Youth Culture Essay

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Young People in Today’s World Young people today live in a post-modern world and the prevailing cultural context in which they live may be said to be characterised by things such as individualism, materialism, pluralism, secularism, relativism and existentialism. Thus, post-modernity poses a challenge to meta-narratives (overall conceptions of history or society) or ‘stories or beliefs which provide the key to the overall meaning of life’. However, ‘it also engenders new opportunities for creativity, tolerance, and mutual understanding’. With regard to today’s young people, it is important to take into account that they are:

...different from their parents in many ways. They grew up in a different world and face different challenges. Their lives are more complex. They face a whole range of choices every day. [Nevertheless,] they do not lack commitment. They do not lack beliefs and values. Rather, faced with an uncertain and ever changing world... they have to make choices from a range of alternatives unknown to earlier generations.

So what is ‘Youth Culture’? The term ‘youth culture’ pertains to the ways in which young people conduct their lives – it can refer to the styles, music, behaviours, clothes, interests, beliefs and suchlike, of adolescents. Indeed, such cultures
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One of the difficulties faced by young people today is that they can find it hard to get in touch with God as they are often so engrossed in trying to keep in touch with their friends in a rapidly changing world. Consequently, many then believe that only those things which can be seen, measured and proven (in other words, scientific) are valid – everything else is viewed as being false, fantasy of simply wishful thinking, thus, allowing no room for the spiritual

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