Teen-Age Culture: An Overview

Abstract

Teen-age culture is a product of affluence: we can afford to keep a large population in school through high school. The teen-age culture of younger adolescents is characteristically lower class, that of older teen-agers, upper middle class. The material traits of teen-age culture include certain kinds of clothes, automobiles, and the paraphernalia of sports and recreation. Teen-agers constitute an impor tant market; advertisers are in a coalition with them if parents protest. The nonmaterial culture traits include a special lan guage. There also is great emphasis on fun and popularity. Popular songs reflect the preoccupation of teen-agers with love in its various stages. Political concern is not characteristic of teen-age culture, but, when they are asked for opinions, teen agers reflect those of their class backgrounds. Class pervades all aspects of teen-age culture from clothes to taste in moving pictures to hangouts to activities. In teen-age society, as in the larger world, a substantial proportion are alienated, out siders, rejected. At the college level, the old "rah-rah" culture is giving way to more serious vocational and academic cultures. If this trend continues, teen-age culture may end with high school graduation; at the college level, young people will be more adult. At the same time, however, it appears that children enter teen-age culture at an earlier age. So long as we can afford to support a large leisure class of youngsters, teen-age culture in some form or other will continue.