The creation of the teenager in the 1950's introduced a new category into the language, one I suppose made necessary by further education and cultural change. Going into the workforce not long after completing primary education was largely a thing of the past by the time I was in high school. About half of my cohort went to Year 10 while the rest continued on to the HSC. From there a small percentage went to university just as the vast majority went into the workforce.

But it was cultural change and the rise of mass marketing that ensured that this new target group would go on to become a force to be reckoned with. Rock and Roll ushered in an era of youth culture that persists to this day, mores the pity really given where music is now!

But contemporary teenagers in the West can be a difficult and unruly lot, unconditioned as they are by the kinds of norms that their grandparents were. What is the meaning of life other than making money and having fun? They have to wrestle with the snake pit of social media too, where every attitude and bodily shape and attribute is subject to raucous and often unkind comment by largely anonymous posters. Who would want that?

"It's a difficult age," a friend of mine used to regular intone.

But what age isn't?