The psychologist Jean Twenge of San Diego State University notes that teens are growing up more slowly by many measures, compared with their 20th-Century counterparts. Over the past decade or two, there have been some intriguing changes in the attributes of the teenager. Teenage music, fashion and language ripples across the rest of society, supercharged by industries established to profit from them. But the point is that the perception of teenagers as cool, trend-setting and influential was – and still is – just as much a creation of commerce and media as a reflection of reality. Today it's TikTok and… well, I wouldn't know, since I'm 41 years old. As a writer for the New Yorker noted in 1958: "To some extent, the teenage market – and, in fact, the very notion of the teenager – has been created by the businessmen who exploit it."īack then it was all about capitalising on rebellion, hot-rods and rock n' roll. They were capable of setting trends and spreading fashions, and therefore could be marketed to for great profit. In the 1950s, companies realised that teenagers could also be influencers. Post-World War Two, historians also note that social attitudes towards the rights of young people shifted in many Western nations: the sense that young people had a duty to serve their parents weakened, and their own wishes and values began to be listened to more.Īnd one sector of society that was listening to these needs the most? Commerce. And in the US, high school graduation rates grew from less than 10% at the start of the century to around 60% by the mid-1950s. In the late 1940s, schooling in the UK was made compulsory up to the age of 15. In rich countries, it became much more likely for a young person to stay in school for their teenage years. Around this time, a number of different forces converged to make that happen. But even then, the invention of the modern teenager wouldn't happen immediately.īefore World War Two, the term teenager (or teen-ager) had occasionally been used, but it was only in the late 1940s and 1950s that it became more common. There was no universal schooling, and only the wealthiest could tap into a "bank of mum and dad" to provide food and shelter.Īs developed-world living standards and education policies began to change in the early 20th Century, however, young people were increasingly able to live fully under the wings of their parents or guardians for longer, supported financially and emotionally. In the late 1800s, writes Cunningham, children in the US were contributing around a third of family income by the time their father was in his 50s. In rural economies, this may have involved farm work to support the family's agricultural income, but as industrialisation spread in the 18th and 19th Centuries, many teens became factory workers, grafting alongside their adult peers. It's difficult to imagine that we ever existed without our adolescent years as we experience them now, but if you could time-travel back a few centuries, people would find the modern idea of the teenager to be something of an alien concept.īack in the 1500s, for example, most Western adolescents would have been workers, recruited into the world of adult labour from as early as seven years old, according to the historian of childhood Hugh Cunningham of the University of Kent. One of the most culturally significant inventions of the past century was the teenager.
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