“Youth leisure had long been a problem, but a rapidly changing consumer culture directed toward the young made for greater intergenerational conflicts. This topic is largely unexplored. Soon after 1900, amusement parks, dance halls, neighborhood milk bars, soda fountains, penny arcades, and nickelodeons were sites of youth recreation and spending in cities. Paula Fass shows how American colleges became venues for a new peer-group culture built around dating, parties, and style-setting organizations like fraternities and sororities. Class and ethnic divisions were often reproduced in these youth leisure groups. A great topic would be a study of the peer leisure of a high school over several generations. Increased mobility due to cheap streetcars and, by the 1930s in America, used cars accelerated the liberation of the young. One of the best ways to explore this autonomy of youth leisure is through its media: movies by 1910; radio in the 1930s; new fantasy literature, especially the comic book from 1938; rock radio and records from 1954; and action figures and video games from the 1970s…”

Cross, Gary. "Leisure and Recreation" Daily Life Online. Greenwood Publishing Group. <http://dailylife.greenwood.com/dle.aspx?k=3&x=GR3233&bc=DBDL1311&p=GR3233-1281>.