Yoof culture....are young people rejecting social values in a way which damages them?

So we've all been there, hit the teens, considered rebellion and gone through from there but why engage in this rather facile process that seems to mean so much at the time and so little later? Is youth culture and the potential to explore and integrate different cultures wasted on the young like youth itself? Youth culture and rebellion tend to go together hand in hand but what they reflect is a need to define self through separation from others largely by age - age seems to be the key factor in defining identity. Rejection of the fashions of the last era defines many attributes of the fashions of the current era.

There tends to be well marshalled boundaries that young people enforce with a result that almost everyone in their cohort is included or dropped for not participating in the group action - this has become a part of the make up of youth culture for over half a century. Are there the same derogatory terms applied to those who follow the values of their parents too rigidly as were in the 1950's such as 'square' etc? Do young people find a great deal about those who are moving straight towards capitalism and consumerism without any strong visible rejection of the values that hold society together rightly unsettling...? Are young people excluded for not engaging in fashions which are detrimental to their employment prospects and society in general...? How and why has this trend amongst young people to engage in youth cultures begun - has this speeded up social and economic change since the first teenage rebels hit the streets of Britain in the 1950's (because of anticipated change during one's lifetime)?

There are a multitude of ways teenage fashions including the rejection of the values of the previous generation could be healthy and improve social change in the West and a number of ways that social change could be unhealthy and create problems for people, including fragmenting family and community relations because of the need to define one's self and one's peers as 'different' from the previous generation and over engaging in this activity.

It is may be worth considering the values that may rejected in the light of social change over the period of a few centuries rather than a couple of decades as most youth culture often seems to be considered. Those values of the previous generation may only reflect a relatively minor blip in the transitions that are always taking place within human cultures and not of any great significance. Have the youth of the West been over sensitised to pick up on matters that they may wish to change because there are such major failings with the current establishment that they don't know where to begin? Maybe change and political action are not closely tied together within Britain at present - do the Labour Party have a significant role in shaping what matters to pick up on in terms of social change and lifestyle factors that the youth of the nation may be more interested in?

Have the 'youthful and dynamic' leaders of the major parties made any form of impact on youth culture and political engagement? Maybe they don't think as Aaron Antonovsky did that having a sense of coherence running through the life of an individual is that important and that life can be fragmented into different stages which may not naturally lead to a complete and whole individual? Are we in a post modern age where one's life may acceptably be classed as fragmented owing to the nature of opportunity and an individuals' well being not be questioned as part of this? Was Antonovskys' conceptualisation of a 'sense of coherence' taking place within a modernist perspective or not - health promoters please comment.