Youth Is A Universal Concept Essay

Young people have continually been a huge subject in our society. People often define youth as just a period between childhood and adult age, but youth is not simply that. There can be a variety of different ways in which we can identify youth and its true meaning in relation to different aspects and influences in our surroundings. Youth can be argued as a social construct rather than a universal concept because everyone has different experiences in their lives and not everyone experiences youth. It is important to understand every aspect that contributes to what youth is, because there is so much more to youth than a group of people or an age. Pierre Bourdieu, once said that ‘youth is just a word’ (Bourdieu, 1978, quoted in Jones 2009: 1). But he then shows that this far from the truth. He states that youth is an evolving concept that is layered with plenty of different values and aspects (Bourdieu, 1978, quoted in Jones 2009: 1). There have been multiple ongoing debates in youth studies on whether youth is socially constructed or if it is just a universal stage of life. We can argue that youth is not a universal stage because everyone’s lives differ from one another. Our experiences, daily routines, culture, environment, families, financial stability are all very different from one another and varies widely. Youth is the transition period from childhood dependence to …show more content…
It is seen as part of our lives. Some people, especially in Western countries define youth as life stages between childhood and adulthood and becoming independent from dependent (Kehily, 2007). The notions of youth are that they are ‘becoming’ while adulthood has already ‘arrived.’ Some argue that everyone experiences youth at some point in their lives, but this is not entirely correct in certain cases. Therefore looking at youth as a universal stage remains an inappropriate