The author offers a critical review of a wide range of findings about young people in areas as diverse as education and training, leisure, family life and sexuality. She shows that whilst youth research texts do not reflect young people's experiences in any straightforward manner, they do indicate the various complex and contradictory ways in which 'youth', 'adolescence' and specific groups of young people are represented in contemporary western societies. In so arguing, she presents new terms for thinking about the position of young people today. This is an important new text accessibly written for students of sociology, social psychology and contemporary culture in both Britain and the USA. It will also be of great interest to social science researchers in a range of other disciplines.