Do you understand ‘youth culture’ or ‘young people’?

Those are actually two very different things. Understanding a boat is not the same as understanding the sea.

Of course, a response to that is ‘sure, Tim, but the boat doesn’t create the sea, whereas youth culture is a direct product of young people.’ Fair point, but is it though?

To what extent is youth culture actually created by young people themselves? If popular culture comes primarily from music, games, clothes, books, sports – in relationship with news, markets, education, politics, technology – etc. then all these things are the purview of adults whose job it is to pre-empt the needs and desires of young people, use available resources, and then create something for them to aspire into. Youth culture then, is largely the by-product of cultural marketing, entertainment companies, and broader secondhand experiences – conceived, designed, packaged, and sold almost exclusively by adults.

Granted, all of this is heavily reliant on trend-spotting, which needs to be very receptive to the voice of young people; but 1) it’s still all largely processed by adults, and 2) we’re still talking about a group of young people that were influenced by the last trends of youth culture – which was also packaged by adults.

Understanding youth culture is not the same as understanding young people.

This is a super important distinction to make as it means that a lot of youth culture is aspirational rather than actual. It’s created outside of them to step into, rather than blossoming directly from them as young people. Culture, in this sense, works as some form of role modelling or inhabitable zones. Young people are therefore forming identifies by reaching for what (culturally) is attractive to them from outside of themselves and ‘deciding’ (whether subliminally or liminally) whether to step into it.

In which case, we as youth leaders need to stop talking exclusively about how to speak into culture and start to literally speak culture instead.

Can we form healthy, distinct, and uniquely aspirational culture in our youth work communities? What is it that we can help them reach for? What relational biases and personal visions can we influence?

Young people are capable of so much more than their cultural whims suggest. Let’s give them that opportunity for more.

This is a big topic – and linked to things I’ve written previously on relevancy, and ‘supra-cultural’ traits – so expect more on this to come.

Photo by Ben den Engelsen on Unsplash