what is left to the youth

While listening to the lecture this week about alternative eculture and the youth subcultures and also reading the recommended reading and searching internet websites, I wanted to look at the reason of why I think it is so difficult today to pinpoint some alternative or sub cultures that are only, or especially, parts of the youth.

To tackle the question I had to go back to my personal youth and think a bit to these years. In the late 70 and late 80’s, in Switzerland, being part of the youth movement was being between 17 to 25 years old. Before 17 years old you were considered as a teenager and after 25 a young adult. Young people had their own music. In Switzerland, The 70”s were the time of French singer like Johnny, Dalida, Claude Francois, Eddy Mitchell, Julio Iglesias (Enrike Iglesias Dad) or France Gall. In the English department it was the time of Grease, the 80’s were the time of Renaud, Jean-Louis Aubert, Julie, Duran Duran, Madonna, Michael Jackson or Boy George. Young people or group had their own way of wearing clothes and dancing depending of which “group” they were part. Personally, that meant, black long coats and black clothes (no emo sort of feeling involved, just a way to differentiate you from others), cool way of dancing in group (would love to do it again), special “pub” or bar where we were hanging between friends. That was our own personal culture that we were thinking and hoping no older generation would understand. Not so much different than the youth of today.

Still something was different, so different than today. Our parents were considered by us as “old”. Less than our grandparents but still in the old department, out of fashion, and we strongly believed that they were not knowing what was going on in our life, our group of friends, or brain. The usual family was composed of a working dad, the king in the house, a mom at home and the children. Parents were acting like parents, like older people, and if they were not it was not in the front of their children. Our parents could not buy us many things as only one of them was working at that time, money was often really tight and material things were expensive. We could not get a new cd or a new video every week. We did not pass as much time in front of the tv or playing computer games as they was usually only one tv (still black and white) per family and no or only a few computer games in the house and so were often not as aware of what was going on in the countries next to ours as we are now, also not so aware at all of what was going on in the rest of the world.

Today, in the 2000 something, we live in a total different world than many generations have. The technology has made so much progress that we have access to many things from all around the world without even travelling. We are inundated by ads, messages, and ideas in our everyday life. We do not have so much time to think of what we really do want personally, it is more we want what we have seen or been told about it. Our parents do not really act as old people, not even our grandparents. We do know that they have already lived many interesting years like the 60’s freedom (sex, drug, rock and roll) time or the 80’s weird clothes and hair time. The 90”s can be remembered as being the time of Aids, 9/11. Not really exciting for youths. Parents of today are often acting like if they were still in their teenager’s period. They do not feel old and do not want to be viewed as such. As written by Steve Colins in Small Fire (May 2002), nobody is a teenager anymore, because everybody is”.

What does it leave for the youth to be different than their parents? Youths have always needed to differentiate from adult. This is part of the process to enter in the adult life. There is the need for youth to be different, to be better than previous generations. There is this need of wanting to be different than your parents, not making the same mistakes than they did, being able to have a better future.

But in today’s world the lines have been blurred and many things have already been lived or done by precedent generations. From 1995 to 2007 whatever has been taken by the youth movements as alternative cultures has quickly be taken by industries to make it a lucrative object. And these alternative or sub cultures will be shown all over the world – with the help of the radio, TV or the Internet, as being something new and trendy where in fact they only are the same old thing as last xx years ago, but repackaged with a lot of merchandising around.

So in the end, what can we find these last ten years that have been left for teenagers to be different from their parents? Not a lot, the big companies are constantly brainwashing our kids and trying to put them in the mold of conformity. But there is an unease feeling in the air. And we have seen the extent of it in the last years with the filming on their mobile of other youth to be bashed by many, killing others students. This is a very worrying thought to see that for some, the only things left for youth to be different than the majority of the older generations is to be violent, violence often used against their own peers. They are looking at being different and being violent may be one of the only things that was left to them by the main part of the adult world.

I would personally say that we, as parents, should not forget that we are our children parents and not their mate. We must act as a parent, caring, understanding and friendly and leave them the right to be young, to experience their own culture and to try to leave the youth this culture, their own, without always trying to take this for us, often in order to stay young and look cool. If the youth of today feels there is still a bit of place left for their own personal, not lucrative, new cultures, than they will perhaps believe in their future, believe in themselves.