Around the middle of the 20th century, the teenager was one of the most viable marketing demographics. At the start of the '60s, nearly half of America was under the age of 18. Almost more importantly, all those young whippersnappers had disposable income. In fact, this was the most affluent generation in American history, with $22 billion at their disposal, according to PBS. What had once been a largely ignored age range became a cash-rich target for businesses to pursue. The baby boom meant there were a ton of 13 to 20-year-olds, and many of them had decent jobs.

While college was certainly a consideration for many, it wasn't this national goal it would become later. While university would later become an aspirational frenzy, with swelling costs and near-universal attendance, only about 38% of teenagers enrolled in the '60s. That number would nearly double by 2010. So, with a majority of teenagers not attending college (or even saving up for it), those same young people were heading into trades, where they'd make even more money, and quicker, compared to other generations. Teens were able to spend a lot. Even those with low-paying jobs were still making a killing relative to a low cost of living.

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The creator of Happy Days said that it would be difficult to write a comedy about modern teenagers

Pop culture shifted in a big, big way. Fashion, music, and social activities all bent to the will of this new, young culture. 

With the ascent of TV as an affordable piece of home entertainment, a lot of teenagers were able to see other young people on the screen.  As such, advertisers could reach into living rooms with specific products and messages aimed at teens' pockets. 

Suddenly, teenagers (the word itself was still brand new) were buying records, clothing, and cars. Drive-throughs and drive-ins were incredibly popular, as were dances and concerts.

So, what happened?

Well, there are probably too many factors to list. It would take an anthropologist to accurately describe the disappearance of teenage culture. However, it doesn't take an expert to see the ways culture and economics have moved in a direction that excludes teens from a lot of the activities they once participated in.

There is, of course, a sizable increase in costs compared to a much lower rise in wages. Currently, anybody younger than 20 years old can be paid $4.25 an hour for their first 90 days of employment. As of February 2025, the federal minimum wage hasn't increased since 2009, when the lowest hourly amount an employer can legally pay a worker became $7.25. While that might be more than teens were making in the '50s and '60s, that money does not have the same buying power it once did.

Add on top of that the components inherent to the education bubble, and it quickly becomes clear why teens aren't nearly as powerful a buying group as they once were. Fewer young people are making good money in union-protected trades. Instead, most high school-aged teens from the '90s onward were readying themselves for debt.

In addition, many teen-centered spaces have disappeared. There aren't very many drive-ins anymore, and drive-throughs have changed entirely. While Sonic might still employ an old-fashioned "park and get your burger" system, the restaurant is no longer a social hub. Paired with the cost of gas, this means that the car culture depicted in American Graffiti has all but disappeared.

Dances have moved to TikTok in one of the many ways internet culture has impacted the modern teen. Because teenagers aren't making nearly the same amount of money as they once were, their attention is now the most valuable commodity for businesses to exploit. Teenagers are no longer buying movie tickets to see their age range inaccurately portrayed by much older actors at the cinema. Instead, they're logging in to see beautified, perfectly composed versions of themselves reflected in 30-second snippets.  The music they consume is fundamentally changed as well: Instead of buying records or CDs, teens best serve the music industry when they play already-popular songs, gilding the streaming numbers to make executives millions of dollars through billions of streams. 

One of the most important factors, though, is the literal disappearance of the age range. While cultural signifiers have vanished, the actual demographic has shrunk as well, as only 21.7% of the American population is under 18 years old. In 2023, the global fertility rate was 2.2 children per household, less than half its peak in 1963.

There are fewer young people, with less money in their pockets than there were in the '50s and '60s, and the world is a more boring place for it.