedrooms in America , which includes, of course, ideas about privacy, sex, and technology. 36

The Oxford Handbook of the History of Youth Culture

Inspired by and complementing this wide-ranging and flourishing historiography of youth culture, the authors who contributed to this handbook come out of a number of academic disciplines, although all write with a historic sensibility. Their essays address topics from their particular points of reference and methodologies. Although global in scope, it is not comprehensive. Each author highlights a particular place or time but draws comparisons and contrasts with other locations and periods. Their samples might cover a century or a decade, a specific country or a larger region, or young men or women or both. But each essay is representative in that, despite its necessarily limited temporal and geographical coverage, it offers conclusions useful to understanding other times and places.

The essays can be split into multiple approaches, with most essays fitting into more than one category. The handbook itself is organized into several sections.

Just a few chapters deal with premodern youth, when the institutions created by and for youth did not yet exist; the sources are few; and the perceptions of this troublesome phase of life were so different than in our own time. These essays illustrate how historians have tried to identify the elements of youth culture during the pre- and early modern periods, when the concept of adolescence, although recognized as a biological phase, was not clearly seen as a discrete period during which youth created their own spaces, prerogatives, and traditions. Nevertheless, several threads that would emerge in youth culture—and in the ways that scholars have explored youth culture—are evident and will surface in the essays that compose the bulk of the book.

Perhaps the first hint of a youth culture emerged in the monasteries, cathedral schools, and universities of medieval and early modern Europe. The boys and young men attending these schools created a proto–youth culture based on their self-conscious “performance,” as Andrew Reeves puts it, of masculine traits and values. Reeves shows that the emergence of the Catholic orders of the thirteenth century, and the Protestant reformation of the sixteenth century, offered youth “countercultures” that rejected established male identities and what they believed to be oppressive Catholic institutions, respectively.

Louise J. Wilkinson’s study of youth culture among the European elite from the thirteenth to the mid-seventeenth-centuries describes a phase that sounds a little more like modern youth. Acknowledging that not all historians of the period agree on what “youth” might have meant to people living during this time, she argues that a tiny fraction of the population—males and some females—took on some adult responsibilities; completed training or education in universities, noble households, or royal courts; and had access to economic resources that helped them prepare for adulthood. Most of these youth came from the European economic elite or were headed for membership in the institutional elite. Adriana Benzaquén’s examination of non-elite youth in the premodern West shows that male youth (and very few females) defined and enlivened a culture of their own through rowdiness, sexuality, and rebelliousness, despite the persistent efforts of the Church and civil authorities to control them.

The second grouping of essays focuses on external forces acting on youth and on the ways that youth have engaged those forces: sometimes resisting, sometimes accommodating, but usually finding some sort of middle ground. All have contributed to the development of youth culture in their times and places.

Armed conflict is one of only a few human enterprises in which the boundaries separating youth and adulthood are simultaneously blurred and reinforced. In war youth can be victims and soldiers, heroes and villains, observers and actors. David M. Rosen reveals how youth have interacted with armed conflict in all its complexity, as participating in war becomes a form of coming of age, socialization, and opportunity for self-expression. Moreover, in certain conflicts, such as revolutionary movements, youth become symbols of a future for which they are fighting. In any case, Rosen argues, youth mobilization has been a “relative constant in human history.”

At face value, the institutions and practices of slavery seem as though they should have quashed any attempt to form a youth culture. Yet, using Jamaica as a case study, Colleen A. Vasconcellos declares that youth culture became a “battleground” in which masters, parents, and youth themselves tried to control lives that, although tightly constrained by violence and law, still represented a chance for youth to use various levels of resistance to create a “culture of survival.”

Corrie Decker looks at the ways in which religion—another constant in youthful lives through much of recorded history—can shape a particular kind of youth culture. Although focusing on one place—Zanzibar—and one faith tradition—Islam—her analysis of the tensions caused by modernization, especially in terms of gender roles, can help us understand the process by which youth culture is formed and evolves. As she writes, “religious ideals held singular importance for young people’s understanding of themselves and their relationships with family members and friends.”

James Schmidt examines another point of continuity through the ages, one that both inhibited and enhanced the development of a youth culture: work. Although youth have worked in nearly every society and every epoch, the extent to which work prepares youth for responsible adulthood, or simply exploits their cheap labor, has been the subject of debate since at least the early nineteenth century. Schmidt studies three distinct periods that demonstrate the widely varying attitudes about work from the points of view of both working youth and reform-minded policymakers in the United States and across the globe.

Urban spaces have always provided conditions and opportunities that encouraged the creation of cultures among the youth living in crowded tenements, attending high schools, or working in shops or on street corners. Simon Sleight and Jasper Heeks explore a particular expression of that youth culture: gangs. Although focusing on the English-speaking world between the middle of the nineteenth and middle of the twentieth centuries, their essay shows the ways in which self-conscious choices about style, a sense of uniqueness, a touch of rebellion, and consumerism merged into this most-talked-about and feared form of youth culture.

Sexuality emerges in a number of chapters, but in David Niget’s essay it provides an occasion to study how values and expectations of the larger society can influence youth culture. The “sexual liberation” of the 1960s, which cracked the “moral order” created by the Cold War, reflected youth’s efforts to achieve greater autonomy in politics and in all aspects of their lives.

The handbook’s third section offers case studies on the ways in which youthful self-expression helps young people create their own cultures. Technology has played an important role in this, but so have political institutions created by adults, which youth have adapted for their own purposes, including patterns and cultures of consumption, sexual mores, and religion.

According to Juliane Fürst , the “power” of style in clothes, hair, music, and entertainment reflected youth interests and politics. Concentrating on the Soviet Union in the twentieth century, she argues that the rise of the Soviet Republic, the Cold War and its aftermath, and the globalization of youth culture shaped the sometimes-subversive youth culture as it grew and evolved under Communism.

Mary Clare Martin expands the parameters of “youth” by investigating the ways in which outdoor activities, imaginative play (such as theatricals), and home-produced magazines and newspapers played important roles in the transition from childhood to youth and then on to adulthood. Focusing on Great Britain between 1700 and 1900, she argues that these processes cut across class and gender lines and show that activities instigated by children and youth complemented those initiated by adults; many took place in familial settings where children and youth of all ages frequently played together.

The boarding schools attended between the mid-nineteenth- through the mid-twentieth-centuries by indigenous children and youth—some voluntarily, most involuntarily—were, in fact, intended to quash native culture. Kristine Alexander shows, however, that indigenous youth in the United States and Canada were often able to resist acculturation by forming their own cultures within the schools, often by sustaining language and other elements of their native cultures, but also through such activities as sports and student journalism and publishing.

Elena Jackson Albarrán casts a wide net throughout Latin America to trace the relationship between national governments and political movements and youth cultures. Although leaders from communist regimes, populist movements, dictatorships, and every other point on the political spectrum tried to employ such organizations as Boy Scouts and Girl Guides, youth exchanges, and others to politicize children and youth into specific ideologies, young people often reshaped those organizations to meet their own ideas and “social goals.”

The ways in which youth spend their money has long been recognized as a form of self-expression. Elizabeth Chin explores the ways in which “entrepreneurial selfhood” shapes the choices and aspirations of wealthy Qataris and poor African and Haitian youth. Despite the huge differences in their backgrounds and opportunities, they are connected by the “global reach of neoliberalism and the pressure to develop entrepreneurial selves.”

Although focusing partly on the Middle East since the late nineteenth century, Nazan Maksudyan provides a broad view of the ways in which youth cultures have been influenced by and, in turn, shaped political activism. Reformers and repressers alike have sought to mobilize youth to promote particular points of view, from nationalist movements in the early twentieth century to antiestablishment movements in the 1960s to the recent rise of environmental and other groups.

Highlighting the centrality of sexuality to the ways in which youth have always identified themselves and the larger culture has always sought to define them, Nicholas L. Syrett offers a second chapter on sexuality, this time focusing on the United States. Although the century witnessed major changes in courtship patterns and sexual activity leading toward the “sexual liberation” of both sexes, there remains a significant double standard based on gender, particularly in the ways that some males used sexual conquests to enhance their masculinity even as some women pay the social price of premarital sexual activity.

Although in most cultures religion has come to play a smaller role in the development of youth culture, Dylan Baun suggests that in Lebanon and other parts of the Global South, religious-oriented youth organizations promoted religion, nation, and masculinity—central components of male youth culture in the twentieth century.

The ways that youth cultures have been depicted in the arts and media, and the ways in which youth interact with them, provide a fourth and final major area of inquiry for this collection.

Although images of youth are relatively rare in the visual arts—unlike children, who are plentiful— Ann Barrott Wicks explores several themes that surface in depictions of youth in China. Despite the difficulty of identifying them, representations of youth, like children, expressed family priorities, such as “lineage, moral outlook, political view, power, or wealth.” As such, rather than being realistic portrayals of youth, they became symbols of aspirations.

Like other commercial art forms, literature has always reflected youth culture and been part of society’s efforts to shape its youthful readers. Paul Ringel takes a broad look at American literature for youth from the late eighteenth to the late twentieth centuries. Unlike other popular art forms, he argues, literature did not give up moral instruction to be commercially successful. Even as the plots have expanded to include more adventure and youthful agency, the themes have continued to reinforce the importance of existing institutions and values.

Helle Strandgaard Jensen and Gary Cross show the intersections and divergences in the ways that television and movies have shaped youth identity and created anxiety among adults in the United States and in Scandinavia. They find deep differences in the ways content was created and the ways that youth were involved between the commercially driven model in the United States and the publicly funded processes in Scandinavia.

Stuart R. Poyntz traces youth culture through the production, representation, circulation, and consumption of mainstream and social media, both in the West and, more recently, in emerging societies. Although originating in tightly controlled commercial settings, the expansion of such platforms as YouTube and WeChat offer youth a chance to create their own media culture.

More than two decades ago, Joseph Hawes, a pioneer historian of childhood, declared that “Childhood is where you catch a culture in high relief.” Hawes can be paraphrased in a way that provides a wonderful framing device for the essays in this anthology: Youth culture is where you catch a community in high relief. Studying the history of youth culture reveals the values that are—or are not—most important to a society, and how they are passed from one generation to the next. Youth culture often provides a sampling of the ways in which new ideas and technologies—from politics and sexuality to television and social media—might eventually affect an entire community. And youth culture, if observed closely, is a constant reminder of our own coming of age, with all the anxiety and joy and sense of discovery that brings. Despite the countless variations over time and space, youth culture is one thing experienced by all humans. 37

1.   Mike Brake , Comparative Youth Culture: The Sociology of Youth Cultures and Youth Subcultures in America, Britain and Canada (London: Routledge, 1985), ix .

2. “Introduction,” to “Coming of Age: The Science of Adolescence,” special issue, Nature 554, no. 7693 (2018), https://www.nature.com/collections/vbmfnrsssw , accessed March 30, 2021 .

3.   Joe Austin and Michael Nevin Willard , eds., Generations of Youth: Youth Cultures and History in Twentieth-Century America (New York: New York University Press, 1998), 1 .

4.   Joe Austin , “Youth Culture,” in Encyclopedia of Children and Childhood: In History and Society , vol. 3, ed. Paula S. Fass (New York: Gale, 2004), 910 .

5.   Peter K. Smith , Adolescence: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 1 .

  Smith, Adolescence , provides an excellent, brief discussion of Hall; 12–15.

7. For two examples of excellent overviews of children’s history in which childhood and youth are blended together, see Colin Heywood , A History of Childhood , 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Polity, 2018) , and Steven Mintz , Huck’s Raft (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004) .

8.   Jacqueline V. Lerner and Richard M. Lerner , eds., Adolescence in America: An Encyclopedia (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC Clio, 2001), vol. 2, 810 .

9.   Giovanni Levi and Jean-Claude Schmitt , A History of Young People in the West , 2 vols. (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1997) .

10.   Keith Gildart, Anna Gough-Yates, Sian Lincoln, Bill Osgerby, Lucy Robinson, John Street, et al., eds., Youth Culture and Social Change: Making a Difference by Making a Noise (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), 2 .

11.   Joseph Kett , Rites of Passage: Adolescence in America 1790 to the Present (New York: Basic Books, 1977) .

12.   Grace Palladino , Teenagers: An American History (New York: BasicBooks, 1996), xxi .

13.   Corrine T. Field and Nicholas L. Syrett , eds., Age in America: The Colonial Era to the Present (New York: New York University Press, 2015) .

14.   Richard Ivan Jobs and David Pomfret , Transnational Histories of Youth in the Twentieth Century (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015) .

15.   Victor D. Brooks , Boomers: The Cold War Generation Grows Up (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2009) ; and Paula S. Fass , Children of a New World: Society, Culture, and Globalization (New York: New York University Press, 2007)

16.   Mary E. Odem , Delinquent Daughters: Protecting and Policing Adolescent Female Sexuality in the United States, 1885–1920 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996) ; Tera Eva Agyepong , The Criminalization of Black Children: Race, Gender and Delinquency in Chicago’s Juvenile Justice System, 1899–1945 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2018) ; and Jenifer S. Light , States of Childhood: From the Junior Republic to the American Republic, 1895–1945 (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2020) .

17.   Sayaka Chatani , Nation-Empire: Ideology and Rural Youth Mobilization in Japan and Its Colonies (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2018) ; Sian Edwards , Youth Movements, Citizenship and the English Countryside: Creating Good Citizens, 1930–1960 (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018) ; and Kristine Alexander , Guiding Modern Girls: Girlhood, Empire, and Internationalism in the 1920s and 1930s (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2017) .

18.   James Schmidt , Industrial Violence and the Legal Origins of Child Labor (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010) .

19.   Elizabeth Chin , Purchasing Power: Black Kids and American Consumer Culture (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001) .

20.   David Rosen , Child Soldiers in the Western Imagination: From Patriots to Victims (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2015) ; and Armies of the Young: Child Soldiers in War and Terrorism (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2005) .

21.   Nazan Maksudyan , Ottoman Children & Youth during World War I (New York: Syracuse University Press, 2019) ; James Marten , The Children’s Civil War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998) ; Victoria Sherrow , Encyclopedia of Youth and War: Young People as Participants and Victims (Phoenix, AZ: Oryx Press, 2000) .

22.   Mark Roseman , Generations in Conflict: Youth Revolt and Generation Formation in Germany, 1770–1968 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995) .

23.   Clive Glaser , Bo-tsotsi: The Youth Gangs of Soweto, 1935–1976 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000) .

24.   Louie Dean Valencia-García , Antiauthoritarian Youth Culture in Francoist Spain: Clashing with Fascism (London: Bloomsbury, 2018) ; and Anne Luke , Youth and the Cuban Revolution: Youth and Politics in 1960s Cuba (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2018) .

25.   Valeria Manzano , The Age of Youth in Argentina: Culture, Politics, & Sexuality from Peron to Videla (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2014) .

26.   Gael Graham , Young Activists: American High School Students in the Age of Protest (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2006) ; Pieter Dhondt and Elizabethanne Boran , eds., Student Revolt, City and Society in Europe Begin the Middle Ages: From the Middle Ages to the Present (New York: Routledge, 2018) .

27.   Sherrie Inness , Delinquents and Debutantes: Twentieth-Century American Girls’ Culture (New York: New York University Press, 1998) .

28.   Abosede George , Making Modern Girls: A History of Girlhood, Labor, and Social Development (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2014) .

29.   Ann Kordas , Female Adolescent Sexuality in the United States, 1850–1965 (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2019) , and Nicholas L. Syrett , American Child Bride: A History of Minors and Marriage in the United States (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2016) .

30.   Eleanor O’Leary , Youth and Popular Culture in 1950s Ireland (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2018) .

31.   Gary S. Cross , Machines of Youth: America’s Car Obsession (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018) .

32.   Devorah Levenson , Adiós Niño: The Gangs of Guatemala City and the Politics of Death (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2013) .

33.   Juliane Fürst , Stalin’s Last Generation: Soviet Post-War Youth and the Emergence of Mature Socialism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010) .

34.   Paul Clark , Youth Culture in China: From Red Guards to Netizens (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012) .

35.   David Nasaw’s   Children of the City: At Work & at Play (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985) ; Simon Sleight’s   Young People and the Shaping of Public Space in Melbourne, 1870–1914 (London: Routledge, 2013) ; and Joe Austin , Taking the Train: How Graffiti Art Became a Crisis in New York City (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002) .

36.   Jason Reid , Get Out of My Room: A History of Teen Bedrooms in America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017) .

37.   Dale Russokoff , “On Campus, It’s the Children’s Hour,” Washington Post , November 13, 1998 https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1998/11/13/on-campus-its-the-childrens-hour/a3d0ee1f-dac7-4543-80db-a95eb07ce215/ , accessed December 19, 2022 .

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The concerns and challenges of being a U.S. teen: What the data show

American teens have a lot on their minds. Substantial shares point to anxiety and depression, bullying, and drug and alcohol use (and abuse) as major problems among people their age, according to a new Pew Research Center survey of youth ages 13 to 17.

How common are these and other experiences among U.S. teens? We reviewed the most recent available data from government and academic researchers to find out:

Anxiety and depression

Serious mental stress is a fact of life for many American teens. In the new survey, seven-in-ten teens say anxiety and depression are major problems among their peers – a concern that’s shared by mental health researchers and clinicians .

Data on the prevalence of anxiety disorders is hard to come by among teens specifically. But 7% of youths ages 3 to 17  had such a condition in 2016-17, according to the National Survey of Children’s Health. Serious depression, meanwhile, has been on the rise among teens for the past several years, according to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health , an ongoing project of the federal Department of Health and Human Services. In 2016, 12.8% of youths ages 12 to 17 had experienced a major depressive episode in the past year, up from 8% as recently as 2010. For 9% of youths in 2016, their depression caused severe impairment. Fewer than half of youths with major depression said they’d been treated for it in the past year.

Alcohol and drugs

Anxiety and depression aren’t the only concerns for U.S. teens. Smaller though still substantial shares of teens in the Pew Research Center survey say drug addiction (51%) and alcohol consumption (45%) are major problems among their peers.

Fewer teens these days are drinking alcohol, according to the University of Michigan’s long-running Monitoring the Future survey, which tracks attitudes, values and behaviors of American youths, including their use of various legal and illicit substances. Last year, 30.2% of 12th-graders and 18.6% of 10th-graders had consumed alcohol in the past 30 days. Two decades earlier, those figures were 52% and 38.8%, respectively. (In the Center’s new survey, 16% of teens said they felt “a lot” or “some” pressure to drink alcohol.)

But the Michigan survey also found that, despite some ups and downs, use of marijuana (or its derivative, hashish) among 12th-graders is nearly as high as it was two decades ago. Last year, 22.2% reported using marijuana in the past 30 days, versus 22.8% in 1998. Past-month marijuana use among 10th-graders has declined a bit over that same period, from 18.7% to 16.7%, but is up from 14% in 2016.

Marijuana was by far the most commonly used drug among teens last year, as it has been for decades.  While more than 10% of 12th-graders reported using some illicit drug other than marijuana in the late 1990s and early 2000s, that figure had fallen to 6% by last year.

The Michigan researchers noted that vaping, of both nicotine and marijuana, has jumped in popularity in the past few years. In 2018, 20.9% of 12th-graders and 16.1% of 10th-graders reported vaping nicotine in the past 30 days, about double the 2017 levels. By comparison, only 7.6% of 12th-graders and 4.2% of 10th-graders had smoked a cigarette in that time. And 7.5% of 12-graders and 7% of 10th-graders said they’d vaped marijuana within the past month, up from 4.9% and 4.3%, respectively, in 2017.

Bullying and cyberbullying

Issues of personal safety also are on U.S. teens’ minds. The Center’s survey found that 55% of teens said bullying was a major problem among their peers, while a third called gangs a major problem.

Bullying rates have held steady in recent years, according to a survey of youth risk behaviors by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. About a fifth of high school students (19% in 2017) reported being bullied on school property in the past 12 months, and 14.9% said they’d experienced cyberbullying (via texts, social media or other digital means) in the previous year. In both cases, girls, younger students, and students who identified as gay, lesbian or bisexual were more likely to say they’d been bullied.

As for gangs, the share of students ages 12 to 18 who said gangs were present at their school fell from 20.1% in 2001 to 10.7% in 2015, according to a report on school safety from the federal departments of Education and Justice. Black and Hispanic students, as well as students in urban schools, were most likely to report the presence of gangs at school, but even for those groups the shares reporting this fell sharply between 2001 and 2015, the most recent year for which data are available.

Four-in-ten teens say poverty is a major problem among their peers, according to the Center’s new report. In 2017, about 2.2 million 15- to 17-year-olds (17.6%) were living in households with incomes below the poverty level – up from 16.3% in 2009, but down from 18.9% in 2014, based on our analysis of Census data. Black teens were more than twice as likely as white teens to live in households below the poverty level (30.4% versus 14%); however, the share of white teens in below-poverty-level households had risen from 2009 (when it was 12.1%), while the share of black teens in below-poverty-level households was almost unchanged.

Teen pregnancy

Far fewer U.S. teens are having to juggle adolescence and parenthood, as teen births continue their long-term decline . Among 15- to 19-year-olds, the overall birthrate has fallen by two-thirds since 1991 – from 61.8 live births per 1,000 women to 20.3 in 2016 , according to the CDC. All racial and ethnic groups have witnessed teen-birthrate declines of varying degrees: Among non-Hispanic blacks, for example, the rate fell from 118.2 live births per 1,000 in 1991 to 29.3 in 2016 .

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Drew DeSilver is a senior writer at Pew Research Center .

Teens and Video Games Today

As biden and trump seek reelection, who are the oldest – and youngest – current world leaders, how teens and parents approach screen time, who are you the art and science of measuring identity, u.s. centenarian population is projected to quadruple over the next 30 years, most popular.

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‘Speaking of Youth Culture’: A Critical Analysis of Contemporary Youth Cultural Practice

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• Andy Bennett  

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For a number of years, theorists have suggested that the term ‘youth culture’ corresponds with particularized forms of youth cultural practice clustered around the more spectacular manifestation of the consumption of music, style, and associated objects, images, and texts. However, such a focus serves to close off any discussion of ‘ordinary’ youth, that is, those young people who are not obvious, card-carrying members of style-based youth cultures. With the increasing turn in academic research to issues of youth leisure and lifestyle in more mundane contexts, combined with a growing body of work focusing on youth’s online practices, questions now need to be asked about the value, and validity, of focusing on ‘youth culture’ as this term has hitherto been defined and applied in sociology, cultural/media studies, and other academic disciplines interested in the cultural practices of youth. Aligned with this is the blurring now evident between youth culture as an age-specific practice and as a series of discourses through which individuals who are far beyond any categorization as ‘youth’ based on age continue to invest in ‘youth cultural’ identities. For example, many adults identify as punks, hard-core, or dance music fans, while simultaneously engaging with adult responsibilities and leading adult lives. This chapter will examine these and other challenges to our understanding of the term ‘youth culture’ and consider whether the latter continues to be a valid conceptual and analytical category.

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Youth and Play: Identity, Politics, and Lifestyle

Social Transformation of Youth and Youth Cultures in Europe: Trends, Theories and the Relevance of Youth Cultural Scenes

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Bennett, A. (2015). ‘Speaking of Youth Culture’: A Critical Analysis of Contemporary Youth Cultural Practice. In: Woodman, D., Bennett, A. (eds) Youth Cultures, Transitions, and Generations. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137377234_4

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Youth Culture   /   Spring 2009   /    Bibliographic Review

A bibliographic essay on youth culture, what is “youth”, emily o. gravett.

Youth, large, lusty, loving—youth, full of grace, force, fascination. —Walt Whitman 1 1 x Walt Whitman, “Youth, Day, Old Age and Night,” Leaves of Grass (Boston: Small, Maynard, 1905) 180.

One of the initial difficulties in mapping out a bibliographic terrain on youth culture is simply ascertaining what that terrain might be, beyond the impression that a line from a Whitman poem leaves. What is “youth”? Are such individuals children? Do they represent innocence, curiosity, naivete, or gullibility? Do youths qualify as adolescents or teenagers, on the cusp of adulthood, experimenting and experiencing, forging new identities for themselves? Or are they actually young adults, feet firmly planted in the world of responsibility and maturity?

First, it is important to remember that “youth” is a social construction, largely shaped by social and economic factors, and that, as Shirley Steinberg notes in the preface to Contemporary Youth Culture , the “notion of youth as we know it has not existed very long in historical time.” Indeed, for much of recorded history, adulthood began at the point we now think of as the years of adolescence, puberty, and “teenagehood”; younger members of society were simply viewed as miniature adults or “adults in training,” to borrow Stephen Mintz’s phrase from Huck’s Raft . Cultural issues that may have been pertinent only to young people or that may have required special treatment when studying this sector of society would have previously remained unaddressed. For this reason (and because the field, and its current data, changes so quickly), most of the texts listed below are quite recent.

While Picasso once said that “youth has no age,” modern institutions are prepared to offer firmer interpretations of this ambiguous term. For instance, while the United Nations defines this period as the years between 15 and 24 and the World Bank describes the category as that “time in a person’s life between childhood and adulthood” (also between 15 and 25), other institutions locate the term a bit earlier. 2 2 x For the UN definition, see http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/unyin/qanda.htm; for the World Bank definition, see http://youthink.worldbank.org/glossary.php. See the U.S. Department of Transportation’s definition, which designates “youth” as a person under 21 years of age: http://www.nhtsa.gov/people/ injury/research/FewerYoungDrivers/ii_ _data.htm. This bibliography also focuses on an earlier age range, situating the subject of study in the adolescent years.

Because youth is a constructed category that intersects with so many other aspects of life, the selection of topics to include in this bibliographic essay proved to be a challenge. Age always acts as a sort of horizontal cross-section of society, providing ranges to which many different subcategories could easily be applied. Everyone spends time in youth, and inevitably passes through it, whether they want to or not. Because of how comprehensive the subject of “youth” is, therefore, the sections below (and the texts included therein) are necessarily partial and selective. They focus on some of the most salient issues in contemporary youth culture studies, while acknowledging that many other directions were not chosen.

Reprinted from The Hedgehog Review 11.1 (Spring 2009). This essay may not be resold, reprinted, or redistributed for compensation of any kind without prior written permission. Please contact The Hedgehog Review for further details.

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Article contents

Youth and media culture.

• Stuart R. Poyntz Stuart R. Poyntz Simon Fraser University
•  and  Jennesia Pedri Jennesia Pedri Simon Fraser University
• https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190264093.013.75
• Published online: 24 January 2018

Media in the 21st century are changing when, where, what, and how young people learn. Some educators, youth researchers, and parents lament this reality; but youth, media culture, and learning nevertheless remain entangled in a rich set of relationships today. These relationships and the anxieties they produce are not new; they echo worries about the consequences of young people’s media attachments that have been around for decades.

These anxieties first appeared in response to the fear that violence, vulgarity, and sexual desire in early popular culture was thought to pose to culture. Others, however, believed that media could be repurposed to have a broader educational impact. This sentiment crept into educational discourses throughout the 1960s in a way that would shift thinking about youth, media culture, and education. For example, it shaped the development of television shows such as Sesame Street as a kind of learning portal. In addition to the idea that youth can learn from the media, educators and activists have also turned to media education as a more direct intervention. Media education addresses how various media operate in and through particular institutions, technologies, texts, and audiences in an effort to affect how young people learn and engage with media culture. These developments have been enhanced by a growing interest in a broad project of literacy. By the 1990s and 2000s, media production became a common feature in media education practices because it was thought to enable young people to learn by doing , rather than just by analyzing or reading texts. This was enabled by the emergence of new digital media technologies that prioritize user participation.

As we have come to read and write media differently in a digital era, however, a new set of problems have arisen that affect how media cultures are understood in relation to learning. Among these issues is how a participatory turn in media culture allows others, including corporations, governments, and predatory individuals, to monitor, survey, coordinate, and guide our activities as never before. Critical media literacy education addresses this context and continues to provide a framework to address the future of youth, media culture and learning.

• media culture
• media literacy
• consumer culture

Introduction

It would be absurd for teenagers today to forgo the Internet as a resource for schoolwork and learning experiences of all sorts. Whether to research an essay, acquire new skills, find an expert, watch a video clip, or contribute a blog post, the Internet is often the first source that students turn to pick up new information, to access useful networks, or to find resources that they need to accomplish whatever it is they want to learn. And why wouldn’t it be? The Internet is now a digital learning economy populated by YouTube and Vimeo channels, social media sites like Wikipedia, software and learning games, library data archives, learning television shows, documentaries, massive open online courses (MOOCs), and assorted other resources that are changing when, where, what, and how young people learn. Some educators, youth researchers, and parents lament this reality (Bakan, 2011 ; Louv, 2008 ), but today’s youth, media culture, and learning are nevertheless entangled in a rich set of relationships.

These relationships and the anxieties that they produce are not new. Since the earliest decades of the 20th century , learning dynamics have been thought to be integral to the way youth and media cultures weave together. But these relationships are vexed; the connections among youth lives, media, and education are sites of tremendous anxiety and concern around the world. Yet learning is now such a profoundly mediated experience that traditional dichotomies separating education and entertainment, work and leisure, expert and nonexpert, and pedagogy and everyday life are no longer helpful.

In this article, we examine this context and address how relations among youth, media culture, and learning have been understood since the turn of the last century. Our story begins in the Anglo-American world, but it has quickly become global as media and youth cultures expand around the world. We highlight the anxieties and panics common to thinking about media in young people’s lives and indicate where and how the mediation of youth learning has been taken up to support progressive ends through the development of novel resources, institutions, and pedagogies that nurture young people’s agency, identities, and citizenship. Our survey examines how specific media forms, including film, television, and Web design, have been calibrated to support young people’s learning through the media, and the development of media literacy education to promote critical learning about the media. To conclude, we detail three major problematics that continue to shape the relationships among youth, media culture, and learning.

Teen Screens

Teenagers graduating from high school in 2017 across the global North and much of the global South have always known smart mobile devices, social media, and YouTube, near-constant data surveillance, the ability to Google facts as needed, and texting, messaging, and posting as part of the regular rhythms of daily life. While many statistics have been collected over the years about the time that adolescents spend immersed in media, the general impression is that most children and youth are more involved than ever with media technologies and content. A new area of children’s and youth media has emerged in recent years. It is a world where the Internet, mobile devices, and “television,” now consumed across multiple platforms, compete for attention alongside older media (i.e., radio, appointment television, and movies). Various studies conducted in recent years have sought to understand these developments, with particular attention given to investigating the role of the Internet, social media, smartphones, and mobile technologies in young people’s lives. Regular television and radio continue to hold a place among teenagers’ media choices, and along with mobile phones, they are part of a primary youth media ecology in the global North and South (Common Sense Media, 2015 ; Livingstone et al., 2014 ).

Today, however, one can no longer assume that television programming is viewed on a television set via regularly scheduled broadcasting. While watching television continues to make up a significant portion of teens’ overall media usage in the United States, Canada, Europe, and other regions (Common Sense Media, 2015 ; Caron et al., 2012 ; Livingstone et al., 2014 ), smart TVs, on-demand services, mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets, and video-streaming services such as YouTube, Netflix, and Baidu have redefined what it means to “watch television.” Because the options for consuming content now exist simultaneously across many platforms, there is also a significant amount of diversity in young people’s preferences and patterns of use. Music, for example, remains the most preferred medium among teens, but among only about one-third of teens (30%). After music, video games are a favorite among 15%, reading among 10%, social media among 10%, and television among 9%. The fragmenting of tastes and preferences is notable, with no single medium standing out above all. Added to this is the diversity of ways that teens can engage in these activities, as well as differences in relation to class, gender, and race/ethnicity (Common Sense Media, 2015 ). The point to be made is that changes in how young people spend time with the media are taking place as part of longer-term trends in how media is knit into adolescents’ lives.

At the center of this trend is the fact that young people simply have more media options—both in terms of the media technology used and the content available—and these options are tightly wedded to the daily lives of children and youth. For instance, 57% of teens in the United States have a television set in their bedroom, 47% have a laptop computer, 37% have a tablet, and 31% have a portable game player (Common Sense Media, 2015 ). Sonia Livingstone ( 2009 , p. 21) identifies these technologies with “screen-rich ‘bedroom cultures,’” which have become the norm for kids in countries across the global North. Adding to and fostering media use in screen-rich bedroom cultures is the fact that two-thirds of teens (67%) now own their own smartphone, on which they talk and text, access social media (40%), and listen to music in daily patterns and rhythms (Common Sense Media, 2015 ).

With all these media options available, it is not surprising that teens are more likely than in the past to be media multitaskers, able to pack more media into an hour of consumption than was possible in previous generations. Young people in the United States spend approximately nine hours a day consuming media, for example, but they consume more than one medium at a time. In fact, 50% of teens say that they watch television while doing homework, and 51% say that they use social media some of or all the time when they do homework (Common Sense Media, 2015 ). The typical teenage user today is someone doing homework while watching Netflix, listening to music, and responding to the occasional text, Snapchat, or Instagram message. In this way, screens do not go away as much as they have become environmental in youths’ lives.

This story casts a pall over contemporary youth cultures for some. It is as though the media machine is never absent from youths’ time and space. It is attached to and formative of the worlds of young people, and it would appear to allow for no distance or time away from screens and representations in everyday life. Concerns of this sort are not new. They echo panicked worries about the consequences of young people’s media attachments that have existed for decades. To make sense of these worries, it is helpful to begin with the history of youth and youth culture, terms which are not exclusive to, but find an early emergence in, the West.

Youth as a Distinct Life Stage

The concept of youth can feel as though it has been with us for centuries. But while the age of transition between childhood and adulthood exists across societies, the idea that this period is associated with a particular group of people—youth—and the cultures that they partake in is a recent phenomenon. Andy Bennett (Bennett & Kahn-Harris, 2004 ) tells us that historical instances of what we now call “youth culture” can be traced back to the 17th and 18th centuries to a group of London apprentices whose dress, drinking, and riotous conduct set them apart from others. Early youth cultures can also be linked to stylistically distinct groups of young workers in northern England in the late 19th century , and to what Timothy Gilfoyle ( 2004 , p. 870) calls the “street rats and gutter snipes” of New York City, who developed oppositional subcultures to challenge adult authority from the mid- 19th century onward. But it wasn’t until the turn of the last century that a modern notion of youth took hold. Schooling would be key to this development.

Publicly funded or supported schooling on a mass scale was regularized in the United Kingdom by the late 19th century and had been ongoing in the United States in the post–Civil War period (i.e., after 1860–1865 ). Public schools developed around the same time in French and English Canada, and slightly later ( 1880 ) in Australia. The practice of batching students into groups by age contributed to the emergence of a new subject position linked to the teen years. If schools started this process, worries about delinquency served to consolidate the notion of youth as a stage of development. Juvenile crime in particular, initially considered primarily an affliction of poor and working-class youth, became generalized by the 1890s as juvenile delinquency and applied to all youth (Gillis, 1974 ). The fear of rising crime rates led to legislative action and the expansion of welfare provisions in the United Kingdom and the United States. The resulting system of social services addressed adolescents as a particular age cohort with specific interests and needs (Osgerby, 2004 ).

By the early 20th century , in psychology and pedagogy studies, G. Stanley Hall’s seminal text, Adolescence: Its Psychology and Its Relations to Physiology, Anthropology, Sociology, Sex, Crime, and Education (Hall, 1904 ) addressed this stage of life as a specific period of development associated with tumult and uncertainty—the sturm and drang of adolescence. Thinking of adolescence in these terms reflected the worries of legislators, educators, and reformers, but it was not until the early 1940s that the notion of youth culture was coined by the American sociologist Talcott Parsons ( 1942 ). Parsons used the phrase youth culture to name a specific generational cohort experiencing distinct processes of socialization that set them apart from others. Fears about young people’s maladjustment to war during the 1940s continued to feed worries about youth delinquency (Gilbert, 1986 ). But more significantly, a series of changes in the social, economic, and cultural lives of adolescents that began prior to World War II and consolidated during the postwar years proved essential to marking out a modern notion of youth culture.

Media and consumer markets were integral to these changes. From the start of the 20th century , mass media were among the key developments shaping youth culture and learning. This was evident in the United Kingdom and the United States, where industrialization and mass consumer markets emerged earlier than in other nations. This reveals something about the characteristics of youth culture; in many ways, youth cultures (dance, music, fashion, sports, etc.) have always been mediated and shaped by the effects of mass production, wage labor relations, and urban experience. In this way, youth and modernity are tightly connected. Modernity is linked to experiences of change driven by urbanization and migration, the expansion of mass, factory-based production, and the proliferation of images and consumerism as normative conditions of everyday life. Since the late 19th and early 20th centuries , youth have been harbingers of these developments and have often been considered the archetypical subject of modernity.

Early Mass Media and Youth Audiences

The tendency to link youth with the changes characterized by modernity has produced a history of anxieties where the relationships among youth, media culture, and education are concerned. These anxieties first appeared in response to the violence, vulgarity, and sexual desire in early popular culture (e.g., penny novels and mass sporting events, like Major League Baseball), which many educators thought posed an imminent threat to culture. The emergence of the cinema at the turn of the 20th century epitomized these fears by forever changing the nature of the intergenerational transmission of knowledge. Movies can be understood with little tuition, meaning that they can fix the attention of all age groups on the screen, a development that proved particularly attractive to children. Early cinematographers were able to stage dramas on a scale unheard of in live theater, to command an audience much greater than literature could, and hence to shape the popular imagination as never before. But because movies work through the language of images, they were thought to create highly emotional—and intellectually deceitful—effects. Images were thought to leave audiences (particularly young people) in something like a trance, a state of passivity that left adolescents open to forms of manipulation that were morally suspect and politically dangerous.

These fears were common, and yet for some, the very fact that movies could reach larger and more diverse audiences—including women and the working class—meant that the medium held a promise for learning that couldn’t be ignored. Such responses not only reflected the sentiment of early film boosters, but they also were part of a more nuanced sense of how life—including the experience of learning—was changing in the 20th century . In a remarkable series of essays, Walter Benjamin ( 1969 , 1970 ) argued thus, suggesting that movies could widen audiences’ horizons through the unique technology of the shot, the power of editing, and sound design. These tools allowed people to see and experience distant lands, other times, and new and fantastical experiences in live-action and highly structured narrative formats. Charlie Chaplin’s The Gold Rush ( 1925 ), MGM’s The Great Ziegfeld ( 1936 ), and Victor Fleming’s The Wizard of Oz ( 1939 ) exemplified film’s early appeal because they seemed capable of helping people to dream and escape vicariously from everyday experiences to imagine a different (and perhaps better) world.

Not surprisingly, Benjamin’s was a minority view in the mid- 20th century . Far more common were fears that modern media would serve to undermine how young people learn proper culture—meaning good books and the right music and stories thought to foster a vibrant and meaningful cultural life. Benjamin’s colleagues in the Frankfurt School (so-called for the city where their work began), Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, were especially influential in this regard. Drawing from their experiences with the role that media (i.e., radio and film) played in the rise of fascism in Germany, as well as their disappointment with the quality of early popular music and Hollywood movies, Adorno and Horkheimer ( 1972 ) argued that the culture industries (the artifacts and experiences produced by the corporations who sold or transmitted film, popular music, magazines, and radio) threatened to undermine rich and autonomous forms of cultural life. They meant that movies, advertisements, and eventually television were signs of the commodification of culture, an indication that culture itself—epitomized by the rich European traditions of classical music, painting, and literature—was being reduced to a sellable thing, a commodity just like any other in capitalist societies.

In this context, Adorno and Horkheimer suggested that culture no longer works to promote critical and autonomous thought; rather, the culture industries promote sameness, a uniformity of experience and a standardization of life that at best serve to distract people from significant issues of the day. Through childish illusion and fantasy, the culture industries produce false consciousness, a form of thinking that misinterprets the real issues that matter in our lives, leaving young people and adults blissfully unaware of key issues of common concern that demand our attention and action. For those suspicious of these observations, they are worth considering in light of Donald Trump’s election as president of the United States in 2016 . Since the election, it has become clear that distraction (by “fake news,” for instance) and illusion (facilitated at least in part by foreign manipulation of social media) played a vital role in the campaign and Trump’s eventual election.

Youth Markets and Media Panics

The concerns of the Frankfurt School found a receptive audience in the second half of the 20th century . The postwar decades mark an especially significant period of expansion in youth markets and youth culture in the West (Osgerby, 2004 ). Increasing birth rates during the postwar baby boom fueled the expansion of youth markets, as did the extension of mass schooling, which “accentuated youth as a generational cohort” (Osgerby, 2004 , p. 16). Complicating this were the emergence of television and an intensely organized effort to shape and calibrate the spending power of young people in the service of conspicuous consumer consumption.

First introduced to the general public at the 1939 New York World’s Fair, in the postwar years, television became a new kind of hearth around which parents and children would gather. In the United States, television was initially thought potentially promising for children’s education. The small screen represented the promise and possibility of modern times. Not surprisingly, this sentiment was short lived (Goldfarb, 2002 ). By the late 1950s and 1960s, it became apparent that “most children’s programming was produced with the size of the audience rather than children’s education in mind. [As a result,] television [became] the source of anxious discourses about mesmerized children entranced by mindless cartoons, punctuated by messages from paying sponsors” (Kline, Stewart, & Murphy, 2006 , p. 132; also see Kline, 1993 ). These worries aligned with increasing concerns about the dangerous and morally compromising influence of rock ‘n’ roll, popular magazines, early celebrities, and movies in youths’ lives, and what resulted was a media panic that harkened back to the earliest days of mass media.

Most often characterized by exaggerated claims about the impact of popular commercial culture on children and youth, media panics are a special kind of moral frenzy over the influence of media on vulnerable populations (Drotner, 1999 ). Stanley Cohen’s groundbreaking study of the mods and rockers, Folk Devils and Moral Panics , suggests that emerging youth cultures became the most recurrent type of moral panic in Britain after World War II (Cohen, 1972 ). He reveals how youth are positioned in postwar industrial societies as a source of fear and often misplaced anxiety. His study has been criticized for simplifying the meaning of the term moral panics and for underestimating how complex media environments can shape them (McRobbie & Thornton, 1995 ); nonetheless, his work draws attention to the ways that overwrought fears of youth and media culture can come to act as stand-ins for larger social anxieties. In the process, youth and youth culture become scapegoats. Media panics don’t offer helpful tools for explaining social change, in other words, as much as they distract parents, educators, and others from making sense of the formative conditions shaping young lives.

Media panics continued to appear throughout the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s. In the United Kingdom, for instance, media panics arose around “video nasties” and the risks that horror films and sexually explicit material were thought to pose for youth (Oswell, 2002 ). Related concerns arose in the 1990s regarding video games and violence, the presence of dangerous and disturbing messages buried in the lyrics of popular music, and fears about fantasy board games, including Dungeons and Dragons . More recently, anxieties have come to the fore having to do with the role of the Internet and social media in young people’s lives, including fears of “stranger danger,” cyberbullying, and the likelihood that teenagers are sharing explicit images of themselves and others online (i.e., “sexting”).

We note these fears not to dismiss them outright, but to draw attention to the history of anxieties that have characterized worries about youth and media culture. Such concerns are often underpinned by the view that young people are vulnerable and highly impressionable persons unable to manage the impact of media in their lives. Indeed, the wariness of public officials, parents, health practitioners, and educators toward media is still today often underpinned by deeper commitments to a sense that youth is a time of innocence and hope. Whether understood biologically as a period of maturation toward adulthood or as a distinct generational cohort characterized by shared processes of socialization, adolescence has long been a repository for both the greatest hopes and fears of a nation. While youth are often considered a risk to society and the reproduction of social order, they also have long been framed in connection with the future health and well-being of nations. The result is that youth often occupy a contradictory space in relation to media culture (Drotner, 1999 ).

On the one hand, popular media culture has been a vital resource through which youth communities, subcultures, and generations have defined themselves, their desires, and their hopes and dreams for decades. This continues to be reflected in the dynamic ways that youth are using and creating digital media to shape their lives and address matters of common concern in societies around the world. We take up these developments in more detail later in this article.

On the other hand, it is evident that consumerism and commercial media culture remain sources of tremendous anxiety. The media content that teenagers access—beyond the watchful eye of guardians and educators—and the way that they learn about gender, race, sexuality, the environment, and other issues continues to raise alarms. From at least the 1980s onward, the quantity of media culture has expanded around the world, meaning that more advertising, more commercial screens, more branded experiences of play, and more intensive systems of corporate surveillance and tracking have become common features of youths’ lives.

The digitization of media and the emergence of more dynamic, participatory media cultures (Jenkins, 2006 ) are crucial to this development, as we explain in the final section. But changes in media concentration and the development of vast media conglomerates—including Google, Disney, Time Warner, Viacom, Baidu, and News Corp—that produce media commodities and experiences for various national markets have been instrumental in shaping the tensions and impact of media culture on youth lives. It is just these sorts of developments that have long raised the concerns of educators and others who remain deeply ambivalent about the relationship between consumer media and young people. The consequence of this ambivalence has led some educators to argue that media, including film, television, and the Internet, can have a broader educational impact, particularly given their ability to reach large audiences. In the following sections, we take up this possibility and address how learning media and media education have been developed to create forms of public pedagogy with the potential to enrich young people’s learning.

The Media as Learning Portal

While the ties between consumer culture and media continue to raise worries, television’s reach and increasingly central role in families have drawn the attention of educators who argue that it can be repurposed to have a broader educational impact. This sentiment crept into educational discourses throughout the 1960s in a way that would shift the thinking about youth, media culture, and education. Educational media programming was not a new idea in the decade so much as it extended and contributed to an older tradition of using stories and folk tales to teach moral lessons to children (Singhal & Rogers, 1999 ). What was different in the 1960s (and today), however, is that this work wasn’t (and isn’t) being undertaken around the local hearth; it was (and is) developing through the conventions, institutions, and practices of a highly complex media system.

Using this media system to create successful learning resources has been a delicate business. The idea of using radio and documentary movies as informational (and often didactic) educational tools to teach kids social studies, geography, and history has a long tradition in national schooling systems. More dynamic forms of educational programming came online in the late 1960s, led by a then-remarkable new program called Sesame Street that came to epitomize these developments.

Created by the Children’s Television Workshop (CTW) in 1969 as part of the so-called American war on poverty (Spring, 2009 ), Sesame Street helped launch the Public Broadcasting System (PBS) in the United States as a counterweight to the influence of commercial programming in the American mediasphere. Originated by Joan Ganz Cooney and Lloyd Morrisett, Sesame Street drew lessons from early children’s television programming in countries like Canada and the United Kingdom (Coulter, 2016 ) and set out to promote peaceful multicultural societies and to provide inner-city kids with a head start in developing literacy and numeracy skills. To do this, the now well-known strategy was to adapt conventions of commercial media—muppets, music, animation, live-action film, special effects, and visits from celebrities—to deliver mass literacy to home audiences.

By the late 1990s, approximately 40% of all American children aged 2–5 watched Sesame Street weekly. From the 2000s onward, the reach of Sesame Street became global, extending to 120 countries and including many foreign-language adaptations developed with local educators in Bangladesh, China, Egypt, Germany, Israel, Palestine, Russia, South Africa, and many other places (Spring, 2009 ). With global audiences, the show’s storylines and issues addressed have also changed. Sesame Street is now engaged in raising awareness and understanding about a host of global issues. For instance, in the South African coproduction, a muppet named Kami who is HIV-positive was introduced in response to the large numbers of South African children who are HIV-positive. Through Kami and related stories, the goal of the program is “to create tolerance of HIV-positive children and disseminate information about the disease” across South Africa” (Spring, 2009 , p. 80). Meanwhile in Bangladesh, the local version of Sesame Street has been used to promote “equality between social classes, genders, castes, and religions” (Spring, 2009 , p. 80).

This success led to the development of other CTW educational programs, including The Electric Company , 3-2-1 Contact , and Square One TV . A conviction that electronic and digital media can support progressive educational goals has also fueled the development of a learning media industry over the past two decades. We are in fact witnessing a veritable explosion of educational media, including an array of educational learning software ( Math Blaster , JumpStart , Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego , etc.) designed to improve older students’ competencies (Ito, 2008 ). Some of this media may be useful, but evidence about the learning value of many of these programs remains scant (Barbaro, 2008 ). On the other hand, at least three other forms of educational media have continued to develop, and in ways that can be beneficial to youth learning. They include public service announcements (PSAs), entertainment education, and cultural jamming.

Public Service Announcements

Public service announcements (PSAs) are now ubiquitous. They can be seen in schools, on television, online, and at commercial film screenings. They address issues ranging from the dangers of smoking, alcohol, and drugs, to concerns about youth driving habits, bullying in schools, what children are eating, and a host of other media-related social causes and health crises. At root, the strategy with PSAs isn’t altogether different from that of learning-oriented programs like Sesame Street . While the broad research and learning agenda that informs Sesame Street isn’t often replicated with PSAs, the idea that commercial media language can be repurposed to influence behavior is common to both formats.

PSAs use the language of advertising—quick, emotional, and sometimes funny messages that emphasize hard-hitting lessons—and the practices of branding to alter behavior or encourage youth to get involved with issues shaping their lives. Studies suggest these strategies can be remarkably effective for influencing young people’s behavior (Montgomery, 2007 , 2008 ; Wakefield, Flay, Nichter, & Giovino, 2003 ; Singhal & Rogers, 1999 ; DeJong & Winston, 1990 ). Wakefield et al. ( 2003 ) for instance, review a number of studies that show antismoking PSAs are useful tools for changing kids’ attitudes, especially when combined with school support programs that help youth to quit or avoid smoking.

These successes are important, of course, because they attest to the ways that learning through media can be nurtured in creative, dynamic, and effective ways, even in a time when media saturation is common in youth lives. A cautionary note is nonetheless in order. PSAs have become so common today that companies are using PSA-like formats to promote everything from cars to personal care products. The personal health products company, Unilever Inc., for instance, has been especially successful with their Dove “Campaign for Real Beauty.” Cutting across online platforms as well as television and film, the campaign has foregrounded the way that beauty ads create unrealistic notions about women’s body images. This is an important message, to be sure; however, while this campaign was underway, Unilever launched an equally provocative campaign for AXE body products for men. What stood out in the latter campaign was precisely the opposite message about women’s body images; AXE ads in fact seemed to suggest that women matter only when their appearance corresponds to a rather tired and old set of stereotypes. This doesn’t necessarily undermine the value of the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty, but it does suggest that the value of PSAs (particularly when developed as singular learning resources) may be waning as this style of communication becomes just one more strategy for channeling commercial messages to youth.

Entertainment Education

Another strategy, often called entertainment education , has a similarly long history in both the global North and South (Singhal & Rogers, 1999 ; Tufte, 2004 ). Distinct from the more explicit focus of learning TV and PSA campaigns, this strategy takes advantage of the fact that it has been clear for some time that youth negotiate their identities and values through popular media representations and celebrity identifications. Because of this, educators and youth activists have turned to network programming (e.g., Dawson’s Creek , MTV’s Real People , and Glee ), as well as teen magazines (e.g., Teen People and Seventeen ) as vehicles for developing storylines and articles that address issues in youth’s lives. Similar practices are evident around the world. In India, Mexico, Brazil, and South Africa, for instance, popular television formats like soap operas and youth dramas (e.g., Soul City and Soul Brothers in South Africa) have been used to raise awareness and change unhealthy behaviors related to a host of issues, including child poverty, community health, HIV-AIDS, and gun violence.

In a related vein, the Kaiser Foundation in the United States has been influential in the development of a multinational set of entertainment education programs on HIV-AIDS in partnership with the United Nations. Since 2004 , the Kaiser Foundation has partnered with the United Nations, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), the South African Broadcasting Corporation, Russia’s Gazprom-Media, Rupert Murdoch’s Star Group Ltd. in India, and more than 10 other media companies to develop a Global AIDS initiative. This eventually led to the integration of HIV-AIDS messages into various programs watched by young people, including a reality series in India modeled on American Idol , called Indian Idol (Montgomery, 2007 ). Similarly, series like the Degrassi franchise in Canada and the United States have addressed issues such as family violence, school shootings, mental illness, and questions about sexuality (Byers, 2008 ). Other series, including Buffy the Vampire Slayer , have ventured into similar territory, and while many educators are perhaps wary of the close working partnership between commercial broadcasters and producers in entertainment education, others note that the very success of this kind of programming demonstrates that media culture can be more than entertainment; it can be a form of meaningful pedagogy that helps young people engage in real social, cultural, and political debate.

Culture Jamming

Fomenting social, cultural, and political debate has been the objective of a third strategy used by educators and progressives concerned about youth, media culture, and education. Culture jamming draws on a long tradition of using media techniques with satire and parody “to draw attention to what may otherwise go unnoticed” in society (Meikle, 2007 , p. 168). Antecedents to culture jamming include the anti-Nazi dada posters of John Heartfield (born Helmut Herzfeld) and the détournment tactics of the Situationist Movement of the mid-1950s and 1960s, which sought to dismantle the world of commercial media culture that transforms “[e]verything that [is] directly lived . . . into a representation” (Debord, 1994 , p. 1).

Culture jammers frequently argue that our lives are dominated by a vast electronic and digital field of multimodal texts (images, audio, and now hypertext and hyperlinks), and the only way to respond is to use the design methods (pastiche, bricolage, parody, and montage) and genres (advertising, journalism, and filmmaking) that characterize commercial media to challenge media power and taken-for-granted assumptions within contemporary culture (Kenway & Bullen, 2008 ). Mark Dery ( 1993 , p. 1) calls this a form of “semiological guerrilla warfare,” through which culture jammers fight the status quo by using the principles of media culture to upend the meanings and assumptions operating in this culture.

Perhaps the most common and popular form of culture jamming is the sub-vertisement that groups like Adbusters have made popular. Sub-vertisements use popular references and techniques in branding campaigns to turn the meaning of logos, branded characters, and signs (like the Absolut Vodka bottle) on their heads. (See http://adbusters.org/spoofads/index.php for a gallery of examples that target fast food culture, alcohol and fashion ads, and political communication.) Other groups, including the Yes Men , have developed another culture-jamming strategy based around highly elaborate spoofs of websites, media interviews, and public corporate communications. Reverend Billy and his Church of Stop Shopping is yet another example of culture jamming. Reverend Billy and his allies use impromptu, guerrilla theater tactics to raise awareness of the deleterious effects of consumerism (i.e., sweat shop labor, debt, climate degradation, etc.) in society. The idea behind this and similar work is to use fun yet subversive tactics to offer radical commentary about common images, brands, and ideas that circulate in our lives. These learning practices are open to all, of course, but they have been especially relevant among educators eager to address critical issues about youth media culture.

Media Education and Direct Interventions in Youth Learning

Learning media aims to educate people through various media forms, and while this continues to be a popular strategy, for more than 80 years educators and activists have also turned to more direct interventions to affect how young people learn and engage with media culture. Media literacy education addresses how media operates in and through particular institutions, technologies, texts, and audiences. In its early development, media education tended to position schools and teachers as the defenders of traditional culture and impressionable youths. Early relationships among youths, media cultures, and education were framed around a reactionary stance that implored educators to protect youth from the media. F. R. Leavis and Denys Thompson ( 1933 ) were the first to champion this protectionist phase of media education in their book Culture and Environment , which is credited as the first set of proposals for systematic teaching about mass media in schools. Leavis and Thompson’s work includes a strong prejudice against American popular culture and mass media in general and reflects the aspirations for early media education within schools to inoculate young people against media messages to protect literary (i.e., high) culture from the commoditization lamented by mass culture theorists (Hoechsmann & Poyntz, 2012 ).

These sentiments remained strong into the early 1960s, but much as learning media took a new and compelling turn in this decade, so too did media education. Fueling this trend was the belief that educators could adapt curricula and teaching practices to the increasing role of commercial television and movies in young people’s lives. In the United Kingdom, this sentiment led educators to develop a screen education movement based around the critical use of movies in classrooms. Drawing from the influential work of Richard Hoggart’s Uses of Literacy ( 1957 ) and Raymond Williams’s Culture and Society ( 1958 ), the purpose of screen education was to study the popular media that teenagers were watching so that they would be in a better position to understand their own situation in the world, including the causes of their alienation and marginalization.

A similar desire to help youth see connections between school and everyday life motivated early initiatives in media education in Australia and Canada. Pedagogically, this led to the development of film analysis and film production courses, which drew inspiration from cultural shifts in the way that movies were understood. No longer seen simply as forms of entertainment, film education focused on the way that popular Hollywood movies (e.g., Easy Rider and Medium Cool in 1969 ) reflected social and cultural values and were thus thought deserving of critical attention. This meant teaching students to understand the language of cinema and the ways that movies engage and shape prospects for social and political change.

As an outgrowth of this work, the 1980s and 1990s witnessed the first sustained period of institutionalization of media education. Key curricular documents were produced, and media education entered the school curricula in many countries in a formal way for the first time. The Canadian province of Ontario led the way, mandating the teaching of media literacy in the high school English curriculum in 1987 . Eventually K–12 students across Canada would receive some form of media education by the end of the 1990s. Meanwhile in the United Kingdom, the late 1980s witnessed the integration of media education into the curriculum as an examinable subject for students pursuing university entrance. This helped to fuel the popularity of courses in media studies, film studies, and communication studies in schools, and by the 1990s and 2000s, additional intermediate courses in media studies were added to the curriculum.

In Australia, the late 1980s and 1990s marked a period of expansion in school-based production and media education training, in part because such training was seen to be an ideal way to equip young people with the technical skills and competencies needed to compete in a globally competitive, highly mediated world (Edith, 2003 ; McMahon & Edith, 1999 ). Similarly, in various non-English-speaking countries, including Norway, Sweden, and Finland, media literacy developed and expanded throughout the 1990s (Tufte, 1999 ).

Even when not included in the formal curriculum, media education became a pedagogical practice of teachers aware of the impact of the media in the lives of their students. In particular, in those countries in the global South where the broader educational needs of the society were still focused on getting children to school and teaching basic literacy and numeracy, media education may not have emerged in the mandated curriculum, but teachers were drawing on media education strategies to help youth make sense of and affect their worlds.

In the United States, school-based media education initiatives were slower to get off the ground. In 1978 , in response to children’s increasing television consumption, the Parents-Teachers Association (PTA) convinced the U.S. Office of Education to launch a research and development initiative on the effects of commercial television on young people. In short order, this initiative led the Office of Education to recommend a national curriculum to enhance students’ understanding of commercials, their ability to distinguish fact from fiction, the recognition of competing points of view in programs, an understanding of the style and formats in public affairs programming, and the ability to understand the relationship between television and printed materials (Kline et al., 2006 ).

Ultimately, attempts to implement this curriculum were hampered in the early 1980s as President Ronald Reagan’s move to deregulate the communications industry challenged efforts to develop media education in U.S. schools. Nonetheless, these early developments proved crucial in establishing the ground from which more recent media education initiatives have grown. Robert Kubey ( 2003 ) noted that as of 2000 , all 50 states included some education about the media in core curricular areas such as English, social studies, history, civics, health, and consumer education.

Beyond schools, a number of key nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have developed over the past two decades and have promoted dynamic forms of media education. The Alliance for a Media Literate America (AMLA), a national membership organization chartered in 2001 to organize and host the National Media Education Conference every two years and to promote professional development, is of particular note. So too are the Media Education Foundation (MEF), which produces some of the most important media education resources in North America, and the Centre for Media Literacy (CML), which offers a helpful MediaLit Kit to promote teaching and learning in a media age.

Literacy and Production

While often led by educators, parents, and young people, these developments in media education have been enhanced by interest in a broad project of literacy. The role and discussion of literacy discourse in media education go back to at least the early 1970s in the United States (Kline et al., 2006 ). As media education has internationalized, however, there has been a tendency to turn to literacy metaphors to conceptualize the kinds of media learning enabled through media education. As media education has increasingly become part of school curricula, the language of literacies also has been a familiar and useful framework to situate classroom (and out-of-school) practices. The New London Group’s ( 1996 ) “pedagaogy of multiple literacies” has been especially influential, offering a framework to address the diverse modalities of literacy (thus, multiple literacies) in complex media cultures, alongside a focus on the design and development of critical media education curricula.

While the New London Group’s work has helped to support the development of media literacy education in an era of multimodal texts, the arrival of the personal computer and the emergence of the Internet have been accompanied by the proliferation of a whole host of digital media technologies (e.g., cameras, visual and audio editing systems, distribution platforms, etc.), encouraging the integration of youth media production into the work of media education. Media production has an impressive history in the field of media literacy education going back to at least the 1960s, when experiments with 16-mm film production in community groups and schools were part of early film education initiatives in the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and other countries. By the 1990s and 2000s, media production became a common feature in media education practices because it was thought to enable young people to learn by doing , rather than just by analyzing or reading media texts. Newly accessible broadcasting (or narrowcasting) opportunities made available through Web 2.0 platforms (e.g., YouTube, Facebook, wiki spaces, etc.) accelerated these developments, encouraging the growth of information training programs in schools that focus on Web design, software training, and mastering camera skills in ways that emphasize technological mastery as an end in itself.

The turn to information training is perhaps not surprising, but while technical skills training can help young people to learn key competencies that may lead to job prospects, technical training on its own misrepresents the critical and civic concerns that have long animated media literacy education. How the civic and political involvement of youth are emerging inside highly engaging digital media cultures is one of three major issues examined in the next and final section of this article, where we address pressing questions about contemporary relationships among youth, media culture, and learning.

Contemporary Issues in Youth Media Culture and Education

Recent questions about youth and media culture are tangled up with the participatory condition common to network societies (Sterne, Coleman, Ross, Barney, & Tembeck, 2016 ; Castells, 1996 ). The age of mass media was preoccupied with problems of representation, atomization, homogenization, and manipulation, and these problems defined the thinking about youth consumption and commercial culture in much of the 20th century . This is reflected in the anxieties and studies noted earlier in this article. As we have come to read and write media differently in a digital era, however, a new set of problems has arisen (Chun, 2016 ). Among these is the new role of participation and a participatory turn in media culture that has enabled users (or those we used to call audiences ) to become more active and involved with brands, franchises, celebrities, technologies, and social media networks across everyday life (Jenkins, 2006 ). This turn is evidenced by the increasing amount of time that youth spend with screens, but it is also a function of the way that many of us now interact with media culture. Audiences have always been actively involved with still and moving images, celebrities, sports, and popular music, among other artifacts. Fan cultures exemplify this, as do studies of how real-life audiences talk about and use media (Buckingham, 1993 ; Williams, 2003 ; Silverstone, 2001 ; Scannell, 1989 ; Radway, 1984 ).

But today we are called on to participate in digital media culture in new ways. Participation has become a condition that is “both environmental (a state of affairs) and normative (a binding principle of right action)” (p. vii), and our digital technologies and highly concentrated media industries are woven into the fabric of this state of affairs (Sterne et al., 2016 , p. vii). “These media allow a growing number of people to access, modify, store, circulate, and share media content” in ways that have been available only to professionals or a select few in the past (Sterne et al., 2016 , p. viii). As digitalization has changed the nature of media production, we have not only become more involved and active in our media use, but our interaction with digital media has allowed others to interact with us in new and sometimes troubling ways. This is the paradox of the participatory condition, and it shapes how youth media culture and education are connected today.

Issue 1: Surveillance, Branding, and the Production of Youth

To begin with, the pointy end of the participatory paradox has to do with the way that digital media cultures allow others, including corporations, governments, and predatory individuals, to monitor, survey, coordinate, and guide our activities as never before. With our data footprint, states, political parties, media, toy, and technology companies (as well as health, insurance, and a host of other industries) become data aggregation units that map and monitor youth behavior to interact with, brand, and modify this behavior for profitable ends. Big data enables the production of complex algorithms that produce what Wendy Chun ( 2016 , p. 363) calls “a universe of dramas” that dominate our attention economies. These dramas (the stories, celebrities, associations, and products with which we interact) are “co-produced transnationally by corporations and states through intertwining databases of action and unique identifiers.” Databases and identifiers enable algorithms to target, engage, and integrate a diverse range of youth into the global imaginary of consumer celebrity cultures and the archives of surveillance states (Chun, 2016 ). The American former military contractor and dissident Edward Snowden draws our attention to this universe in the documentary CitizenFour , which tells his story, and makes clear that instead of governments and corporations being accountable to us, we are now, regularly and without knowing it, accountable to them (Snowden, 2016 ).

Compounding these concerns, strangers can now access youth in ways that magnify the potential damage done by the pointy end of the participatory paradox. Fears about stranger danger and cyberbullying have been especially acute in recent years, and while these fears are not new (Poyntz, 2013a ), they have been central to panicked reactions among parents, educators, and others wary of youth media culture. These fears are often connected to worries about online content that young people now access, including vast troves of pornography available at the click of a button, as well as worrying online sites that promote hate, terrorism, and the radicalization of youth. The actual merits of concerns about who is accessing youth and what content they are accessing are sometimes difficult to gauge; nonetheless, it remains the case that for the foreseeable future, one of the fundamental issues shaping relationships between youth, media culture, and education is how and through what means youth are produced and made ready to participate in contemporary promotional and surveillance cultures—particularly when this happens for the benefit of people and institutions that exercise immense and often dubious power in young lives.

Issue 2—Creative Media and Youth Producing Politics

On the other end of the participatory paradox is a second issue shaping youth, media culture, and learning. While network societies produce new risk conditions (like those noted previously) for teenagers, digital media undoubtedly have enabled new forms of creative participation and media production that are changing how youth agency and activism operate. Mobile phones, cameras, editing platforms, and distribution networks have become more easily accessible for young people across the global North and South in recent years, and as this has happened, youth have gained opportunities to create, circulate, collaborate, and connect with others to address civic issues and matters of broad personal and public concern in ways that simply have not been available in the past. Since the mid-1990s, online media worlds have emerged as counterenvironments that afford teenagers a rich and inviting sphere of digitally mediated experiences to explore their imaginations, hopes, and desires (Giroux, 2011 ).

The fact that young people’s online worlds are dominated by the plots and affective commodities of commercial corporations means that these worlds can foster a culture of choice and personalized goods that encourage youth to act in highly individualized ways (Livingstone, 2009 ). But the skills and networks that teens nurture online can be publicly relevant (Boyd, 2014 ; Ito et al., 2015 ). The Internet, social media, and other digital resources have in fact become central to new kinds of participatory politics and shared civic spaces that are emerging as an outgrowth and extension of young people’s cultural experiences and activities (Ito et al., 2015 ; Soep, 2014 ; Kahne, Middaugh, & Allen, 2014 ; Poyntz, 2017 ; Bennett & Segerberg, 2012 ; Bakardjieva, 2010 ).

These practices extend a history of youth actions wherein culture and cultural texts have been drawn on to contest politics and power (including issues of gender, class, race, sexuality, and ability) and matters of public concern (including climate change and the rights of indigenous communities). Youth who lack representation and recognition in formal political institutions and practices often turn to culture and cultural texts to contest politics and power (Williams, 1958 ; Dimitriadis, 2009 ; Maira & Soep, 2005 ; McRobbie, 1993 ; Hebdige, 1979 ; Hall & Jefferson, 1976 ). Recently, these tendencies have been evident in the actions of the Black Lives Matter movement , which has produced an array of cultural expressions, including a video story archive and a remarkable photo library that lays bare the experiences and hopes of a movement that aims to be “an ideological and political intervention in a world where Black lives are systematically and intentionally targeted for demise.”

Beyond North America, in Tunisia, Egypt, Israel, Chile, Spain, the United Kingdom, Turkey, and other places, a range of bottom-up communication for social change practices has been part of epochal political actions and assemblies often led by students and other young people demanding government action on social justice and economic and human rights (Dencik & Leistert, 2015 ; Tufte et al., 2013 ). The contexts for these actions are complex, but in general, they point to instances where political cultures are emerging from young people’s cultural experiences and learning, challenging the meaning, representation, and response of those in power to matters of public concern.

More generally, across a range of youth communities, peer networks, and affinity associations, participatory media cultures are enabling levels of engagement, circulation, and cultural production by young people that are altering relationships between youth creative acts and political life. Kahne et al., 2014 have described these emerging practices as part of a wave of participatory politics that include a cross-section of actions that often extend across global communities. Examples include consumer activism (e.g., product boycotting) and lifestyle politics (e.g., vegetarianism); groups like the Harry Potter Alliance (HPA), which use characters and social justice themes from the novels to encourage connections between cultural and civic life; a community gathered around the Nerdfighters , a YouTube channel and movement organized around John and Hank Green and their mission to “decrease world suck”; fascinating examples of participatory storytelling, including the use of video memes by and about undocumented immigrant youth to draw attention to lives that have largely disappeared from mainstream media culture; and youth-driven campaigns and petitions organized in conjunction with groups like Change.org and Openmedia.ca to challenge public policy and focus attention on major injustices by institutions and officials using memes, videos, and mobile phone recordings of violence, inequity, and exploitation (Ito et al., 2015 ).

In addition to politically mobilized youth and youth drawn into mediated politics through cultural pastimes, there is evidence that youth connections to politics are being nurtured further by a diverse range of community youth media initiatives and groups that have emerged in cities across the global North and South over the past 20 years (Poyntz, 2013b , 2017 ; Asthana, 2015 ; Tufte et al., 2013 ; Tyner, 2009 ). Such community groups are part of a response to the risk conditions that shape contemporary life. They are crucial to negotiating citizenship in highly mediated cultures and for addressing digital divides to equip young people with the resources and networks necessary to manage and respond to experiences of change, injustice, violence, and possibility.

Community youth media production groups are part of an informal cultural learning sector that is an increasingly significant part of the work of provision for socially excluded youth. These groups are of many types, but they are symptomatic of a participatory media culture in which new possibilities and new opportunities have arisen to nurture youth creativity and political action. How to foster these developments through media education and the challenges confronting these efforts represents the third major issue shaping connections between youth, media culture, and learning today.

Issue 3—Youth, Media Learning, and Media Education

Media literacy education refers to learning “a set of competencies that enable one to interpret media texts and institutions, to make media of [one’s] own, and to recognize and engage with the social and political influence of media in everyday life” (Hoechsmann & Poyntz, 2012 , p. 1). We might debate this definition, but the larger point is that since at least the mid-1990s, media literacy education has made many gains in school curricula and among community groups and social movements, as noted previously (Skinner, Hackett, & Poyntz, 2015 ). At the same time, the challenges facing media literacy education are significant. For instance, the massive and relentless turn to instrumental forms of technical and creative learning in the service of job markets and competitive global positioning in formal schooling has mitigated the impact of critical media education.

Over the past two decades, a broad set of changes in schooling environments around the world have increasingly put a premium on preparing teenagers to be globally competitive, employable subjects (McDougal, 2014 ). In this context, the lure of media training in the service of work initiatives and labor market preparation is strong; thus, there has been a tendency in school and community-based media projects and organizations to focus on questions of culture and industry know-how (i.e., knowing and making media for the culture industries), as opposed to the work of public engagement and media reform. This orientation has been further encouraged by a return to basics and standardized testing across educational policy and practice, which has encouraged a move away from citizen-learning curricula (Westheimer, 2011 ; Westheimer & Kahne, 2004 ). These developments have led to efforts to redefine media education in the English curriculum in the United Kingdom, in ways that discourage critical media analysis and production (Buckingham, 2014 ).

In like fashion, the pressure to return to more traditional forms of learning has led to education policies in the United States, Australia, and parts of Canada that are intended to dissuade critical and/or citizen-oriented learning practices in schools (Poyntz, 2015 ; Hoechsmann & DeWaard, 2015 ). Poyntz ( 2013 ) has indicated elsewhere how this orientation shapes the projects of some community media groups working with young people, but the upshot is that instrumental media learning has come to complicate and sometimes frustrate how media literacy education is used to intervene in relationships among youth, media culture, and learning (Livingstone, 2009 ; Sefton-Screen, 2006 ).

This situation has been complicated further as the field of media literacy education has evolved to become a global discourse composed of a range of sometimes contradictory practices, modalities, objectives, and traditions (McDougall, 2014 ). The globalization of media literacy education has been a welcome development and is no doubt a consequence of the globalization of communication systems and the intensification of consumerism among young people around the world. But if the result of this development has been an outpouring of policy discussions, policy papers, and pilot studies across Europe, North America, Asia, and other regions (Frau-Meigs & Torrent, 2009 ), this has at the same time also produced a complex field of media literacy practices and models that have led to a generalization (and even one suspects a depoliticization) of the field. This has happened as efforts have emerged to weave media literacy education into disparate education systems and media institutions (Poyntz, 2015 ).

As the proliferation of media literacies has been underway, a raft of new media forms and practices—including cross-media, transmedia, and spreadable media (Jenkins, Ford, & Green, 2013 ) have also encouraged the production of a myriad of discourses about “ digital literacy, new media literacy [and] transmedia literacy” (McDougall, 2014 , p. 6). These and similar developments have ensured that media literacy education remains a contested field of objectives and meanings. While this can be interesting for academics, it may be less than encouraging for young people, educators, and others eager to draw on media education to affect contemporary relationships between youth, media culture, and learning. And let it be noted that the impact of these developments is not only relevant to the ways that youth negotiate media culture, but also to the future of democracy itself.

Concluding Thoughts

Media cultures have come to play a significant role in the way that young people go about making meaning in the world; this is especially true of how knowledge is shared and acquired. As a result, media are part of the continual shaping and reshaping of what learning resources look like. Both inside and outside the classroom, young people are increasingly able, even expected, to utilize the vast number of resources now available to them. Yet, many of these resources now foster worry rather than learning. The fact that “Google it,” for instance is now a common phrase referring to the act of information seeking is in itself telling; a distinct culture of learning has emerged from the development of the Internet and other media technologies. In fact, many young people today have never experienced learning without the ability to “Google it.” Yet this very culture of learning is indistinguishable from an American multinational technology company that is not beholden to the idea of a “public good.” If the project of education is not just to be for the benefit of a select few, but for society and a healthy democracy as a whole, however, then these contradictions must be engaged. So while media cultures are a significant feature of young people’s lives, it is becoming clear that media cultures have augured complicated relationships between youth and education in ways that are not easily reconciled.

The project of media education is not without its own set of challenges and contradictions, including those highlighted in this article. But it remains indispensable if educators, parents, and researchers are to support young people in navigating learning environments and imagining democratic futures.

Acknowledgments

Parts of this article have been adapted from Hoechsmann et al. ( 2012 ).

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It’s Time to Stop Talking About “Generations”

By Louis Menand

The discovery that you can make money marketing merchandise to teen-agers dates from the early nineteen-forties, which is also when the term “youth culture” first appeared in print. There was a reason that those things happened when they did: high school. Back in 1910, most young people worked; only fourteen per cent of fourteen- to seventeen-year-olds were still in school. In 1940, though, that proportion was seventy-three per cent. A social space had opened up between dependency and adulthood, and a new demographic was born: “youth.”

The rate of high-school attendance kept growing. By 1955, eighty-four per cent of high-school-age Americans were in school. (The figure for Western Europe was sixteen per cent.) Then, between 1956 and 1969, college enrollment in the United States more than doubled, and “youth” grew from a four-year demographic to an eight-year one. By 1969, it made sense that everyone was talking about the styles and values and tastes of young people: almost half the population was under twenty-five.

Today, a little less than a third of the population is under twenty-five, but youth remains a big consumer base for social-media platforms, streaming services, computer games, music, fashion, smartphones, apps, and all kinds of other goods, from motorized skateboards to eco-friendly water bottles. To keep this market churning, and to give the consulting industry something to sell to firms trying to understand (i.e., increase the productivity of) their younger workers, we have invented a concept that allows “youth culture” to be redefined periodically. This is the concept of the generation.

The term is borrowed from human reproductive biology. In a kinship structure, parents and their siblings constitute “the older generation”; offspring and their cousins are “the younger generation.” The time it takes, in our species, for the younger generation to become the older generation is traditionally said to be around thirty years. (For the fruit fly, it’s ten days.) That is how the term is used in the Hebrew Bible, and Herodotus said that a century could be thought of as the equivalent of three generations.

Around 1800, the term got transplanted from the family to society. The new idea was that people born within a given period, usually thirty years, belong to a single generation. There is no sound basis in biology or anything else for this claim, but it gave European scientists and intellectuals a way to make sense of something they were obsessed with, social and cultural change. What causes change? Can we predict it? Can we prevent it? Maybe the reason societies change is that people change, every thirty years.

Before 1945, most people who theorized about generations were talking about literary and artistic styles and intellectual trends—a shift from Romanticism to realism, for example, or from liberalism to conservatism. The sociologist Karl Mannheim, in an influential essay published in 1928, used the term “generation units” to refer to writers, artists, and political figures who self-consciously adopt new ways of doing things. Mannheim was not interested in trends within the broader population. He assumed that the culture of what he called “peasant communities” does not change.

Nineteenth-century generational theory took two forms. For some thinkers, generational change was the cause of social and historical change. New generations bring to the world new ways of thinking and doing, and weed out beliefs and practices that have grown obsolete. This keeps society rejuvenated. Generations are the pulse of history. Other writers thought that generations were different from one another because their members carried the imprint of the historical events they lived through. The reason we have generations is that we have change, not the other way around.

There are traces of both the pulse hypothesis and the imprint hypothesis in the way we talk about generations today. We tend to assume that there is a rhythm to social and cultural history that maps onto generational cohorts, such that each cohort is shaped by, or bears the imprint of, major historical events—Vietnam, 9/11, COVID . But we also think that young people develop their own culture, their own tastes and values, and that this new culture displaces the culture of the generation that preceded theirs.

Today, the time span of a generational cohort is usually taken to be around fifteen years (even though the median age of first-time mothers in the U.S. is now twenty-six and of first-time fathers thirty-one). People born within that period are supposed to carry a basket of characteristics that differentiate them from people born earlier or later.

This supposition requires leaps of faith. For one thing, there is no empirical basis for claiming that differences within a generation are smaller than differences between generations. (Do you have less in common with your parents than with people you have never met who happen to have been born a few years before or after you?) The theory also seems to require that a person born in 1965, the first year of Generation X, must have different values, tastes, and life experiences from a person born in 1964, the last year of the baby-boom generation (1946-64). And that someone born in the last birth year of Gen X, 1980, has more in common with someone born in 1965 or 1970 than with someone born in 1981 or 1990.

Everyone realizes that precision dating of this kind is silly, but although we know that chronological boundaries can blur a bit, we still imagine generational differences to be bright-line distinctions. People talk as though there were a unique DNA for Gen X—what in the nineteenth century was called a generational “entelechy”—even though the difference between a baby boomer and a Gen X-er is about as meaningful as the difference between a Leo and a Virgo.

You could say the same things about decades, of course. A year is, like a biological generation, a measurable thing, the time it takes the Earth to orbit the sun. But there is nothing in nature that corresponds to a decade—or a century, or a millennium. Those are terms of convenience, determined by the fact that we have ten fingers.

Yet we happily generalize about “the fifties” and “the sixties” as having dramatically distinct, well, entelechies. Decade-thinking is deeply embedded. For most of us, “She’s a seventies person” carries a lot more specific information than “She’s Gen X.” By this light, generations are just a novel way of slicing up the space-time continuum, no more arbitrary, and possibly a little less, than decades and centuries. The question, therefore, is not “Are generations real?” The question is “Are they a helpful way to understand anything?”

Bobby Duffy, the author of “The Generation Myth” (Basic), says yes, but they’re not as helpful as people think. Duffy is a social scientist at King’s College London. His argument is that generations are just one of three factors that explain changes in attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors. The others are historical events and “life-cycle effects,” that is, how people change as they age. His book illustrates, with a somewhat overwhelming array of graphs and statistics, how events and aging interact with birth cohort to explain differences in racial attitudes, happiness, suicide rates, political affiliations—you name it, for he thinks that his three factors explain everything.

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Duffy’s over-all finding is that people in different age groups are much more alike than all the talk about generations suggests, and one reason for all that talk, he thinks, is the consulting industry. He says that, in 2015, American firms spent some seventy million dollars on generational consulting (which doesn’t seem that much, actually). “What generational differences exist in the workplace?” he asks. His answer: “Virtually none.”

Duffy is good at using data to take apart many familiar generational characterizations. There is no evidence, he says, of a “loneliness epidemic” among young people, or of a rise in the rate of suicide. The falling off in sexual activity in the United States and the U.K. is population-wide, not just among the young.

He says that attitudes about gender in the United States correlate more closely with political party than with age, and that, in Europe, anyway, there are no big age divides in the recognition of climate change. There is “just about no evidence,” he says, that Generation Z (1997-2012, encompassing today’s college students) is more ethically motivated than other generations. When it comes to consumer boycotts and the like, “ ‘cancel culture’ seems to be more of a middle-age thing.” He worries that generational stereotypes—such as the characterization of Gen Z-ers as woke snowflakes—are promoted in order to fuel the culture wars.

The woke-snowflake stereotype is the target of “Gen Z, Explained” (Chicago), a heartfelt defense of the values and beliefs of contemporary college students. The book has four authors, Roberta Katz, Sarah Ogilvie, Jane Shaw, and Linda Woodhead—an anthropologist, a linguist, a historian, and a sociologist—and presents itself as a social-scientific study, including a “methodological appendix.” But it resembles what might be called journalistic ethnography: the portrayal of social types by means of interviews and anecdotes.

The authors adopt a key tenet of the pulse hypothesis. They see Gen Z-ers as agents of change, a generation that has created a youth culture that can transform society. (The fact that when they finished researching their book, in 2019, roughly half of Gen Z was under sixteen does not trouble them, just as the fact that at the time of Woodstock, in 1969, more than half the baby-boom generation was under thirteen doesn’t prevent people from making generalizations about the baby boomers.)

Their book is based on hour-long interviews with a hundred and twenty students at three colleges, two in California (Stanford and Foothill College, a well-regarded community college) and one in the U.K. (Lancaster, a selective research university). The authors inform us that the interviewees were chosen “by word of mouth and personal networking,” which sounds a lot like self-selection. It is, in any event (as they unapologetically acknowledge), hardly a randomized sample.

The authors tell us that the interviews were conducted entirely by student research assistants, which means that, unless the research assistants simply read questions off a list, there was no control over the depth or the direction of the interviews. There were also some focus groups, in which students talked about their lives with, mostly, their friends, an exercise performed in an echo chamber. Journalists, or popular ethnographers, would at least have met and observed their subjects. It’s mystifying why the authors felt a need to distance themselves in this way, given how selective their sample was to begin with. We are left with quotations detached from context. Self-reporting is taken at face value.

The authors supplemented the student interviews with a lexical glossary designed to pick out words and memes heavily used by young people, and with two surveys, designed by one of the authors (Woodhead) and conducted by YouGov, an Internet polling company, of eighteen- to twenty-five-year-olds in the United States and the U.K.

Where there is an awkward discrepancy between the survey results and what the college students say in the interviews, the authors attempt to explain it away. The YouGov surveys found that ninety-one per cent of all persons aged eighteen to twenty-five, American and British, identify as male or female, and only four per cent as gender fluid or nonbinary. (Five per cent declined to answer.) This does not match the impression created by the interviews, which suggest that there should be many more fluid and nonbinary young people out there, so the authors say that we don’t really know what the survey respondents meant by “male” and “female.” Well, then, maybe they should have been asked.

The authors attribute none of the characteristics they identify as Gen Z to the imprint of historical events—with a single exception: the rise of the World Wide Web. Gen Z is the first “born digital” generation. This fact has often been used to stereotype young people as screen-time addicts, captives of their smartphones, obsessed with how they appear on social media, and so on. The Internet is their “culture.” They are trapped in the Web. The authors of “Gen Z, Explained” emphatically reject this line of critique. They assure us that Gen Z-ers “understand both the potential and the downside of technology” and possess “critical awareness about the technology that shapes their lives.”

For the college students who were interviewed (although not, evidently, for the people who were surveyed), a big part of Gen Z culture revolves around identity. As the authors put it, “self-labeling has become an imperative that is impossible to escape.” This might seem to suggest a certain degree of self-absorption, but the authors assure us that these young people “are self-identified and self-reliant but markedly not self-centered, egotistical, or selfish.”

“Lily” is offered to illustrate the ethical richness of this new concern. It seems that Lily has a friend who is always late to meet with her: “She explained that while she of course wanted to honor and respect his unique identity, choices, and lifestyle—including his habitual tardiness—she was also frustrated by how that conflicted with her sense that he was then not respecting her identity and preference for timeliness.” The authors do not find this amusing.

The book’s big claim is that Gen Z-ers “may well be the heralds of new attitudes and expectations about how individuals and institutions can change for the better.” They have come up with new ways of working (collaborative), new forms of identity (fluid and intersectional), new concepts of community (diverse, inclusive, non-hierarchical).

Methodology aside, there is much that is refreshing here. There is no reason to assume that younger people are more likely to be passive victims of technology than older people (that assumption is classic old person’s bias), and it makes sense that, having grown up doing everything on a computer, Gen Z-ers have a fuller understanding of the digital universe than analog dinosaurs do. The dinosaurs can say, “You don’t know what you’re missing,” but Gen Z-ers can say, “You don’t understand what you’re getting.”

The claim that addiction to their devices is the cause of a rise in mental disorders among teen-agers is a lot like the old complaint that listening to rock and roll turns kids into animals. The authors cite a recent study (not their own) that concludes that the association between poor mental health and eating potatoes is greater than the association with technology use. We’re all in our own fishbowls. We should hesitate before we pass judgment on what life is like in the fishbowls of others.

The major problem with “Gen Z, Explained” is not so much the authors’ fawning tone, or their admiration for the students’ concerns—“environmental degradation, equality, violence, and injustice”—even though they are the same concerns that almost everyone in their social class has, regardless of age. The problem is the “heralds of a new dawn” stuff.

“A crisis looms for all unless we can find ways to change,” they warn. “Gen Zers have ideas of the type of world they would like to bring into being. By listening carefully to what they are saying, we can appreciate the lessons they have to teach us: be real, know who you are, be responsible for your own well-being, support your friends, open up institutions to the talents of the many, not the few, embrace diversity, make the world kinder, live by your values.”

I believe we have been here before, Captain. Fifty-one years ago, The New Yorker ran a thirty-nine-thousand-word piece that began:

There is a revolution under way . . . It is now spreading with amazing rapidity, and already our laws, institutions, and social structure are changing in consequence. Its ultimate creation could be a higher reason, a more human community, and a new and liberated individual. This is the revolution of the new generation.

The author was a forty-two-year-old Yale Law School professor named Charles Reich, and the piece was an excerpt from his book “The Greening of America,” which, when it came out, later that year, went to No. 1 on the Times best-seller list.

Reich had been in San Francisco in 1967, during the so-called Summer of Love, and was amazed and excited by the flower-power wing of the counterculture—the bell-bottom pants (about which he waxes ecstatic in the book), the marijuana and the psychedelic drugs, the music, the peace-and-love life style, everything.

He became convinced that the only way to cure the ills of American life was to follow the young people. “The new generation has shown the way to the one method of change that will work in today’s post-industrial society: revolution by consciousness,” he wrote. “This means a new way of living, almost a new man. This is what the new generation has been searching for, and what it has started to achieve.”

So how did that work out? The trouble, of course, was that Reich was basing his observations and predictions on, to use Mannheim’s term, a generation unit—a tiny number of people who were hyperconscious of their choices and values and saw themselves as being in revolt against the bad thinking and failed practices of previous generations. The folks who showed up for the Summer of Love were not a representative sample of sixties youth.

Most young people in the sixties did not practice free love, take drugs, or protest the war in Vietnam. In a poll taken in 1967, when people were asked whether couples should wait to have sex until they were married, sixty-three per cent of those in their twenties said yes, virtually the same as in the general population. In 1969, when people aged twenty-one to twenty-nine were asked whether they had ever used marijuana, eighty-eight per cent said no. When the same group was asked whether the United States should withdraw immediately from Vietnam, three-quarters said no, about the same as in the general population.

Most young people in the sixties were not even notably liberal. When people who attended college from 1966 to 1968 were asked which candidate they preferred in the 1968 Presidential election, fifty-three per cent said Richard Nixon or George Wallace. Among those who attended college from 1962 to 1965, fifty-seven per cent preferred Nixon or Wallace, which matched the results in the general election.

The authors of “Gen Z, Explained” are making the same erroneous extrapolation. They are generalizing on the basis of a very small group of privileged people, born within five or six years of one another, who inhabit insular communities of the like-minded. It’s fine to try to find out what these people think. Just don’t call them a generation.

Most of the millions of Gen Z-ers may be quite different from the scrupulously ethical, community-minded young people in the book. Duffy cites a survey, conducted in 2019 by a market-research firm, in which people were asked to name the characteristics of baby boomers, Gen X-ers, millennials (1981-96), and Gen Z-ers. The top five characteristics assigned to Gen Z were: tech-savvy, materialistic, selfish, lazy, and arrogant. The lowest-ranked characteristic was ethical. When Gen Z-ers were asked to describe their own generation, they came up with an almost identical list. Most people born after 1996 apparently don’t think quite as well of themselves as the college students in “Gen Z, Explained” do.

In any case, “explaining” people by asking them what they think and then repeating their answers is not sociology. Contemporary college students did not invent new ways of thinking about identity and community. Those were already rooted in the institutional culture of higher education. From Day One, college students are instructed about the importance of diversity, inclusion, honesty, collaboration—all the virtuous things that the authors of “Gen Z, Explained” attribute to the new generation. Students can say (and some do say) to their teachers and their institutions, “You’re not living up to those values.” But the values are shared values.

And they were in place long before Gen Z entered college. Take “intersectionality,” which the students in “Gen Z, Explained” use as a way of refining traditional categories of identity. That term has been around for more than thirty years. It was coined (as the authors note) in 1989, by the law professor Kimberlé Crenshaw. And Crenshaw was born in 1959. She’s a boomer.

“Diversity,” as an institutional priority, dates back even farther. It played a prominent role in the affirmative-action case of Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, in 1978, which opened the constitutional door to race-conscious admissions. That was three “generations” ago. Since then, almost every selective college has worked to achieve a diverse student body and boasts about it when it succeeds. College students think of themselves and their peers in terms of identity because of how the institution thinks of them.

People who went to college in an earlier era may find this emphasis a distraction from students’ education. Why should they be constantly forced to think about their own demographic profiles and their differences from other students? But look at American politics—look at world politics—over the past five years. Aren’t identity and difference kind of important things to understand?

And who creates “youth culture,” anyway? Older people. Youth has agency in the sense that it can choose to listen to the music or wear the clothing or march in the demonstrations or not. And there are certainly ground-up products (bell-bottoms, actually). Generally, though, youth has the same degree of agency that I have when buying a car. I can choose the model I want, but I do not make the cars.

Failure to recognize the way the fabric is woven leads to skewed social history. The so-called Silent Generation is a particularly outrageous example. That term has come to describe Americans who went to high school and college in the nineteen-fifties, partly because it sets up a convenient contrast to the baby-boom generation that followed. Those boomers, we think—they were not silent! In fact, they mostly were.

The term “Silent Generation” was coined in 1951, in an article in Time —and so was not intended to characterize the decade. “Today’s generation is ready to conform,” the article concluded. Time defined the Silent Generation as people aged eighteen to twenty-eight—that is, those who entered the workforce mostly in the nineteen-forties. Though the birth dates of Time’s Silent Generation were 1923 to 1933, the term somehow migrated to later dates, and it is now used for the generation born between 1928 and 1945.

So who were these silent conformists? Gloria Steinem, Muhammad Ali, Tom Hayden, Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Nina Simone, Bob Dylan, Noam Chomsky, Philip Roth, Susan Sontag, Martin Luther King, Jr., Billie Jean King, Jesse Jackson, Joan Baez, Berry Gordy, Amiri Baraka, Ken Kesey, Huey Newton, Jerry Garcia, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Andy Warhol . . . Sorry, am I boring you?

It was people like these, along with even older folks, like Timothy Leary, Allen Ginsberg, and Pauli Murray, who were active in the culture and the politics of the nineteen-sixties. Apart from a few musicians, it is hard to name a single major figure in that decade who was a baby boomer. But the boomers, most of whom were too young then even to know what was going on, get the credit (or, just as unfairly, the blame).

Mannheim thought that the great danger in generational analysis was the elision of class as a factor in determining beliefs, attitudes, and experiences. Today, we would add race, gender, immigration status, and any number of other “preconditions.” A woman born to an immigrant family in San Antonio in 1947 had very different life chances from a white man born in San Francisco that year. Yet the baby-boom prototype is a white male college student wearing striped bell-bottoms and a peace button, just as the Gen Z prototype is a female high-school student with spending money and an Instagram account.

For some reason, Duffy, too, adopts the conventional names and dates of the postwar generations (all of which originated in popular culture). He offers no rationale for this, and it slightly obscures one of his best points, which is that the most formative period for many people happens not in their school years but once they leave school and enter the workforce. That is when they confront life-determining economic and social circumstances, and where factors like their race, their gender, and their parents’ wealth make an especially pronounced difference to their chances.

Studies have consistently indicated that people do not become more conservative as they age. As Duffy shows, however, some people find entry into adulthood delayed by economic circumstances. This tends to differentiate their responses to survey questions about things like expectations. Eventually, he says, everyone catches up. In other words, if you are basing your characterization of a generation on what people say when they are young, you are doing astrology. You are ascribing to birth dates what is really the result of changing conditions.

Take the boomers: when those who were born between 1946 and 1952 entered the workforce, the economy was surging. When those who were born between 1953 and 1964 entered it, the economy was a dumpster fire. It took longer for younger boomers to start a career or buy a house. People in that kind of situation are therefore likely to register in surveys as “materialistic.” But it’s not the Zeitgeist that’s making them that way. It’s just the business cycle. ♦

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Youth culture is the societal norms that shape children, adolescents, and young adults. The norms, values, and symbolic systems shared by this demographic are distinct from those found in adult culture. As a result, there are many theories on the origins, development, and influences of this culture. This article will...

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Youth culture is the shared societal norms of children, adolescents, and young adults. It consists of symbolic systems and processes that are common to this demographic, and differs from adult culture in a number of ways. Let's explore the origins, genesis, and evolving nature of youth culture. The definition of...

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Students are often asked to write an essay on The Role of Youth Today in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

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100 Words Essay on The Role of Youth Today

The importance of youth.

Youth is the foundation of a society. They are the future leaders, innovators, and change-makers. Their role is crucial for societal development.

Education and Youth

Education empowers the youth. It gives them the knowledge and skills to contribute positively to society.

Youth and Technology

Youth today are tech-savvy. They use technology to learn, communicate, and solve problems, which is beneficial for the modern world.

Youth and Social Change

Youth are often at the forefront of social change. They challenge old norms and fight for equality and justice.

The role of youth today is significant. They have the potential to shape a better future.

250 Words Essay on The Role of Youth Today

The catalysts of change.

Youth today are not just the leaders of tomorrow, but also the partners of today. They represent a dynamic, energetic, and innovative segment of the population. Their role in society is not confined to self-development and securing a future, but extends to shaping the present.

The Power of Innovation

The digital native generation is at the forefront of technological innovation. They are not just consumers, but creators, harnessing the power of technology to develop new solutions to old problems. From climate change to social justice, the youth are using their digital prowess to drive change.

Agents of Social Transformation

Youth today play a pivotal role in social transformation. They challenge traditional norms, advocate for equality, and strive for a more inclusive society. Their voices are loud and clear in movements against racial discrimination, gender inequality, and environmental degradation.

Driving Political Change

The role of youth in politics is increasingly significant. They are not just voters, but active participants, influencing policy and demanding accountability. The youth’s engagement in politics is redefining democracy, making it more participatory and representative.

The Challenges Ahead

However, the youth face numerous challenges, including unemployment, mental health issues, and a lack of access to quality education and healthcare. Addressing these challenges is crucial for harnessing the full potential of the youth.

In conclusion, the role of youth today is multifaceted and crucial. They are the catalysts of change, the drivers of innovation, and the agents of social and political transformation. The future lies in their hands, and it is our collective responsibility to ensure they are equipped to shape it.

500 Words Essay on The Role of Youth Today

The significance of youth in the contemporary world.

In today’s rapidly evolving society, the role of youth is more critical than ever. They are the torchbearers of change and progress, acting as catalysts in the transformation of society. They are the ones who question, challenge, and break the rigid structures of the past to pave the way for a more progressive future.

The Youth as Agents of Change

The youth of today are not just the leaders of tomorrow – they are also the leaders of today. They are at the forefront of social, political, and environmental movements, driving change in their communities and countries. From climate change activists like Greta Thunberg to social justice advocates like Malala Yousafzai, young people are making their voices heard on the global stage.

Their activism is not limited to public protests and speeches. They are leveraging technology and social media to amplify their voices, mobilize support, and effect change on a scale that was previously unimaginable. They are harnessing the power of digital platforms to challenge the status quo and push for reforms in various spheres of life.

The Youth as Innovators

In addition to being change-makers, the youth are also innovators. They are the ones pushing the boundaries of technology, science, and art, creating new possibilities for the future. They are not afraid to take risks and experiment, and this spirit of innovation is what drives societal progress.

Young entrepreneurs are disrupting traditional industries with innovative business models and technologies. They are creating jobs, driving economic growth, and contributing to societal development. Their innovations are not just about profit – they are also about solving pressing social and environmental problems.

The Youth as Builders of Peace

The youth also play a crucial role in peacebuilding. They are the ones who can bridge cultural, ethnic, and religious divides, fostering mutual understanding and respect. They can challenge divisive narratives and promote a culture of peace and tolerance.

In conflict-ridden societies, the youth can play a crucial role in reconciliation and healing. They can promote dialogue and understanding, helping to mend the social fabric and pave the way for a peaceful future.

The Challenges Facing the Youth

Despite their potential, the youth face numerous challenges. They are often marginalized and excluded from decision-making processes, their voices unheard and their needs unmet. They also face numerous socio-economic challenges, including unemployment, lack of access to quality education and healthcare, and discrimination.

These challenges are not insurmountable. With the right support and opportunities, the youth can overcome these obstacles and fulfill their potential as agents of change, innovators, and builders of peace.

In conclusion, the role of youth today is multifaceted and crucial. They are the agents of change, the innovators, and the peacebuilders. Their energy, creativity, and resilience make them a powerful force for progress. It is therefore essential that we recognize their potential, address their challenges, and provide them with the opportunities they need to thrive. After all, the future of our society depends on them.

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3 biggest issues affecting youth today

There are a variety of issues facing young people today. Image:  Unsplash/Priscilla Du Preez

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Stay up to date:, future of work.

• More than two-thirds of Europe’s young adults live with their parents.
• Life expectancy among working-age Americans is declining.
• 10 young leaders under the age of 20 will attend this year’s World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos.

A group of 10 young leaders, all under the age of 20, will be attending this year’s World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos for the first time.

Alongside their – slightly older – peers among the Global Shapers Community , they will be championing the involvement of the next generation in policy decisions that will affect them for decades to come.

The need to engage younger people in this process has perhaps never been greater, and the challenges they face are complex, interconnected and seemingly intractable.

Have you read?

There's a global youth unemployment crisis. here's what we can do about it, why local communities are essential to curbing youth unemployment, what you need to know about the world's youth, in 7 charts, this is what millennials look for in a job, a home of your own.

More than two-thirds of young European adults live at home with their parents . While that might sound great for those parents dreading the moment their kids leave home, it's also an indication some young adults across the developed world simply can’t afford a place of their own.

While their parents’ generation enjoyed high wage inflation and benefitted from rising property values , the young face relatively low levels of income and social mobility, particularly in the US and the UK, but elsewhere in the developed world, too.

Incomes for 25- to 34-year-olds have only increased by 19%, which might explain why home ownership among the same group fell from 55% in 1997 to 35% in 2017.

A similar pattern exists in the United States, where housing costs have quadrupled since 1950 and homelessness rates have hit highs not seen since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Between 1949 and 2018, mortgage debt as a percentage of GDP grew from 15% to 80% in the US.

The Global Shapers Community is a network of young people under the age of 30 who are working together to drive dialogue, action and change to address local, regional and global challenges.

The community spans more than 8,000 young people in 165 countries and territories.

Teams of Shapers form hubs in cities where they self-organize to create projects that address the needs of their community. The focus of the projects are wide-ranging, from responding to disasters and combating poverty, to fighting climate change and building inclusive communities.

Examples of projects include Water for Life, a effort by the Cartagena Hub that provides families with water filters that remove biological toxins from the water supply and combat preventable diseases in the region, and Creativity Lab from the Yerevan Hub, which features activities for children ages 7 to 9 to boost creative thinking.

Each Shaper also commits personally and professionally to take action to preserve our planet.

Join or support a hub near you .

Working-age life expectancy

In addition to struggling to afford a home of their own, studies show young people today suffer from more mental health challenges . And in some developed countries, life expectancy rates have slowed or even reversed.

In the UK, life expectancy for under-50s has fallen behind some other European countries. This is fuelled, in part, by a wave of drug-related deaths, most acutely in Scotland .

In the United States, between 2010 and 2017, mortality rates for working-age people, between 25 to 64, increased from 328.5 deaths per 100,000 people to 348.2 deaths per 100,000. The main causes were drug and alcohol abuse and suicide .

Time to listen

By most measures, youth unemployment is likely to be higher than that of the overall working population. Around 621 million young people between the ages of 15 to 24 are not in education, employment or training .

Across the 36 OECD countries, three stand out for very high youth unemployment: Italy, Spain and Greece. There, youth unemployment rates are 32%, 34% and 40%, respectively. South Africa, which is not a full OECD member, has a youth unemployment rate of 53%.

Although some countries, such as Japan, face the challenge of an ageing population, the world is dominated by young people. One-quarter of all people alive today are younger than 14 and the global median age is just 30 .

For one young leader attending the Forum’s Annual Meeting, now is the time to elevate the position of young people. Grace Gatera, a mental health worker in Rwanda, says, “Young people are largely ignored when decisions affecting them are being made.”

Doing so is a tragedy, she says: “It’s time to pass the mic.”

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License and Republishing

World Economic Forum articles may be republished in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Public License, and in accordance with our Terms of Use.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.

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10 Social Issues and Problems That Trouble Today's Teens

Technology and social media can amplify the struggles teens face, but they aren't the only issues they encounter.

Social Media

Peer pressure, on-screen violence, sexual activity, alcohol use, academic problems, how to talk to your teen.

Just like adults, teens nowadays often face social problems. They may also be more susceptible to challenges because their brains are still developing and their bodies are changing quickly. Combine that with advances in technology, and today's teens are facing new and different social issues than their parents may have.

Not only has electronic media amplified some teenage troubles, but digital communication and social media have also changed the way teens interact with their peers and romantic interests. The end result is a group of young people who struggle with essential interpersonal communication skills like picking up on social cues.

Some of this dysfunction can be linked to technology—especially since the average teen spends more than eight hours each day using electronic devices.  That said, not all teen social issues are linked to the digital world. Teens also are at a higher risk for overdose, might not practice safe sex, and are facing increasing academic pressures.

Here's a closer look at the top 10 social issues teens nowadays struggle with.

Brianna Gilmartin 

Instagram, Twitter, and SnapChat  can be great ways for teens to connect, but social media can be problematic for several reasons. It can expose your teen to cyberbullying, slut-shaming, and so much more.  

Social media can hurt friendships, and it's changing the way teens date. Research shows it can impact their mental health.  And no matter what precautions you take, teens are likely to be exposed to unsavory people, unhealthy images, and sexual content online.

Help your teen learn to navigate social media in a healthy way by following these tips:

• Talk about ways to stay safe online.
• Ask what your teen is doing on social media.
• Educate yourself about the latest apps, websites, and social media pages teens are using.
• Consider  limiting your teen's screen time .

While peer pressure has affected teens for generations, social media brings it to a whole new level. Sexting, for example, is a major cause for concern. Many teens don't understand the lifelong consequences that sharing explicit photos can have. 

But sending inappropriate photos isn't the only thing kids are coerced into doing. Teens face pressure to have sex, use drugs or alcohol, and even bully others.  

To keep your kids from falling victim to peer pressure, consider these tips:

• Give them skills to make healthy choices and resist peer pressure.
• Talk to teens about what to do if they make a mistake.
• Let them know it's safe to come to you when they have problems or make poor choices.
• Demonstrate that you can listen without judging or overreacting.
• Help them find healthy ways to make amends and move on if they peer pressure others.

Teenagers are going to witness some violent media at one time or another. And it's not just TV, music, and movies that depict violence. Many of today's video games portray gory scenes and disturbing acts of aggression. Over the past couple of decades, studies have linked these violent images to a lack of empathy and aggressive behavior .

Other studies have shown the top factor in determining the way kids relate to media is how their parents think and act.  That means the more violence parents watch, the more likely their kids will think it's OK.  

To help limit exposure to on-screen violence, pay attention to your teen's media use and consider implementing these guidelines:

• Restrict or limit your teen from watching R-rated movies or playing M-rated video games. Consuming that material excessively (and unsupervised) is not healthy. 
• Talk about the dangers of being exposed to violent images and monitor your teen's mental state.
• Discuss sexual situations and racial stereotypes that your teen might see.
• Help them identify what's good and what's bad about the media.
• Boost their media literacy by helping them think objectively about what they're seeing on television, TikTok, in the movie theater, or in a video game.

According to the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), an estimated 5 million adolescents in the U.S. have had at least one major depressive episode . That means 20% of American teenagers may experience depression before reaching adulthood. Data from NIMH also shows that depression is much more prevalent in female teens (29.2%) than male teens (11.5%) and among teens who reported two or more races (27.2%).

Spending too much time on electronic devices may be preventing young people from in-person activities with their peers, such as sports or other physical activities, that can help ward off depression.  They're also experiencing new conditions like "fear of missing out" or FOMO, which further leads to feelings of loneliness and isolation.

Keep in mind that depressive disorders are treatable, but it's important to seek professional help. Here's how to navigate this situation:

• Schedule an appointment to a health care provider or contact a mental health professional if your teen seems withdrawn, experiences a change in sleep patterns, or starts to perform poorly in school.
• Consider online therapy as an option if your teen is reluctant to meet with a therapist in person.
• Be willing to discuss what they're thinking or feeling, including their thoughts of suicide. Having these conversations can reduce their fears and let them know someone is willing to listen, but it also needs to be handled thoughtfully.
• Call the  National Suicide Prevention Lifeline  at  988  or  911 if they are in immediate danger.

Nearly one in four teens between the ages of 12 and 18 report being bullied each year.  Research suggests that social media has made bullying much more public and more pervasive. In fact, cyberbullying has replaced in-person bullying as the most common type of harassment that teens experience.

To help guard against these kinds of teenage troubles, regularly talk to your teen about bullying and consider utilizing these tips to help:

• Discuss what they can do when they witness bullying.
• Talk about options if they become a target themselves.
• Recognize that being proactive is key to helping your child deal with a bully.
• Talk to your child about when and how to get help from a trusted adult.
• Acknowledge that talking about how someone has humiliated them is never an easy topic.
• Remind them that asking for help isn't a sign of weakness; it's a show of courage.

According to the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System (YRBSS) survey, 30% of high school students reported having had sex and 21% said they were currently sexually active . That represents a decline over the past decade (47% had had sex in 2011; 34% were currently sexually active).

This decline in sexual activity doesn't necessarily mean teens nowadays are using contraceptives, though. Just over half of sexually active teens reported using a condom in their last sexual encounter, according to YRBSS data, while about one-third used hormonal birth control and 10% used both.

This may explain why more than half of the 26 million new sexually transmitted infections in the U.S. are among young people between the ages of 15 and 24. Here are some things you can do to ensure that your teen understands the risks of teen sex and how to be safe:

• Talk to your teen about sex and allow them to ask questions.
• Let them know they can come to you about anything and that no questions are off-limits.
• Do your best to not shame them or make them feel embarrassed by their inquiries.
• Instill the importance of safe sex practices—even if you don't think your child is engaging in sexual activity.
• Discuss contraception options and make sure they have access to contraception if they're sexually active.
• Give them resources to learn about safe sex.

The percentage of teens nowadays using illicit substances is roughly 10.9% of eighth graders, 19.8% of 10th graders, and 31.2% of 12th graders, according to most recent data from the Monitoring the Future Survey published by the National Institute on Drug Abuse. While this decline has been noted since the survey began in 1975, there has been a dramatic rise in overdoses among teens.

Illicit fentanyl, a powerful synthetic drug, is largely responsible for these overdoses. Drug dealers are adding it to counterfeit pills made to resemble prescription medications, which means that although teen drug use is declining, it's becoming more risky for those who do partake.

It's important to have regular conversations with your teen about the dangers of drugs. Here are some key topics you need to discuss:

• Mention the dangers of over-the-counter drugs and prescription medications. Many teens don't recognize the risks associated with taking a friend's prescription or popping a few pills.
• Tell your teen that drug use during adolescence increases their risk for developing a substance use disorder later in life.
• Address how easily addictions can happen.
• Discuss how drug and alcohol use can affect their brain development.
• Talk about the risks associated with overdosing.
• Explain the danger of illicit fentanyl contaminating counterfeit drugs.
• Recognize talks about drug use are not one-and-done conversations, but something you should be discussing on a consistent basis.

Alcohol use and binge drinking continue to decline among teenagers. Still, 15.1% of eighth graders, 30.6% of 10th graders, and 45.7% of seniors say they used alcohol in the past year. The forms of alcohol teens are using have also changed. More kids are choosing flavored alcohol (also called "alcopops") and alcohol with caffeine in it. About 36% of seniors reported drinking flavored alcohol.

It's important to talk to your teen about the risks of underage drinking. Here are some tips on how to navigate those conversations.

• Educate them about the dangers of alcohol use, including the fact that alcohol can take a serious toll on their developing brain.  
• Express your disapproval of underage drinking. Saying you don't approve can make a big difference in whether your teen decides to drink.
• Discuss the dangers of drinking and driving.
• Let them know that if they do decide to drink, they should call you or another trusted adult for a ride rather than risk getting behind the wheel.
• Assure your teen that it's safe to reach out to you if they make a mistake and need help.

About 22% of 12- to 19-year-olds in the U.S. are obese, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data. Hispanic and Black children are more likely to be overweight or obese than White or Asian children.

Children and teens who are overweight or obese are often targeted by bullies and are at a much greater risk of lifelong health problems such as diabetes , arthritis, cancer, and heart disease.  They may also struggle with body image issues or develop eating disorders as a way of changing their appearance.

But surveys show parents may not recognize when their kids are overweight.  They tend to underestimate their child's size and the risks associated with being overweight. Here are some ways you can help:

• Ask their health care provider privately about their weight in comparison to their height and age—though many health care providers will alert you to an issue without asking.
• Find ways to support and empower your teen , especially if their doctor recommends a different eating plan or exercise.
• Ensure your teen has the necessary tools to make changes, but recognize that they must want to change. You can't force the issue, nor should you try to control them,
• Avoid shaming or embarrassing your teen about their weight, but instead communicate acceptance for who they are as a person. They need to know their worth is not tied to their weight.

About 5% of high school students drop out of high school each year in the United States, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.  A high school dropout is likely to earn significantly less over their lifetime when compared to a high school graduate, which can have a significant impact on a young person's future.

But it's no longer just "troubled teens" who are dropping out of school. Some teens feel so much pressure to get into a good college that they're burning themselves out before they graduate from high school.

Here are some ways you can help your teen avoid academic problems:

• Stay involved in your teen's education.
• Provide support and guidance when needed.
• Be ready to assist your teen if they encounter problems.
• Try to remove some of the pressure they may be facing by not placing so much emphasis on grades, achievements, and college acceptances.

Bringing up any difficult subjects with your teen can feel uncomfortable. And your teen isn't likely to respond well to a lengthy lecture or too many direct questions. But having a conversation with your teen about social issues and other teenage troubles isn't something you should shy away from.

Even when it seems like they're not listening, you're the most influential person in your teen's life. It's important to lay a strong foundation before the window of opportunity closes. A good way to strike up a conversation about drugs, sex, vaping, or other uncomfortable situations is to ask a question like, "Do you think this is a big issue at your school?"

Listen to what your teen has to say. Try not to be judgmental, but make your expectations and opinions clear. It's important that your teen understands that you don't condone certain behaviors and that they know the consequences of breaking the rules. That said, you also need to communicate that if they do make a poor choice, it's not the end of the world and that you're there to help.

Technology-Based Communication and the Development of Interpersonal Competencies Within Adolescent Romantic Relationships: A Preliminary Investigation .  J Res Adolesc . 2017.

Growing Up Wired: Social Networking Sites and Adolescent Psychosocial Development .  Clin Child Fam Psychol Rev . 2014.

Associations Between Social Media and Cyberbullying: A Review of the Literature .  Mhealth . 2016.

Smartphones, Social Media Use and Youth Mental Health .  CMAJ . 2020.

Sexting, Mental Health, and Victimization Among Adolescents: A Literature Review .  Int J Environ Res Public Health . 2019.

Emotional Desensitization to Violence Contributes to Adolescents' Violent Behavior .  J Abnorm Child Psychol . 2016.

Screen Violence and Youth Behavior .  Pediatrics . 2017.

Tips on How to Deal With Media Violence . Common Sense Media.

Major Depression . National Institute on Mental Health.

Physical Exercise in Major Depression: Reducing the Mortality Gap While Improving Clinical Outcomes .  Front Psychiatry . 2018.

The Myths & Facts of Youth Suicide . Nevada Division of Public and Behavioral Health (DPBH) Office of Suicide Prevention .

Bullying Statistics: Rates of Incidence . National Bullying Prevention Center .

Cyberbullying Prevalence Among US Middle and High School-Aged Adolescents: A Systematic Review and Quality Assessment .  J Adolesc Health . 2016.

Youth Risk Behavior Survey Data Summary & Trends Report 2011–2021 . Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Sexually Transmitted Diseases: Adolescents and Young Adults . Centers for Disease Control and Prevention .

Monitoring the Future: National Survey Results on Drug Use, 1975-2023: Secondary School Students . National Institute on Drug Abuse.

Reported Drug Use Among Adolescents Continued to Hold Below Pre-Pandemic Levels in 2023 . National Institute on Drug Abuse.

The Effect of Alcohol Use on Human Adolescent Brain Structures and Systems .  Handb Clin Neurol . 2014.

Prevalence of Childhood Obesity in the United States . Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.  

Morbidity and Mortality associated With Obesity .  Ann Transl Med . 2017.

BMI Health Report Cards: Parents' perceptions and reactions .  Health Promot Pract . 2018.

Status Dropout Rates . National Center for Education Statistics. 

Burned Out to Drop Out: Exploring the Relationship Between School Burnout and School Dropout .  Eur J Psychol Educ . 2012.

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Youth Popular Cultures and Music Analytical Essay

Introduction, global context.

Scholars have reviewed youths and popular music cultures across the globe, and they show that the trend is likely to continue as new genres of music emerge. We note that youth popular cultures and movements have transformed societies by contributing to some progressive forms in terms of sexuality, gender, race, and cultural developments. Most studies tend to look at the impacts of youth cultures and music on society.

We must acknowledge that youth culture has radically transformed and changed the world through different genres of music. Since 1956, social issues like gender roles, race relations, aging processes, and sexuality have taken different turns due to forces of music.

As a result, studies tend to look at youths of today alongside the popular music cultures. Some scholars refer to such youth cultures as unfairly maligned. Youth cultures have influenced social changes for the past fifty years and have instilled values in societies that can never change (Danesi, 2010, p. 13).

The explosion of compact discs of the 1990s rocked China hard and had great impacts on its youths. The Chinese youths had the opportunity to try the new types of trendy lifestyles and sounds from the music. They referred to this as dakou CDs. These CDs became the new identity of the Chinese emerging youths. In fact, this generation abandoned the culture of the Maoist to concentrate on the emerging forms of leisure activities.

The music of 1990s also emerged and grew with China as it seeks cultural and economic growth in the global scene. Consequently, there were social challenges in Chinese society among the youths (de Kloet, 2005, p. 15). Sociologists have shown interests in studying activities of adolescents, and how they react to social changes in society, cultural issues, and cross-cultural influences in the global scene. However, it is only sociologists and some scholars who have remained experts on youth popular cultures and other social issues.

The study of youth emerged from the West after a period of rapid industrialization and social changes in structures of the society. However, serious studies began during the 1960s with such music as Punks, Hippies, the anti-war demonstrations, Beatles fans, and so on. Studies on the Western youth cultures revealed self-conscious individuals of consistent behavior demonstrated by attitude and trends in lifestyles (Arnett, 2002, p. 36).

This became known as the youth subculture. What stood out in the subculture of the Western youths were their levels of self-consciousness and manner of self-expression. The music was loud. There was a distinguishing hairstyle, fashion, behavior, and a tendency to reject any form of culture perceived as conservative or adult oriented. Though studies of the youths came from the West, analytical methods for researching Western urban youth cultures can easily apply in studying the Chinese urban youths.

Following the adoption of new lifestyles and trends as a result of Western music, Chinese youths became factors of study to determine their self-consciousness in relation to their societies. In the recent past, the growth and transfer of various types of music, such as rock ‘n’ roll, hip hop, and other forms of music entertainment only contributed to the expansion and consolidation of the urban youth style that is different from the old generation and other cultural outcomes.

We have always believed that Chinese had strong cultural orientations based on the wise teachings of their philosophers. Thus, we may think that a Chinese would not easily give up his culture for a foreign one. However, this is not the case as industrialization began to change Chinese society. Chinese youths had the opportunity to interact with the Western music and produce their music based on imitation to reflect their popular culture.

Most urban areas of China have experienced such changes. Consequently, some different forms of youth culture have emerged in urban China due to quick development and industrialization. Even in remote villages, Chinese youths would reflect the urban influence of popular youth cultures through their attires, music and so on. Most Chinese youth cultures originated from the popular cultures of urban music.

These changes are evident in their behaviors. Chinese youths have suddenly increased what were only popular in the Western world, such as materialism and consumerism, demand for self rights, individualism, active premarital sex, rebellion, and experimentation with new lifestyles.

Some scholars have approached the issue of youth popular cultures from a global perspective and view it as a problem of globalization. They argue that the youth is a generation at crossroad. Such is the case of Columbia studies conducted by Dennis. Dennis argues that challenges facing the youths in terms of cultural representation results from negative effects of globalization.

He argues that it is globalization that has promoted imbalances in society seen in socio-political ills, such as poverty, violence, warfare, and income inequalities among others. He further notes that such prevailing social ills in Colombia have great impacts on the racial minorities of Afro-Colombian origins. The youths find means of expressing such socio-political ills through rap music because they do not get any benefits from effects of globalization (Denis, 2006, p. 276).

According to Dennis, the content of the hip hop music expresses frustration and dissent due to inaccessible of benefits of globalization. This reflects broken promises, and such youth know that such advantages cannot be for all members of the society. It is the globalization that has led to changes in cultures and youth identities as seen in Afro-Colombian youths. Some youths have found themselves integrated into the modern economic and cultural trend of globalization.

Afro-Colombian youths can only use their music to construct their identities. These youths can only use hip hop to establish themselves both in the local and international societies. They have turned their music talents into cultural and professional activities for defining their ethnical identities. Their performances also reflect their ethnic-racial identities and cultural importance of their roots.

These artists have learnt the art of combining both the local and foreign elements of different cultures into their music to enable them celebrate their origins, define their black identity, and localities. Such forms of music do not fit in any culture due to combination of different cultures from other parts of the world.

Dennis refers to this culture as autonomous culture and neocolonial dependence. In order to understand the Afro-Colombian culture, we must first understand their histories and cultures. This is because its form of hip hop music keeps on changing in terms of discourse, forms, cultural, and narrations in the global context (Denis, 2006, p. 279). Just like in other societies, the popular music culture has also penetrated the identities of adolescents in Poland.

These are complex changes that affect Polish society over several decades. The popular music of the Polish reflected various aspects of their everyday lives under the guidance of communism ideologies. At the same time, they also experienced economic strain on their musical experiences. However, Polish youths and popular music cultures became complex and fragmented after 1989. This was after the democratic revolution (Kotarba, 2002, p. 233).

The Polish youth music experience shows significant changes in three major ways. First, the popular music culture of the US or Britain has reached Polish youth through various means such as the Internet, and popular music TV channels among others. Second, Polish youths heavily borrow from the popular international music for creating their own local versions.

Third, some Polish artists have remained true to their cultural roots, musical styles, and traditional music. These combinations of music have served the western youths in creating their own subcultures of adolescents.

Hip hop music has influenced many youths across the world. However, the main challenge is how to fuse hip hop and local music among youths. Australian Aboriginals youths are enthusiastic about hip hop music just like any exposed youths in society. Among Australian youths, hip hop has served as a form of expression particularly with regard to expression of socio-political agendas. It is in hip hop music where Aboriginal youths find solid foundations for their self-expressions.

At the same time, hip hop serves them with the purpose of providing youth identification (Morgan and Warren, 2011, p. 925). People blame the rap and hip hop for moral deterioration in Australia. They view these forms of music as purely African-America musical styles. According to Australians, hip hop is the major cause of problems they have in the country with reference to youths. They believe that hip hop and rap music portray violence, pimping, misogyny, sudden wealth, machismo, and brutality.

These bad influences reach the youths through popular music TV channels, music videos, and commercial radio stations. These characteristics of hip hop and rap music have given politicians a chance to blame these forms of music on almost all unrests across the world involving the youths. On the other hand, the Aboriginal hip hop is not like African-American forms of hip hop and rap. In fact, Morgan and Warren observe that most native Australian hip hop music portrays the elements of hip hop as positive.

These elements include MCing, graffiti, DJing, and breaking. In Australia, they see their native, Aboriginal hip hop as a channel through which youths can express themselves, give the disadvantaged youths opportunities for recognition and as a way of encouraging the use of indigenous languages (Morgan and Warren, 2011, p. 927). Aboriginal language is native and unwritten language. It remains a language of expression in terms of arts, rituals, dance, and others.

Given this context, Aboriginal hip hop blends well with this native language. The use of local language has enhanced majority of Australians to know a lot about their native hip hop. The use of local language has enabled Aboriginal elders to encourage young people to participate in hip hop music.

This has also increased the number of Aboriginal youths participating in hip hop music industry. Hip hop has become a means of exploring one’s identity and relating with their traditional ways of life. On the other hand, when we look at Aboriginal hip hop from the educational point of view, we notice that it gives the youths opportunities to express their pride in their roots, anger, join the community through performances, storytelling, and consider their places in the modern society.

Scholars who have taken keen interests argue that American rap, hip hop, or gangsta music provides a way of expressing deviant culture that reflects a message of social criticism, resistance, drug, violence, and empowerment among others. They also note that the analyses tend to avoid the explicit sexist and misogynist contents of such music. They have noted that most gangsta rap music contents are violence, misogynist relation to use of certain terms such as bitch.

Gangsta music has created its documented domain in the study of African-American music and culture. Further studies look into gangsta music and violence, and misogynist tendencies, gender relationships, and crime. These are some the few meanings scholars are trying to link with the explicit gangsta music (Riley, 2005, p. 297). Most sociologists always strive to establish the link between gangsta music and social problems in society.

They argue that it is the gangsta music that is responsible for the promotion of a value-free society through representation of romanticizing themes in the lyrics. These representations usually portray women as celebrating their pimping nature and explicit lifestyle. In addition, they note that the erosion of America values in 1989 occurred as a result of rap music, which tried promoting the lifestyles of gangsters and sluts.

However, the music is becoming tame as time goes. Sociologists look at the role of language in gangsta music. They argue that language acts a form of symbolism for behavior itself. Consequently, they are trying to establish the role language plays in defining interpersonal relations. They note that the use of language influences the manner in which we see what is real. In addition, they note that words are just like actions, particular when practiced instead of expressed (Schneider, 2011, p. 36). We must understand rap music in its verbal form.

This allows us easily analyze the content and interprets the lyrical messages of songs. A comparison of meanings in gangsta music will inform us of what language codes it represents. The music codes have their distinct meanings that sociologists use to interpret lyrical contents of rap music.

Youth popular cultures and music have become established part of everyday life across the globe. This observation is evident from reading some literature across the world. We have also seen how Western music has influenced the entire youth populations in relations to music they consume and what it says about them. Thus, we can establish the relationship between youth popular cultures and music within the context of their identities, and relations in the modern society.

Youths produce and consume their own music in a manner that reflects their self-consciousness, self identity, and society. Societies in which youths operate define their identities. A closer look at Chinese youths and their music cultures show that their cultures emerged during 1990s at the time of globalization. This influence came from the US through compact discs. Chinese youths copied some aspects of the US music for production of their own.

On the other hand, Afro-Columbian youths use music for condemnation of negative effects of globalization, reinforce their black identity, and express their anger and frustration. The Aboriginal youths try to relate with their traditions through their hip hop music. This shows that youth popular cultures and music depend on the social environment of youths. In such cases, the music tends to reflect what their main sources of concern might be.

Arnett, J. (2002). Adolescents in Western countries on the threshold of the 21st century. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Danesi, M. (2010). Geeks, Goths, and Gangstas: Perspectives on Youth Culture. Toronto: Canadian Scholars’ Press Inc.

de Kloet, J. (2005). Popular music and youth in urban China. China Quaterly, 183 , 609-626.

Denis, C. (2006). Afro-Columbian hip-hop: Globalization, popular music, and ethnic identities. Studies in Latin America Popular Culture, 25 , 276-295.

Kotarba, J. (2002). Popular music and teenagers in post-Communist Poland. Studies in Symbolic Interaction, 25 , 233-246.

Morgan, G, and Warren, A. (2011). Aboriginal youth, hip hop and the politics of identification. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 34 (6), 925-947.

Riley, A. (2005). The rebirth of the tragedy out of the spirit of hip hop: A cultural sociology of gangsta rap music. Journal of Youth Studies, 8 (3), 297-311.

Schneider, C. J. (2011). Culture, rap music, “bitch” and the development of the censorship frame. American Behavioral Scientist, 55 (1), 36-56.

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IvyPanda. (2019, June 27). Youth Popular Cultures and Music. https://ivypanda.com/essays/youth-culture/

"Youth Popular Cultures and Music." IvyPanda , 27 June 2019, ivypanda.com/essays/youth-culture/.

IvyPanda . (2019) 'Youth Popular Cultures and Music'. 27 June.

IvyPanda . 2019. "Youth Popular Cultures and Music." June 27, 2019. https://ivypanda.com/essays/youth-culture/.

1. IvyPanda . "Youth Popular Cultures and Music." June 27, 2019. https://ivypanda.com/essays/youth-culture/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Youth Popular Cultures and Music." June 27, 2019. https://ivypanda.com/essays/youth-culture/.

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Essay on Youth for Students and Children

500+ words essay on youth.

Youth is a worthwhile phase of one’s life. The age where the age group is no longer of a child but yet to turn out to be a grown-up is the youth age. It is an age recognized by traits of heroism, toughness, muscle, stimulation, curiosity, judgmental attitude and even much more. At this stage, even though driven by fantasy or freedom and the power to choose his or her response, all must be cautiously exercised. It is a golden phase to accomplish the dual goals of intelligence and character.

A Period of Stress & Strain, Storm & Strife

Youth, in the present era, is a powerful asset of the nation possessing the abundant energy and the zeal considered necessary for the overall advancement of the same. Youth is a critical age of development, a period of uncertainty when everything is in ferment.

As a Youth is neither a child nor an adult, the personality possesses a mixture of both stages. He can be selfish at some times or turn out to be selfless the very next day. He may also turn out to be rebellious one day.

Youth develops a revolting personality and thus we can see conflicts in opinions between the family. It is also a major cause of worsening of family relations. Youth, being argumentative in nature, develop an attitude of apt rationale and judgment.

Thus, it denies accepting as true in anything without an appropriate cause following the same. It is not that there is no lack of moral awakening or his total refusal to adhere to ethical and moral standards. It is merely that he wants his every question to be answered and having his quest fulfilled, he accepts the same.

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How to channelize Youth Power in the right direction?

Youth is full of strength and intellectual capability, which if properly utilized could assist in turning the invisible into visible, the hardships to triumph and the hard work to success thus leading to the overall growth of an individual and the nation at large.

Following measures must be adapted to turn the youth into prolific individuals:

• Understanding child psychology by the parents at this stage.
• Proper guidance by the teachers
• Practical representation of best ideals and values to foster moral education in the schools. Sex education is a must for better emotional development.
• Minimizing the habit of excessive control and strict discipline so as to promote the expression of emotions, thus leading to suitable mental development.
• The organization of extra-curricular activities to channelize the imagination in youth towards creative activities.
• Preparing the youth for the cause of society by entrusting the responsibility so as to develop a feeling of responsibility in them.
• A right and rationale attitude towards democracy should be developed in the surroundings. This would lead to develop the philosophy of life.

  Conclusion

Youth is the golden period to cherish a big dream full of passion and energy. Although, the period is also full of adventures yet they have to be looked for with the eyes open. It is the time when we can provide shape to our ideas for the economic development of society. By encouraging to take an active part in the dramas, projects, sports and others are pretty good ways to control excessive fantasy. Also, it is the time to move towards the destination which can be made possible through vocational awareness and critical study of individual differences.

Mixed with responsibility and fun, new environs, excitement, thrill, applauses, and regrets, it has a huge significance in one’s life. It is time to achieve wisdom in addition to knowledge.

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May 14, 2024 | Tiana Tran

A Reflection on Asian Culture

UConn Health Pharmacist Tiana Tran shares an essay for Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month

From left: UConn Health pharmacist Tiana Tran celebrates Tết with her sister, Viviana Tran, mother, Bachloan Phan, and father, Thoi Tran, February 2024. (Photo provided by Tiana Tran)

Growing up as a Vietnamese American, Vietnamese culture was perpetually ingrained into my home life. While both my sister and I were born in America, our parents made sure to include our culture in our childhoods. We were raised speaking Vietnamese and we spent quality time with our grandparents, which helped to solidify our language skills. We listened to Vietnamese music, played Vietnamese board games, and learned the history of our family. We enjoyed Vietnamese dishes nearly every day and celebrated Vietnamese traditions such as welcoming our departed ancestors home to eat dinner with us as well as colorful Lunar New Year festivities with family. As a result, my culture is very integral to my identity and I am proud of who I am.

Today, my family and I still perpetuate these traditions; just this February, my family got together and celebrated Tết, the Lunar New Year, in our own special way. I feel very grateful that my family and my culture are so present in my life.

A large part of my culture, and most East Asian, Southeast Asian, and South Asian cultures, revolves around community and family. In the spring, we celebrate Tết with our loved ones. We welcome the new year, full of new beginnings and good fortune, with our community. The celebrations are a chance for everyone to become closer and for communities to get together. It’s a chance for us to appreciate our roots, pay respects to our ancestors, and share well wishes for the new year with our loved ones.

With May’s arrival and spring in full bloom, I reflect upon the community I am a part of at UConn Health, and the immense pride I feel for working in and with a health system that truly cares for everyone. I am so incredibly grateful for the opportunities I have received that allowed me to contribute to the health care system as a pharmacist. This spring, I reflect on my identity and my culture, and how I am so proud of my heritage because it has made me the person I am today.

This May, I reflect on my roots, how my loved ones, my ancestors, and my culture have led me to where I am now. To everyone who has Asian or Pacific Islander heritage, I am so proud to see us represented at UConn Health, where we work together to cultivate a community of care in our health care system.

And to everyone in general, I invite you to do the same and reflect on your roots, and how they have led you to where you are today. Happy Asian American Heritage Month!

Tiana Tran, Pharm.D., is a 2022 graduate of the UConn School of Pharmacy. She completed her pharmacy residency at UConn Health a year later, and started as a staff pharmacist at UConn Health last August.

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The Value of Defeat in Developing Resilience

"wins and lessons" instead of "wins and losses" in youth sports..

Posted May 16, 2024 | Reviewed by Michelle Quirk

• What Is Resilience?
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• How we respond to failure in sports and in life is highly significant.
• Self-assessment at the individual and team levels after defeats allows us to zoom in on areas for growth.
• School social work practitioners can give students choices to support their ability to think independently.

No athlete plays to lose, nor does any coach game plan for defeat. It’s safe to say that a competitive mindset is a prerequisite to participating in sports in any capacity. Nevertheless, no athlete or coach is undefeated in their lifetime, and how we respond to failure makes all the difference in sports and in life. As a youth football head coach, my teams and I have experienced our share of defeats. Sometimes we are outplayed, sometimes outcoached, sometimes both. Gleaned from a less-than-stellar win-loss record has been a plethora of teaching and learning moments.

Self-assessment at the individual and team levels after defeats has allowed us to zoom in on analyzing areas for growth, opportunities that often don’t exist after victories. It’s human nature to believe that little work is needed after wins while more work is needed after losses. The more we win, the more we believe we have already outworked our competition , subconsciously becoming complacent. Losses, though never desired, can be capitalized upon to accelerate growth through urgency.

I’ve often told my athletes that to play like a winner, you have to work like a loser. During especially difficult seasons, I’ve used the language of “wins and lessons” instead of “wins and losses” as it encourages continuous growth under undesirable circumstances. These lessons often transcend from the football field into the classroom and eventually into careers in the boardroom.

What if ‘All I Do Is Win’?

“All I do is win, win, win no matter what” (DJ Khaled, 2010).

Although this seems like a delightful way to experience life, it’s quite obvious that the low points in our lives make the high points that much more enjoyable. If all we did was win, apathy would replace enthusiasm as we wouldn’t know the sting of loss. Defeat helps us learn resilience through constructive criticism, whereas constructive criticism is more difficult to formulate and accept in victory.

It’s a myth that we either fail or we succeed. The reality is that we fail in order to succeed—that the road to success is paved in failure. Thus, there is no success without failure, and contrary to what some may believe, failure is not the opposite of success but rather it’s a part of success (Huffington, 2018). Ultimately, if all we did was win, it would be impossible for us to grow.

Fixed Mindset vs. Growth Mindset

Stanford University psychologist Carol Dweck (2015) writes about fixed and growth mindsets : A fixed mindset leads to a desire to look smart and therefore a tendency to (a) avoid challenges, (b) give up easily due to obstacles, (c) see effort as fruitless, (d) ignore useful feedback, and (e) be threatened by others’ success. This results in what she calls "static intelligence ." A growth mindset, on the other hand, leads to a desire to learn and therefore a tendency to (a) embrace challenges, (b) persist despite obstacles, (c) see effort as a path to mastery, (d) learn from criticism, and (e) be inspired by others’ success. This results in what she calls "developmental intelligence."

Implications for School Social Work Practice

Developing growth-minded youth, athletes or not, means facilitating autonomy. School social work practitioners can give students choices to support their ability to think independently. To develop meaningful relationships with students, school social work practitioners can organize group activities in and out of sports. Asking students to keep a journal is a great way for school social work practitioners to support students’ self-reflection.

School social work practitioners can provide opportunities for students to display life skills by welcoming student leadership in decision-making , particularly in peer-group settings (e.g., team sports). When teachable moments appear, school social work practitioners can pause to stress the transferability of life skills. Using volunteerism is another way school social work practitioners can involve local communities by having students teach (or coach) younger students.

Academic development is the top priority for students, including student-athletes, and school social work practitioners can help coaches take an interest in their athletes’ academic progress. By encouraging peer evaluation and learning from others, school social work practitioners can encourage students to learn from each other in addition to their teachers and coaches. Finally, school social work practitioners can help teachers and coaches intentionally plan developmental strategies to encourage realistic goal-setting for their students and athletes.

Wins and losses in youth sports are essentially meaningless. I’ve told the parents of my youth football players that some of them may go pro, but none of them will go pro next year. (I coach 8-year-olds.) I’ve opted to use the language of "wins and lessons" instead of "wins and losses," and it has helped implement a growth mindset for holistic athlete development. I ask my athletes to consider how the lessons they learn on the football field can translate to lessons applied in the classroom, and one day, the boardroom. Past task competence can help develop future task confidence ; thus, reflecting on why a lesson learned about football is actually a lesson learned about life is of utmost importance to the development of student and athlete resilience and empowerment.

Dweck, C. (2015). Carol Dweck revisits the growth mindset. Education Week, 35 (5), 20–24.

Satara, A. (n.d.). In 1 Sentence Arianna Huffington Captured the Pathway to Success; Anyone with ambitious goals needs to hear her perspective on this . Inc.com.

Khaled, D. (Artist). (2010). All I do is win [Music]. Victory.

Dr. Nafees Alam is a professor specializing in nonprofit program evaluation and macro practice, where he has over seven years of experience.

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