Teen Magazines

Rising to prominence in the mid-20th century and saturating the market until print media’s decline in the early 21st century, teen magazines have a long history of promoting consumerism and a certain kind of White middle-class ideology. Teen magazines can be defined as periodicals specifically geared toward teen interests and lifestyles, but in a general sense, they can also refer to any media that teens read, regardless of the demographic or ideology attached. This entry traces the evolution of the teen magazine over the 20th and 21st [Page 1544]centuries in the United States, with particular attention to the way these magazines socialize both male and female readers into cultural norms.