The Rise of the Teenager

The Roaring 20s were famous for many things. Gatsby, prohibition, speakeasies, flappers, radio, cars, and the rise of the teenager.

In the 1800s, people lived in a state of either "adult" or "child". There was no teenager.

As a child, you lived under your parents' strict rules, but did not have to worry about that which came with being an adult. As an adult, you had freedom, but all the responsibility that came with it. The teenager came with the creation of a middle ground.

Teenagers were granted a taste of the freedom of adult life, with only some of the responsibilities that came with it. A few of the events that most contributed to the advent of the teenager were the lengthening of a student's time in school, the pushing back of marriage, and the invention of the affordable car. All of these either gave children more time to develop or more freedom.

Schools, now further away from home, developed their own culture, separate from home life, and teens dated freely, instead of under the watchful eyes of their parents. They gained freedom, but not necessarily responsibility.

Since then, teenagers have become almost a being of their own. They are the hopes and future of the nation, the rebels and the untrustworthy and the alarming. "America created the teenager in its own image--brash, unfinished, ebullient, idealistic, crude, energetic, innocent, greedy, changing in all sorts of unsettling ways."

What do you think the teenager stands for today?


http://www.ushistory.org/us/46c.asp
http://www.thomashine.com/the_rise_and_fall_of_the_american_teenager_3432.htm