Initially invented as a marketing target, "teenagers" only came into existence after World War II. Possibly our most important years, our teenage years are a time of transition, a period in which we develop from children into adults. We may remember them as either the best or the worst days of our lives, but the life experiences encountered between the ages of 12 and 20 leave a lasting impression: burgeoning emotional and sexual feelings; physiological development of secondary sexual characteristics; entry into the order of society through individual and group affiliations. Since the instantiation of teenagers as a category, they subsequently may have been exploited ruthlessly as such by commercial interests, but this also has allowed (and continues to allow) the identification and interrogation of issues affecting one of the most important groups within society.

Teenagers in 1956.

Following World War II, a sudden boom in affluence in the West produced...