In this article the authors outline the kinds of propositions from both progressive and pessimistic commentators that young people are either threats to civilisation or victims of change. They question the validity of representing young people as victims and/or agents of social disorder. Contemporary representations of youthful disorder, lawlessness and misrule as novel responses to change, newness and discontinuity, are better understood as part of a tradition of myth making that is central to what some writers refer to as the history of modernity. In the final part of the article, the authors cast doubt about the empirical basis of contemporary claims made about the societal causation of youth crime and youth suicide.