Though it can be little contested that youth identity varies widely across cultures, there is the possibility of youth being united by their unique age-constrained situation in the same way that women are united by their societal limitations such as the ‘glass ceiling’ and the ‘public-private’ divide (also socially constructed). Norman Kiell wrote, as far back as 1969, in The Universal Experience of Adolescence, that ‘the great internal turmoil and external disorder of adolescence are universal and only moderately affected by cultural determinants.’

He argued that adolescence is a psychological state, and that while cultures differ in their traditions and rules, sources of friction affecting youth such as family, marriage, money, jobs, religion, etc., are universal. Kiell accepts that the intensity of the adolescent experience is dependent on a variety of factors that form the general societal attitude towards adolescence, but contends that the human adolescence everywhere is in a socially recognized period of transitional status,

‘Transitional periods by their very nature share many properties in common and generate characteristic constellations of psychological problems that inevitably arise when individuals are confronted by radical changes in their biological status,’ he writes.

In addition to being united by their common transitional status, youth are finding themselves connected by evolutions in new media, notably the internet, which allow them to communicate and share information and resources like never before. The increasingly integrated global economy facilitates trade between cultures and further fells borders. Though the idea of globalisation is a debate that this essay will not undertake, there can be little doubt that youth are able to connect on a global scale much more easily than in the past.