Youth and the Promise of a New Millennium?
	The ‘millennium’ fever has gripped the professional world with all manner of promises and goals for new achievements in financial, production and academic circles. The field of adolescent medicine and health has not escaped the bandwagon of millennium expectations but will the promise be as evanescent as the future of the Millennium dome in Greenwich which opened late and bankrupted its developers? 

Looking back over the past millennium – what were some of the milestones and what has happened for youth.
Fashion 1000
Millennium Fashion? What was the trendy teen wearing in 1000? Of course children and hence teens were dressed just like adults until well past the Victorian era.
Teen Kings
1000	 we begin the millennium with three teen kings; Ethelred II succeeded in 978 aged only 10; 1016 Ethelred's 22-year-old son, Edmund Ironside.  And then  Canute, the even younger son of Sweyn of Denmark

Leisure 
1000  In between real battles, Saxon and Norse people alike were fond of substitute battles in the form of board games, often with elaborate rules. They also played dice and were keen, if unsporting Sportsmen. 
Was there a millennium club scene? Music and poetry were popular entertainments , Although there were professional performers - scops and gleemen - available, it was the custom for partygoers each to do a turn.

1300  In the royal accounts at the turn of the century is a rather mysterious mention of a stick and ball game referred to as 'creag'. Just possibly, this is history's first reference to cricket

1400 Geoffrey Chaucer died. page boy at court, a soldier, magistrate, member of parliament, customs controller, diplomat, language scholar, and scientist. completed 24 of his Canterbury Tales. He had planned to write 30, to follow the formula from Boccaccio.

1600   Will Kempe, a wildly popular comic actor, spent nine days morris dancing from London to Norwich. an excellent publicity stunt. Shakespeare, in the full flood of his creativity, produced Twelfth Night, The Merry Wives of Windsor, and Hamlet
 
1800 Fore runner of Disneyland? The Great Exhibition was opened by Queen Victoria in May 1851. The exhibition hall was even more stupendous than its contents: a vast iron and glass pleasure-dome. The Crystal Palace was destroyed by fire in the 1930s.

Substance abuse
1000 "after two days only the bravest or silliest of the village would drink the ale, but usually it was only fit for pigs." He was writing about the most popular tipple of the age: traditional ale.
After a little less than two years as king of England, Harthacanute met his ignominious end in the summer of 1042. He was attending a wedding feast with his Danish followers when he collapsed, apparently having drunk himself to death

Alcohol abuse - The Gin Act of 1751 was the government's latest desperate attempt to crack down on the sale of rotgut spirits in London. It had already taxed gin at £1 a gallon. Now it subjected the distillers and gin-shopkeepers to regular inspections. The new restrictions were a godsend to the brewers of the day, who marketed beer as a wholesome and cheaper alternative to gin. 

Drugs - 1800  In Britain, Humphrey Davy, fast emerging as the most distinguished scientist of the day, was discovering the pleasant and beneficial properties of nitrous oxide.

1920  Prohibition - Woodrow Wilson was replaced in the White House by Warren Harding, a Republican. They presided over the first phase of the daft, doomed experiment known as Prohibition. On January 1, 1920, the Volstead Act came into force, preventing all citizens of America, the champion of individual freedom, from making alcohol for sale. The drinks industry went underground, and boomed as never before.

Sexuality
1000 Edward the Confessor sees little action on the battlefield or in the marriage bed – edith virgin queen ; Macbeth retains centre stage in Scotland; and Lady Godiva bares all in Coventry

Sexual scandal - In 1200 King John scandalised the kingdom by casting aside his marriage to Isabella of Gloucester on grounds of consanguinity. married Isabella of Angouleme. 12 years old. The King was 33.

1500  - The Borgia example - Pope Alexander VI, Rodrigo Borgia, was setting new and startling standards of clerical depravity
Sexual censorship - 1920 D.H. Lawrence continued to skate close to the wind of the Obscene Publications Act, with his new work Women in Love.

Health 
1300 five million people living in the British Isles, and the number was rising steadily but the arrival of the Black Death in 1347 wiped out fully a third of the population 
1400  - unhealthy diet - the drab diet of Britain, largely based on rotten meat and contaminated grain, was enlivened by the introduced from Europe of onions and cabbages. Hops arrived too, to allow the transition from ale to beer

Social
There was still child labour in 20th century Britain, but it was fast disappearing. In 1900 a new Mines Act forbade the underground employment of boys under 13. This was the beginning of rules on child protection. Previously only animals working in the mines were protected from cruelty.

Dance Crazes - Chubby Checker Twisting; Bill Haley Rocking
Music Culture - One of the great men of modern rock, Jimi Hendrix, died in 1970. 1980  John Lennon  was gunned down by David Chapman  1980 Bob Marley, the king of reggae music, died of cancer in Miami, at the age of 36.

The Computer Age 
Began late in the millennium it was as late as1980 that there was the launch of the first range of IBM personal computers.

Teen Queens
 1113 King Stephen married Matilda at age 8 and she gave birth at 15, Henry VIIth’s mother was 14 when he was born. Until the 16th century the average age of marriage of English Queens was under 16
The Fertility Gap - As the age of menarche fell – the fertility gap closed
Sexual Activity - Sexual activity has risen and age of first sex has fallen in surveys. Is this a true picture? Media influences

Education 
Education act 1944
Girls were educated by law for the first time
Health Provisions
1852 founding of the Children’s Hospital in Great Ormond Street
1907 school health service marked the beginning of health for adolescents  1944 school clinics