ABSTRACT This article gives an account of four studies of youth culture in the areas of recent fiction film and television in Spain and Mexico. It argues that, although the primary texts are different in medium, format and audience address, they coincide in their treatment of such themes as friends and family, and sex and violence. The article also suggests that much-criticized youth TV series in both countries deserve both close textual analysis and sympathetic reading of the social media that they have provoked and with which they have converged. These give evidence of an active and sophisticated audience response.