Yearbooks as a Force in Representing and Developing Adolescence

Abstract

The findings of this research indicate that high school yearbooks serve as a means of perpetuating both the idea of adolescence as a social construct and stereotypes of youth. In other words, I explore how adolescence is a social construct that becomes further developed through the creation, distribution, and further use of yearbooks. For example, the people and events represented in yearbooks usually work to maintain the status quo and do little to represent the student bodies of high schools accurately and fairly. Reasons why this is so are explored, in addition to background building of how the social construct of adolescence came to be.