ABSTRACT
The specifically youthful character of young people, and the powerful effects of adolescence on their behaviour are inadequately acknowledged generally in Britain. Age is a generally important criterion of social differentiation, a powerful principle in terms of which most, if not all, societies are organized and ordered. The age system is comprised of a set of inter-related categories (cultural definitions) and age groups (structural units). Youth is one of this set: an age category, an age group, a social role institutionalized within society. It refers to the same reality as the psychologist construes under the concept of adolescence. The crucial social meaning of youth is withdrawal from adult control and influence compared with childhood. Peer groups are the milieu into which young people withdraw. In at least most societies, this withdrawal into the peer group is, within limits, legitimated by the adult world.
