Sometime in the 1940s, the idea of the American teenager was born. Adolescents obviously existed before the 1940s, but they were busy getting married or (if poor) working. As Thomas Hine wrote in The Rise and Fall of the American Teenager, “During most of the nineteenth century, fourteen-year-olds were viewed as inexperienced adults.” But once marketing executives realized that young people had their own money and could be a target, they started marketing to them. Would teens like to buy a pink typewriter? You bet your ass they would. “To some extent, the teenage market—and, in fact, the very
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