Youth cultures and social change

Youth cultures are formed in specific educational, labour market and family contexts, and additional relevant contexts are the uses of leisure that are catered for and role modelled, with which young people become acquainted during childhood socialisation. This paper uses Britain to illustrate how youth cultures have changed alongside successive transformations in broader uses of leisure. The first era of modern leisure saw recreation movements, which included numerous youth organisations, struggle to save working class youth from gang and other street cultures. Upper and middle class youth were relatively protected by families and schools. The second relatively classless modern era of leisure for young people was created in the post-Second World War years of full employment, progressively rising standards of living, and the expansion of new consumer industries. The third and latest era, still historically in formation, is characterised by post-industrial economic and employment profiles, slower economic growth, widening income inequalities, an extended youth life stage, the multiplication of information and communication technologies and uses thereof, and, perhaps most profoundly, the inability of most young people to move into adulthoods during which they will live as well as their parents, at least in material terms. Historical transformations in uses of leisure, like changes in the circumstances of young people, are associated with broader social, economic and political changes, but in the case of leisure the changes spread completely throughout a population only with cohort replacement, and the broader economic and political changes are more likely to extend over decades rather than just years.  Moreover, the changes operate differently and occur earlier and later among different socio-demographic groups. This complicates the task of  relating youth cultures to broader leisure and other patterns, but doing so helps to resolve issues such as whether, during the late-20^th century, young people’s leisure became post-subcultural.