ABSTRACT
Researchers have long recognized that moral panics help construct youth cultures not only as adults imagine them, but also as they are experienced by young people themselves. In Folk Devils and Moral Panics, sociologist Stanley Cohen takes a decidedly critical view of this phenomenon:
Cohen notes that young people retain some capacity to define youth cultures for themselves, primarily through consumerism, conceding, “the adolescent consumer is also an active agent in creating modes of expression which reflect his cultural experience” (Cohen 2002, 151). Nevertheless, Cohen maintains, moral panics typically exploit youth cultures in order to deter youthful rebellion – and in the process keep young people from defining their own cultures freely.
