an old newspaper article

treating them like kids

"young people became teenagers because we had nothing better to do with them." So writes Thomas Hine in his new book, "The Rise and Fall of the American Teenager."
according to Hine, teenagers were created by the Great Depression, which cost them the jobs they'd traditionally held and forced them to go to the one place left open to them: high school.
for the first time, Hine says, "a majority of high-school-age Americans actually enrolled. We defined maturity primarily in terms of being permitted adult vices, and then were surprised when teenagers drank, smoked, or had promiscuous sex."

i must have clipped this article or statement when i was in high schoo. i guess i thought it was interesting. it is.