Byron Bay Life

The influence of youth on culture has been noted at least since the time of Socrates, who is said to have lamented that “Children now are tyrants, not the servants of their households.” Certainly, in today’s culture, many trends begin among younger members of society and gradually “bubble up” through the remainder of society. Musical trends are perhaps the most recognizable; certainly in 1956, Elvis Presley’s appeal began with teenagers and met significant resistance from parents and older adults who found his music distasteful and his dance moves far too sensual.



A similar phenomenon occurred with the Beatles; their appeal to younger fans met with harsh disapproval by those who saw the Fab Four as undermining the wholesome entertainment they themselves had enjoyed in youth.

This pattern of youth acceptance and embracing of a new trend, rejection by the adult society, and eventual incorporation of the trend into the mainstream has been repeated countless times throughout history. Those rejecting new trends were often innovators and trendsetters in their own youth; their failure to recognize similar traits in today’s youth may account for their rejection of current cultural trends. Ironically, this negative reaction often spurs even more radical and reactionary trends and may ensure that the trend becomes even more entrenched among the youth presented with this disapproval.



In Japan, significant research has been done into the phenomenon of “massing” due to the increased influence of youth-oriented cultural trends during the mid 1970s. Japanese sociologists and researchers witnessed the mass adoption of trends by the youth of that period and sought its root causes. Their conclusions indicated that the predominance of youth culture was due to an increasingly affluent population who, unaccustomed to modern luxuries, devoted their excess income to their children’s happiness and entertainment in order to provide them with the pleasures and extras that adults of the period had done without. This focus on the child as the center of the family was soon reflected in commercial and societal trends, and youth-oriented entertainments and products were soon staples throughout the economic marketplace.

A similar effect was seen in the United States during the baby boom years; children, teenagers, and young adults formed an enormous commercial demographic. Products designed to appeal to these younger consumers were rewarded with higher sales; products that incorporated attributes of the existing youth trends sold even better. While this was often presented as “counterculture” marketing, in fact it was completely in line with the general pattern of cultural change. Trends that were first embraced by youth and rejected by adults eventually became a part of the mainstream and were replaced by still more controversial trends; this pattern continues today, and forms a large part of the fabric of cultural change that characterizes modern society.