Youth is a target, and perhaps that's all it is. Since the mid-20th century, as communication professionalized, an obsession with young people has grown in parallel. Whether it's for brand image purposes or a fear of seeing one's customer base vanish (literally dying off), 'young people' are ubiquitous in advertisers' briefs.
They seem to ask advertisers to be the interpreters of a strange tribe supposed to bring them wealth and prosperity, provided they can speak its language. Because young people must have a specific language common to all, a grammar that advertising hopes, one day, to crack.
Is that the right question to ask?
No, of course not. However, to contribute to the reflection, we will ask ourselves together what the right question should be when addressing youth. We will focus on French youth aged 15 to 25.
Since when are we young?
In France, the transitional period between childhood and adulthood is a recent construct responding to a social need.
For most of our history, children moved directly into adulthood. For boys, as soon as they were old enough to work and marry, which could be very early in the lower social classes, they entered adulthood. For girls, unfortunately, one might consider that the question was less relevant, as women never truly left a state of minority (property of a father then a husband) until the 20th century(1).
On the other hand, the scaling up of wars after the Revolution created in our country a constant demand for young men. Then, aiming to better frame these future soldiers, public education developed in step with the increase in the legal working age. This created an 'older pool' of children.. By gradually making the service a rite of passage to adulthood, a category of 'recruits' naturally emerged, which would graft onto the notion of youth (2).
With the trauma of the world wars, we gradually gave birth to the concept of a 'sacrificed generation' due to the high proportion of youths killed between 17 and 25 years old. When it was said that youth was just a target (3).
From the 1960s onward in France, various political parties, especially on the left, crafted youth as a social category for electoral purposes. They turned 'parents' into a reactionary symbol, greatly inspired by the Maoist model that idolized youth during the Cultural Revolution. It was during this same period that most professions known in advertising agencies emerged. Thus, increasingly precise ways to transform social categories into targets were invented as consumer society progressed. Overall, what we can deduce from this quick and imperfect historical overview is that ultimately, one is young since there arose a strategic need for youth, whether for nations, politicians, or merchants. Therefore, we have been young since the old deemed it so.
What does it mean to be young?
What journalists and advertisers attribute as qualities or attributes of youth are largely inherited from conceptions of the 1960s. They portray:
Youths in opposition to their parents: perhaps in the face of post-war conservatism, young men and women openly clashed with their elders, especially on social mores. However, today we see rather a good rapport across generations and a strong value agreement. The 'Family' remains the number one value mentioned by young people in France (5). In reality, the gap in tastes and viewpoints is closing. Among the top 3 favorite singers of 18-24-year-olds, we find Jean-Jacques Goldman (6).
Idealistic and progressive youth: Perhaps in a France emerging from colonial wars, where the brightest Marxist thinkers of the time infused ideas, led to a 'revolutionary' youth in pursuit of progress. Today, the trend appears to lean heavily towards conservatism. 47% of 18-24-year-olds believe having a leader who doesn't need to worry about Parliament and elections would be beneficial, and 52% of high school students don't support the right to criticize a belief, symbol, or religious dogma. Additionally, the value right after family for the 18-30 age group is 'Authority' (8).
Youths driven by environmental and social justice: Once again, here’s an idealism that no longer exists as such. Social issues, although they seem to resonate more with a younger audience, remain quite marginal in the concerns of the majority. Wokeism, criticized by its detractors, involves a series of concepts like intersectionality, gender studies, post-colonial studies, etc., known to barely 1 in 10 young people (9). Nearly 40% of men between 18 and 24 feel that 'In today's society, women have gained too much power', more than twice the average for those aged 25-65+ (10).
We often talk about a 'paradox generation', which seems to be a convenient label to dismiss a troubling question. Yet, indeed, there are quite a few paradoxical positions among the youth. For instance, behind the banner of self-acceptance, there is a rather neurotic relationship with one's image. 75% of 18-24-year-olds say they feel self-conscious about their image (compared to a national average of 67%), and a quarter of French women of the same age consider cosmetic surgery (compared to 12% national average for women) (11). Social networks have introduced this new fantasy of managing a public image like celebrities. An entirely controlled and polished image transforms interactions with others and is even blamed for a true decline in social interactions for this generation (12).
In reality, what we are observing seems more like a condensed version of current French society (so finding paradoxes shouldn't be worrisome). It's a sort of summary of the various dilemmas faced by citizens, with perhaps a bit less nuance due to possibly less experience.
Youth did not invent the distrust in institutions or the environmental awareness. These are themes that permeate the entire French society; we just focus on those who naturally have little perspective and also possess new communication tools. Being young, therefore, simply means being a member of society born later than others, and the fact that they might express differently does not make them a separate member. In this sense, being young also means remaining dependent on one's immediate social, political, and economic environment. Hence this 'fragmentation' of youth, which actually corresponds to the fragmentation of French society as aptly described by Fourquet in his French archipelago.
"In a few decades, everything has changed. France, in the era of the 'yellow vests', has nothing to do with this one and indivisible nation structured by a common cultural reference. Yet, the dynamics of this metamorphosis reveal an archipelago of islands ignoring each other."
What do young people want?
One could say that much like the society they live in, young people's aspirations are diverse and varied. Well, that would be very disappointing even if it's true in detail.
However, there is indeed something common in the aspirations of the youth throughout history and even cultures: BECOMING ADULT.
What they desire at every era are the markers of adulthood: employment, security, purchasing power. You can add social and sexual life. The state of minority is pleasant for no one and increasingly unbearable as one gains maturity.
The issue is, to become an adult, youth lacks one essential thing they have no means of acquiring faster: A PAST. In reality, what is often held against them is a lack of past, leading to a deep sense of injustice.
When they submit their CV for the first time at 18, they are blamed for lack of experience, their parents blame them for never having tougher times (the famous grandfather's orange under the tree). Hence, they feel unable to witness a series of achievements that is impossible to realize in their condition. Being young, they instinctively understand that experience and past establish authority (they don't even need to have read Hannah Arendt), and being naturally deprived of it condemns them to obey. It is understandable this is infuriating, and if we don't understand, teenagers will tell us. Minority is an acknowledged, necessary, and conventional injustice, being the only case of legal inequality between two people in France for 'natural' reasons.
The aim here is not to question the merit of minority status at all, but to understand that it generates a powerful frustration that advertising ultimately exploits quite little.
Yet, when we look at the favorite brands of young people in France,14 we find:`
Ways to earn money independently (Vinted, LeBoncoin)
Ways to manage money independently (Lydia)
Ways to organize vacations independently (AirBnB)
Ways to communicate and create independently (Apple, Facebook)
In summary, one could say they are trying to be like mom and dad, but on their own terms.
Similarly, one cannot help but observe the rapid creation of a cultural past encouraged by social media. Being present at the start of an influencer's success is a source of pride. It allows for a broader, purer perspective for criticizing content or discrediting the opinions of novices.
One of the most-watched videos of the 'macro-influencer' Squeezie is titled '90 vs 2000', consisting of a song battle between two generations with cultural references. Besides, it was a remarkably effective communication campaign for the dairy product lobby.
What truly changes compared to previous generations is the speed of cultural creation. The memes circulating on the internet for over fifteen years are an excellent example. Most of them are humor pieces whose meanings have been lost and can only be understood by those familiar with internet culture, 'those who were there'.
Thus, what young people want more than anything is to be able to say 'I was there', automatically taking them out of the state of youth as it now pertains to 'those who weren’t there'. One might almost say that what youth fantasizes is the purism of adulthood, yet finds it unbearable since they're mostly excluded from it.
Therefore, it's clear that many brands have perhaps been asking the wrong question in trying to reach young people, by imagining that all it takes is to 'speak young'. Not only is this the best way to appear outdated and ridiculous (as this language, if it exists, is ever-changing), but more importantly, it bluntly reminds the target of a state they despise: their condition of being young. This suggests that even if, one day, a copywriter managed to produce an ad in true 'young language', the ad would miss its audience.
So, if the goal is to address youth, one should actually reach out to the adult they aspire to become. By understanding that the fundamental desire of a young person is to be old.
(1)GALLAND, Olivier. 'The Invention of Youth', Sociology of Youth. 5th edition, under the direction of Galland Olivier. Armand Colin, 2011. (2)Id. (3)FOURNIER, Martine. 'Sacrificed Generations?', Sciences Humaines, Vol. 297, No. 11, 2017 (4)DRESSEN, Marnix. 'Chinese Shadows: Views of French Maoists on Mao's China (1965-1976)', Materials for the History of Our Time, Vol. 94, No. 2, 2009 (5) DABI, Frédéric, and STEWART Chau. 'The Fracture'. Paris: Les Arènes, 2021. – [IFOP survey carried out on a sample of 1014 people, representative of the French population aged 18 to 30 from September 24 to 29, 2021] (6)IFOP survey for L'Express conducted on a sample of 1067 people, representative of the French population aged 18 to 24 from June 15 to 27, 2020 (7)DABI Frédéric Op.Cit 8Id. (9)Institut Montaigne 'A Plural Youth' - survey on 18-24 - February 22 (10)IFOP for ELLE, 'Men and the New Masculinity' - October 2019 (11)YouGov survey cited by AirofMelty - July 2020 (12)BAUMAN Zygmunt & LEONCINI Thomas, 'Children of the Liquid Society', Fayard - 2018 (13)FOURQUET Jérôme 'The French Archipelago: Birth of a Multiple and Divided Nation' (Political Book Award 2019), Seuil editions, February 2019 (14)YouGov ranking of brands sparking interest among 18-34 year-olds in France (word of mouth + positive buzz indicator) – Dec. 2021
