The social context of youth groups.

Over the past thirty years, social theorists have explored consequences of structural change in society for status passage from childhood to adult roles. To a considerable extent, this analysis has focused on the origin and consequences of group formations among youth, their problematic function, position and relative influence in the socialization network. Certain conditions were discussed, which determine the degree and type of peer influence, and its relation to adult influence. Answers to such questions have been sought in both structural factors and social interaction, in structural conduciveness and strain, on the one hand, and in social processes which promote or weaken social attachments, on the other. A structural perspective directs attention to the position of youth in the social order, and to conditions which give rise to youth groups and subcultures, whether pro-cultural or oppositional. These social phenomena are generally viewed as a collective response to shared deprivation or interests occasioned by structural differentiation, functional specialization, status barriers, and lack of incorporation in achievement-oriented societies. Collective adaptations are facilitated by the common situation of youth, and prolonged concentration in relatively segregated settings.