Where did the word come from?

The troubled, tormented teenager has not always existed. This cultural icon first appeared in American culture during World War II.

Awareness of teens as a distinct social group first emerged at the dawn of the 20th century in novels like Booth Tarkington’s Seventeen. Tarkington presented a light-hearted portrait of the gangly, self-conscious bumbling adolescent and puppy love.

Middletown, the influential 1929 sociological study of a Midwestern town by Robert and Helen Lynd, underscored the changes that were taking place in the lives of adolescents: increasing high school attendance, the growing significance of the peer group, and the emergence of new teenage customs, such as dating.

Teenaged adolescents proliferated during the Great Depression of the 1930. The 1933 film Wild Boys on the Road, portrayed homeless teenage boys and girls who hop trains, panhandle, and live in a sewer pipe city. It was followed by Girls of the Road. There were also the 1938 pictures Delinquent Parents and Juvenile Court.

Toward the end of the decade came a new image of the teenage adolescent--the Kleen Teens: Deanna Durbin, Mickey Rooney, Judy Garland, and Lana Turner. Particularly influential in helping to define the teenager were ten lighthearted Andy Hardy movies released between 1939 and 1946.

The Archie comic books, which first appeared in 1942, provided a cartoonish version of the Andy Hardy characters. These comics featured such teenage archetypes as the sweet Betty, the spoiled Veronica, and the hamburger-obsessed Jughead.

It was in 1941 that the term “teenager” entered the English language. An issue of Popular Science first contained the word.

Also in 1941, the first magazine targeted at teenage girls appeared: Calling All Girls, “the favorite magazine of girls and sub-debs.” But it would be Seventeen, which appeared in September 1944, that underscored the size of the teenage market. Its first issue sold 400,000 copies.

It was an event in 1942, however, that identified teenagers as a cultural force. Thousands of teenaged girls swooned over the blue-eyed singer Frank Sinatra.

Adults became aware of a new teenage culture that was emerging among the young, marked by saddle shoes, bobby sox, sock hops, juke boxes, and slumber parties.

During World War II, there was great fear that teens, left unsupervised, would wreak havoc. A Look magazine issue of September, 1943, entitled “Are These Our Children?,” captured the public’s anxiety:

You see it in the papers every day ... Five boys caught stealing automobiles; a 15-year-old charged with 30 sex offences; in Detroit, a juvenile mob invades nightclubs, bars, movies, smashing windows and furniture; a father reproves his 17-year-old son, and the next day the father's mutilated body is found beside a railroad track. J. Edgar Hoover reports 1942 arrests for drunkenness of girls under 21 up 40 per cent over 1941, for prostitution 64 per cent, other sex offences 104 per cent ... with 1943 arrests mounting. Are these our children?"