Youth culture Facts for Kids

Young people protesting the Vietnam War.

Youth culture is about the ways young people, like children, teenagers, and young adults, live and act. It includes the shared ideas, styles, and activities that are special to young people and different from adults.

Things like clothes, popular music, sports, special words, and dating often show what youth culture is about. Inside youth culture, there are many changing groups called youth subcultures. These groups can be different based on things like race, background, how much money they have, or their style.

Is Youth Culture Real?
Youth Movements Through History
- Flappers: A New Spirit
- Mods: Style and Empowerment
Why Did Youth Culture Appear?
How Youth Culture Affects Young People
How Youth Culture Affects Society
See also

Is Youth Culture Real?

People sometimes wonder if youth culture is truly separate from adult culture. Some say that young people's values are not really different from their parents. Also, how much friends influence someone can change a lot depending on where they are, their gender, age, and social standing. This makes it hard to say there's just one "youth culture."

However, some researchers believe youth culture is real. They say that young people use their own words and ways of speaking to create meanings that only they understand. This shows that young people might see the world differently from adults. This difference suggests that youth culture is indeed its own culture.

Youth Movements Through History

Throughout the 1900s, young people have greatly influenced how we live and what's popular. Two good examples are the flappers and the Mods.

Flappers: A New Spirit

Flappers were young women after World War I who felt excited about the future. This excitement showed in their new attitudes. They openly drank, smoked, and sometimes socialized with rougher types of men. Their fashionable clothes also showed off this new, lively way of life.

Mods: Style and Empowerment

Mods appeared during a time of war and social problems. They were young men and women from all walks of life who believed their fashion choices "gave them entry everywhere" and made them feel powerful. The Mods' style and love for new technology spread from the UK to North America and other countries.

Why Did Youth Culture Appear?

Youth culture is a fairly new idea in history. There are a few main ideas about why it started in the 20th century. These ideas look at history, money, and how people think.

Schooling and Age Groups

One idea is that youth culture grew because of mandatory schooling. Before schools became common, many children and teenagers spent most of their time with adults. But now, young people spend a lot of time with others their own age. These interactions help them share experiences and ideas, which forms the basis of youth culture.

Society's Rules and Modern Life

Another idea is that some societies help youth culture grow more than others. This depends on whether a society has rules that apply to everyone (universal rules) or rules that change for different people (particular rules). Modern societies, where everyone needs to learn the same rules, tend to have universal rules.

This need for universal rules has made it hard for young people to learn everything only from their families. So, many societies use age groups, like in schools, to teach children society's rules. Youth culture can be a side effect of this. Because children spend so much time together and learn the same things, they develop their own culture.

Finding Your Identity

Psychologists also think youth culture helps young people figure out who they are. When a young person's future path isn't clear, youth culture can be a way to find their identity. Erik Erikson suggested that during teenage years, a main challenge is "identity versus role confusion." The goal is to answer the question, "Who am I?"

In many places, teenagers are expected to act like both children and adults. Some thinkers believe that forming a youth culture helps young people deal with these different expectations. For example, Talcott Parsons thought that being a teenager is a time of moving from relying on parents to becoming independent. During this time, relying on friends can be like a temporary replacement for parents.

Another idea is that youth culture helps teenagers find freedom. Even though school keeps them dependent on parents, young people still need some independence. They find this freedom through fun activities with their friends.

How Youth Culture Affects Young People

For a long time, adults have worried that youth groups might cause young people to lose good values. Some researchers have said that youth culture has values that are "in conflict with those of the adult world." Common worries include young people not caring about school, doing risky things, and spending too much time on fun activities. These worries have made some adults think that young people have different values and that youth culture is a threat to society's morals.

However, researchers don't all agree on whether youth groups really have different beliefs than adults. Many studies have found that most teenagers have views similar to their parents. Some studies even showed that teenagers' values were more like their parents' in the 1980s than in earlier decades. While there might be some differences, they are often about how strongly someone believes something, not about the behavior itself.

Things like sports, language, music, clothing, and dating are often ways young people show their independence. They can try these things without changing their core beliefs or values.

How Youth Culture Affects Society

Young people can bring about big changes in society, sometimes through youth-led movements. Groups of young people, often students, were very important in the American civil rights movement. Organizations like the Southern Student Organizing Committee and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee played a key role. The Freedom Summer campaign, for example, relied heavily on college students who helped African Americans register to vote and taught in "Freedom Schools."

The protests against the Vietnam War in America were also led by students. Many college campuses protested the war with sit-ins and demonstrations. Groups like the Young Americans for Freedom and the Student Peace Union were based on young people's involvement and helped with anti-war activities. Some experts say that the activism during the Vietnam War showed a youth culture that had values different from the main American culture.

In the early 2010s, the Arab Spring showed how young people were important in protests. This movement was started mostly by young people, especially college students, who were unhappy with their opportunities. Because young people were so involved, Time magazine included several young members of the movement in its 2011 list of the 100 most influential people. Also, this movement used social media (which is often seen as part of youth culture) to plan and share information about events.

Youth culture facts for kids

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