Examples of youth subcultures

Hippies were one of the most powerful countercultures of the 20th Century. They started in the mid- 1960s in the Unites States as a youth subculture characterized by utopian socialism and psychedelic art and music. The movement peaked in the 1969 and subsided by the mid 70s.


Hackers are a new media subculture built around gaining access to hidden corners of the internet and suppressed online data. Hackers embark on ‘hackathons’ where they work together on multi-hour sprints to develop ways to hack into networks. They exist upon a spectrum of illegal hackers gaining data for nefarious means, through to hackers working for companies or governments to stress test security software.


New age spirituality emerged as a spiritual and religious subculture in the 1970s. It is highly eclectic without a central unifying doctrine. However, it is often characterized by a holistic understanding of divinity (similar to pantheism) and belief in the ability to communicate with angels and the afterlife.


Surf culture existed as a small sub-culture throughout the 20th Century, but boomed in the 1960s in Southern California. It is often associated with a ‘chilled out’ approach to life, love of the surf and sun and 1960s beach music. There are sub-sets of this cultural grouping, such as big wave surfers and ocean environmentalism. A common trope in surf culture is territorialism, with surfers laying claim to certain surf breaks as their own. This culture is also visible in Hawaii and Australia.

Hipsters were a sub-culture in the 1940s, but made a resurgence in the early 21st Century. It is characterized by counter-cultural fashion, including wearing clothing and stylings ironically. Full beards, twirled mustaches, big glasses, bicylces and skinny jeans are common. While intended to be counter-cultural, the fashion is derided for its internal consistency and conformism, and was quickly co-opted into the fashion mainstream of the 2010s. The term ‘hipster’ is often pejorative, and rarely used by hipsters themselves.

The portmanteau of ‘costume play’, cosplayers are a sub-cultural group of nerds and geeks who gather in dress up costumes that mimic their favorite comic book, cartoon and film characters. Cosplay events such as Comicon are world-wide annual celebrations of this subculture.

Steampunk is associated with art, fashion and literature that is retrofuturistic. The fashion combines Victorian and industrial era iconography such as gears and steam powered machinery with futuristic science fiction. Steampunk films include The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, The Golden Compass and Wild Wild West. Steampunk has significant overlaps with cosplay due to the strong fan dress-up culture.

Graffiti subculture is an underground counterculture with eclectic members. It ranges from gangs making their marks on public infrastructure to lay claim to territory, through to legitimized graffiti art commissioned by councils and landowners. Graffiti art can range from simple ‘tags’ spray painted in public spaces as a conquest and sign of rebellion, through to political art such as the famous wall art in Medellin’s Communa 13 in Colombia.

Skaters (skateboarders) are a sub-cultural group who gather around love of the sport of skateboarding. It grew throughout the second half of the 20th Century and was particularly strong in the 1980s. There are two overlapping sub-groups: vert and street. Street skaters embrace skating in public urban areas, using the street landscape to do tricks. Vert skaters started with skating in empty pools, with Tony Hawk revolutionizing vert by launching off the lip of pools to gain ‘air’. Vert is now commonly associated with skating on halfpipes.

Goths are a music subculture that originated in the UK in the 1980s. Its group members embrace post-punk Gothic rock from bands like Bauhaus and Joy Division. Their fashion includes all-black clothing, dark eyeliner, pale face blush, black nail polish, and androgynous dress.

Punk rock was one of the most influential youth music subcultures in the 20th Century. Born in the 1970s, the original wave of punk rock only lasted a few years, but has influenced many subsequent subcultures hoping to embrace the passion and creativity of punk rock. Punk bands like The Clash and The Ramones introduced music with a rapid-fire driven beat. The subculture was strongly anti-corporatism, against ‘selling out’ to music labels, and even embraced anarchism. Punks wore leather jackets, Dr. Martens boots and spiked colorful mohawks. Subsequent waves of punk rock never matched the original wave, but gave rise to several worldwide supergroups including Blink 182 and Green Day.

Grunge was a west-coast subculture which emerged mainly out of Seattle in the late 1980s and early 1990s (it is often referred to as Seattle Sound). Their music was a hybrid of metal and punk. Key bands include Nirvana, Pearl Jam and the Stone Temple Pilots. Their music is characterized by guitar distortion, and the undisputed anthem of grunge music is the song Smells Like Teen Spirit, which encompassed the quintessential grunge mood of the early 1990s. Critics of grunge claim it is emblematic of the narcissism of privileged and bored white middle-class youth during an era of American prosperity.

Hip-hop is a subculture that emerged in the mid-1970s in The Bronx, NY. Its members are primarily Black, Caribbean and Latino American youth. Key activities include disc-jockeying, breakdancing and rapping, but many members also identify with the graffiti artist subculture. The ‘golden age of hip hop’ spanned 1987 – 1996, and saw the rise of key artists from the genre including Public Enemy, NWA, Tupac and The Notorious B.I.G. Much of the music explores Black poverty, gang affiliation and police violence against people of color in areas of the US such as the Bronx and Crompton.

D’n’B is a musical subculture that grew in the 1990s with a strong focus on electronic music, fast back beats and heavy bass. Influenced by Jamaican dub music and reggae, D’n’B was very popular in Northern Europe and is celebrated for leading the way in electronic music, strongly influencing subsequent music styles like EDM and progressive house music.

Emos were a music subculture of the early 2000s known for melancholic music designed to empathize with teen angst. Shortened from ’emotional music’, Emos gathered inspiration from pop punk and gothic rock music. They’re identifiable by their all-black outfits, black died mid-length hair swept over their faces, skinny jeans, and gauge earrings. Central bands from the movement include Simple Plan, Jimmy Eat World, My Chemical Romance and Weezer.

Shortened from ‘Korean Pop’, K-Pop was a subculture that became a predominant cultural identification among Korean youth, although its influence is global. Upbeat pop and hiphop music, its most globally recognizable song is Gangnam Style. Fashion from this sub-culture includes sporty street wear, bandanas and hip-hop outfits.

Otaku is also defined in Japan as a word that defines a person who has obsessive interests, and can apply to a wide variety of topics, including anime, manga, cosplay, collectibles and more.