Anti-intellectualism - Youth Culture

Youth Culture

Critics have suggested that contemporary youth culture is a commercial form of anti-intellectualism orienting adherents to consumerism. The Frontline public affairs television series documentary The Merchants of Cool(2001) describes how the advertising business transformed adolescents’ language, thought, and action (cliques, fashion, fads) into commodities, and thus engendered a generation of intellectually disengaged Americans uninterested in progressing to adulthood.

The US youth subculture originated from the post-World War II economic prosperity allowing adolescents to work and have a discretionary income — whilst still dependent upon parents. In turn, scholars argue that the newfound economic power of adolescents allowed business to sell them popularity — an identity as a young person — something that once was not for sale, but self-created; to wit, the computer programmer and blog writer Paul Graham likened youth culture to an occupation permitting little time for education and intellectual interests.