This course will situate contemporary debates about youth and media in historical and theoretical context by examining the ways in which media texts and technologies construct and reflect ideas about youth culture. With a focus on western societies, we will examine the cultural, economic, and political factors that contributed to the social construction of adolescence as a distinct lifecycle stage in the twentieth century. In particular, we will look at how media industries have worked to define and commodify this life stage, thereby creating expectations about what it means to "grow up" in western cultures. We will explore the importance of media texts - including music and fashion - in the construction of youth subcultures. Our investigation of subcultures will consider the role of race, class, and gender in academic theories about young people. We will examine how "moral panics" about youth culture and counter cultural movements are reflected and reproduced in current fears about the effects of media technologies and texts on teenagers. We will conclude by investigating how these various interventions play out in discussions about adolescents' media production, particularly in a digital environment in which young people are simultaneously constructed as savvy "digital natives" and vulnerable victims of media messages.