Youth Groups

Peer groups, school classes, sports groups, interest groups, fellowships, friendship groups, political groups, subcultures, gangs of youths, “tribes,” clans—there are numerous kinds of youth groups, sharing a number of meanings and qualities with individual members and with other groups. Origin, purpose, and structure of youth groups, as well as motivation for joining and staying in a group, however, might be quite diverse. The average adolescent participates in several groups established in various contexts of everyday life. He or she moves between different groups according to time of day, situation, interests, needs, and social context. It is a complex network of relations that demands both constant evaluation and tuning of role performance, participation, and give-and-take in the situation. Youth groups are the basis of youth cultural practices, social interaction, and identity formatting.

Youth groups can be classified as either institutionally defined or peer group oriented. The first classification includes, for example, school classes or youth clubs in which young people come together by necessity or interest but are grouped by the choice of others. A school class might define a certain community in relation to other classes, but the powerful groups are established within or across these rather loose frames. Social scientist Mats Lieberg (1995) distinguished between peer groupand association-oriented teenagers. The latter consists of groups such as sports teams, in which members share an interest and act united in relation to other teams. Others could be institutionally organized music groups, Scouts, and political groups. Variations are self-organized interest groups such as fan groups, news groups, private music groups, and role-playing groups, all based on a rather homogeneous common interest.

The second classification, peer-oriented groups, is based on a combination of local belonging, shared interests, and common understanding/recognition. Hence, there is a potential multiple set of interests within the group. Interest groups can arise both in physical space and in virtual space, whereas peer groups traditionally are established from meetings in physical space. The continued validity of this classification can be discussed as the increasing movement between virtual space and physical space changes the patterns of social and cultural practices.

The community experience within the group might be rather vague. A group can be defined as a “number of persons placed together or naturally associated.” However, according to social scientists Barry Wellman and Milena Gulia (1999), a community is more than the sum of a set of ties. Political scientist J. Dean (2000) further claims that community is not based on common action and common interest alone. With a reference to Howard Rheingold (a theorist and researcher on virtual communities), Dean says that a community is emergent property, and it is loaded with common feeling, emotion, and affect.