Youth Culture

Youth cultures are formed from a criteria consisting of dress/fashion, music influences, rebellion against "the norm", having a collective identity and being marginalised. Teenagers are the age group which stereotypically fall into such cultures. The word teenager means a constructed social group. They were in part made by marketers to sell products and services to. In the 1960's and 1970's there was an uprising and rebellion against consumerism which led to the forming of "counter culture". The trend has continued by formation of user generated cultures online.

Ketley theory 2007- "Among young people themselves, a wide range of colourful labels such as "Goths, Skaters, Greebos and Surfers" are often used to make distinctions between the behaviours of specific frienship groups"

The youth culture criteria includes:

• dress codes
• music influences
• expression- rebellion and apposing against traditional apperances and views
• fitting into a group but at the same time being an outsider
• literature- fan magazines, fan sites
• cultural practices- behaviours, morals, codes
• being marginalised-  the minority
• having an opinion leader, band member, avid fan- who can change the opinion of the group.

Keu words in Youth Culture

collective identity- the self that finds solidarity with others who are similar

mediated- how the media influences and portrays social groups and the influence this has on their identity.

"We" media- marginalised social groups have often used media as a way of forging their own collective identity. This can challenege how social groups are represented in the media, this is a form of Self Representation. We media is also a word for anything that is produced by us and not by professionals and organisations.

Prosumers- producers and consumers, we consume and distribute- due to proliferation of technology.

The first youth culture were the "bowery boys" or "soap locks". The bowery boys were antivist, anti catholic and anti irish gang based north of the five points district of New York City in the mid-19th century. They were primarily single males who frequently visited the saloons and brothels of the Bowery and dressed in black stovepipe hats, red shirts, black flared trousers, high-heeled calfskin boots and black vests, with oil slicked hair- hence the name "soap locks". The bowery boys were known as a gang and not a group which has uring the New York Draft Riots of 1863, the Bowery boys took part in much of the looting and fighting with rival gangs. They even developed their own dialect- the words B'hoy and g'hal  were the slang words used to describe the young men and woman of the lower working class of Manhattan.