A few years ago, youth, or yoof, was all about woolly hats and saying "brilliant!" There was grunge and house and, always, designer surliness. But now, writes our ageing reporter, Ian Kilroy, looking for the difference between this generation and before, things have moved on

Once over 30, the days of acne seem very far away indeed. You can almost remember fondly those stand-up arguments with your parents.

You might smirk quietly to yourself, thinking about those late nights you sneaked up the stairs, avoiding that creaky step, thinking you've gone undetected, while all the time your mother listens intently to your progress in the dark. With time, those turbulent teenage years almost glow with the light of nostalgia.

For any of us that went through our teens or twenties in the 1990s, those days were the days of Kurt Cobain, of rave culture and the surge of techno. We saw condom machines installed in every pub and club in Ireland and attention spans shrink - a necessary evolutionary back-pedal to allow us to enjoy the monotony of live Big Brother coverage or the increasingly repetitive beat of dance music.

Now, however, you hear very little about raves and the Seattle scene. Grunge is long dead and Ibiza has become little more than a place on Sky television, rather than the underground Mecca for cutting-edge music it was. So what are "the youth" into these days? Who, indeed, are "the youth"?

Colm Ó Mongáin, of the National Youth Council of Ireland (NYCI), defines them as "people under the age of 25 or about 41 per cent of the population". In Europe, the definition is wider, he says. There, under-35s are considered to constitute the youth - "it has something to do with them having an older college-leaving age", he says.

Ireland, however, does have an ageing population. With the demographic shift, that 41 per cent will doubtlessly have shrunk by the time the breakdown of the 2002 census becomes available. Yet we still do have the youngest population in the European Union, as any expert who monitors the sale of Westlife CDs will be able to tell you.

But Westlife, as any self-respecting teenager will assert, is not really where it's at. As 17-year-old Paul told me in Dublin's Meeting House Square recently, "the charts are nothing but a sham". Hanging out with friend Cian, also 17, Paul filled me in on the scene. Having been robbed by a heroin-addict with a syringe moments before I met them, they were a little wary at first. But they soon opened up and were a mine of information.

"All the people hanging around Curved Street and the Central Bank are into nu-metal," says Paul. "They're skateboarders into bands like Linkin Park," adds Cian, "it's a kind of 'we hate the world' sort of thing . . . that's the whole thing with this nu-metal".

Both lads, up in Dublin for the day from Wicklow, insist that "nu-metal is crap"; they're into "rock" by which they mean Nirvana and other guitar, drum and bass-based bands. "All those nu-metal kids are just mammies boys looking for attention - it's a D4, upper-class thing," they say.

Prehistoric notions of mods versus rockers spring to mind; is there something like that going down here? "There's not really a bad vibe between us," says Cian, "I think they try to hate everyone else, but they're harmless really. Most of the people that would slag you for being into rock would listen to dance music."

Zoe (23) and Anna (22) were sitting on a bench near Temple Bar Music Centre, Anna trying to coax Zoe to follow her in a tongue-piercing ritual she had just undergone and that Zoe was having second thoughts about.

"It was just a bit of a pinch, it was only a little bit sore," pronouncing her words perfectly - remarkable for a woman who had just had a bolt of metal forced through her tongue. Zoe from Carlow still isn't sure. "We sort of said one night after a few drinks that we were getting it done and then we had to come up to Dublin today to do it."

The NYCI had told me that as few as one third of the under-25s who are eligible to vote ever bother doing it and that as few as 2 per cent of young people are involved in political parties. What about Zoe and Anna then?

"I'd never vote, I'm an absolute disgrace. I've never voted. Never," says Zoe. "I've no real interest in politics. And because my vote is in Carlow and I now live in Kildare . . . it's just too much hassle to go home and vote."

According to the NYCI, the low interest in politics by the young is not encouraged by the fact that polling doesn't take place on a weekend day, when most young people could get home from college to vote.

What interests Anna and Zoe is "going to the pub, going dancing, going to the gym". What distinguishes this generation from earlier, more amply proportioned ones is the cult of the body beautiful; "Even most of the lads we know go to the gym," says Zoe.

On the down side is the increase in suicide among the young, particularly among young men. Between 1970 and 1999, the suicide rate in Ireland increased over sixfold, from 1.8 to 11.7 suicides per 100,000 people. In the 1990s alone, annual suicide deaths went over the 300 mark for the first time, reaching 504 in 1998. Suicide is now the second most common cause of death among 15- to 24-year-old men. Among men aged between 25 and 34, the suicide rate here is twice that of the Britain.

"We live in an area where a couple of lads committed suicide," says Anna. "We know two people that killed themselves," says Zoe. Paul and Cian also know people that have at least considered suicide: "People don't really have proper friends any more," says Paul.

Sexual promiscuity and the spiralling cost of rents also concern these people and the youth council as well. Commenting on the sexual mores of the young, Zoe says "monogamy is dead", noting also that people are losing their virginity at a younger and younger age. For the lads it was the exorbitant cost of motor insurance for the young that concerned them, as well as a fear of the unreasonable rents they would be charged when they moved up to Dublin to attend college in a year's time.

Their plight will not be improved by the 70 per cent hike in college registration fees recently announced, coupled with a paltry € 3 a week rise in the maintenance grant. Small wonder that Cian says: "I don't think much of the current crowd anyhow" when I ask him for his opinion of the present Government. Both Cian and Paul say that they will be exercising their vote next time round.

But back to more serious matters - what of Zoe's tongue piercing? "Yeah, I'm going to go through with it," she says, getting up from her seat."Well, if she doesn't," says Anna, "I'm going to drag her in there by the ear."

See the National Youth Council of Ireland's website, www.youth.ie, for more information