Youth Culture on Screens Big and Small

Abstract

Motion pictures and television have shaped youth identity while also evoking anxiety from adults concerned about the influence of this media on the young. Within different media systems, this phenomenon has had different trajectories, which becomes clear in a comparison of the United States and Scandanavia. In both regions, adults’ anxiety about the influence of films on the young was a dominant issue from the birth of the medium, accompanied by recurrent discussions of censorship and age classifications. After the Second World War, and particularly the 1960s, commercialized youth media in America attempted to directly appeal to youth, often through fantasy and romance. By contrast, publicly funded agencies in Scandinavia and elsewhere in Europe invited young people to influence how television and film could be used to advance their own agendas and aesthetics. With the expansion of the World Wide Web, youth were able to come together from all over the world to discuss and celebrate their favorite television series on dedicated fan pages and social media.