Making Youth: A History of Youth in Modern Britain. Chapter 5: Leisure and Consumption

What is it about?

Youth consumption in the nineteenth century Cultures of girls and young women Rebellious and disaffected styles Post-war youth Shaping a national youth culture In the nineteenth century, most young people were defined by their involvement in production but from the First World War, consumption and consumer culture started to play a much larger part in their lives. In the second half of the twentieth century, these became a major influences, with music, fashion and cultural styles becoming ideological and political expressions of youth identity. In the decades after the Second World War, the leisure and marketing industries became more sophisticated, as did the media, which had developed since the late-Victorian period to become a mass phenomenon. By the end of the twentieth-century, young people were not only targets of consumer culture but its drivers, ‘cultural innovators’ who used consumer opportunities creatively, to shape themselves in ways that differed not only from their parents’ generation but also from other young people. This chapter discusses the process by which consumption came to play such an important part in young people’s lives, starting first with their involvement in the emerging consumer culture of the nineteenth century.

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