Youth cultural styles

Abstract

This research examines whether opposition between higher and lower forms of youth culture still contributes to the emergence of groups with different cultural tastes. Do youth at higher levels of secondary education (for example, pre-university education) tend to display ‘omnivorous’ tastes nowadays (Peterson, 1992), just as highly educated adults do? A sample of Dutch adolescents (N = 226) completed a questionnaire concerning their preferences in several cultural domains (music, film and television, light reading and literature, receptive cultural participation). Four groups or clusters representing cultural styles were identified: omnivores, moderate omnivores, a group interested primarily in popular culture, and a culturally disinterested group; each group comprised about a quarter of the sample. Whereas girls were overrepresented in the first two groups, boys were more common in the latter two groups. The two groups with omnivorous tastes appear to fit the profile of ‘normal’ youth. Otherwise, the four cultural groups could not be linked to specific youth subcultures.

The impact of COVID-19 on online music listening behaviors in light of listeners’ social interactions

“…Evidence suggests that males prefer less mainstream music genres, while females favor melodic and popular genres [14]. Specifically, females tend to exhibit a preference for mainstream music genres such as pop [25,27], folk [49] [91], and classical music [26,113]. A more detailed discussion can be found in [25,26,77].…”