How did we get to calling a group of people teenagers? It isn't a nice sounding word. And it has grown in stature over the century that it came into use. It used to be "youth" or "adolescent". The late 18th century say the definition of youth as including a separate, stormy, rebellious stage of life. Wikipedia wants us to think it is a numeric term for people ages 13 to 19 years. That's because teen is in the number names. Within this context those 10 to 12 aer called preteen - given there is no "teen" in the number name.
in print around the 1920s it became popular in the early 1950s for marketing to the age group who emerged as a new economic group - the age span of that was 13 - 25. Supposedly in the 1950x people in this age group had more discretion on spending money, mobility with the car, and fewer responsibilities.
The term has been contested and criticized over the decades. The conclusion of the Wikipedia entry reference a Psychology Today article - 'A 20-Second Experiment in Racial Stereotypes' points out that attributes of delinquency, emotional volatility, sex and rebellion immediately come to mind when describing teenagers in general without knowing anything about them on a case-by-case basis.
I blame James Dean for all of this. He's the symbol of all those qualities. Maybe Elvis Presley as well.
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