Question

is there a youth culture in the United States? what difference in values and norms are there between younger people(14-25) and people 26 or more years older?

Answer 1

Culture can be defined as a set ideas, traditions customs and social behaviour of a particular type of people, society or population.

Youth culture can be defined as beliefs, behaviours, practices, styles and interests that are associated with young people (14-25).

Yes there is a presence of youth culture in the United States of America. This is reflected through various practices and trends in the US society as follows:

• The pop culture if the United States of America greatly reflects and emphasizes the youth culture. The themes of the songs are videos are central to youth culture such as love, dating, identity crisis, use if drugs, alcohol etc.
• This is also reflected in the clothes and fashion industry of America. An example of this would be in the 1960s clothes that indicated freedom(an important aspect of youth culture especially adoloscents) were in trend.
• Language and hairstyles that show distinction from others are preferred and promoted.

The differences between the values and norms between younger people and people older than 26 years old are as follows :

• Youth and people 26 or older differ greatly in their developmental stages if we consider Erik Erikson's stages of development. So while adoloscents are still struggling with identity vs role confusion the older ones are dealing with intimacy vs isolation or generativity vs stagnation.
• Therefore while younger people have emphasis on values such as freedom, autonomy, independence the older ones are more concerned with values and norms such as belonging, intimacy, cooperation, ambition.