Define "teen"

[shinyhappypeople]

Seriously.  Go.  (Yeah, this is kind of a dumb question, but I feel like I must be missing something in an IRL situation.)

[Pawz4me]

13 - 19

The numbers that end in "teen."

[Night Elf]

I consider a teen to be 13 - 18. Once they graduate high school and go away to college they're young adults.

[Lang Syne Boardie]

I don't mind the ambiguity at the high end, but I would like to know why the library, the YMCA, and the church all label their activities for "teens" when they really mean "tweens and people no older than 13 to 15." Seriously! So many activities for teens, they literally meant age 10 to 13!

[gardenmom5]

13 - 19

[klmama]

 13-19.  However, I've seen a lot of homeschool group activities that include the younger middle schoolers, even if they aren't officially teens yet.

[Crimson Wife]

This is why I find it better when activities label themselves as "middle school" and/or "high school". If they want to include older 'tweens or exclude older teens, then labeling it by stage rather than a generic "teens" label is useful.

There can be liability issues for including teens who are legally adults so I have no problem with excluding 18-19 y.o.'s.

[teachermom2834]

Strict definition of course 13-19. 

I would not consider most teen activities to be intended for my 18 yo high school graduates. Might be OK. Might not. But it would need to be considered. I wouldn’t expect a 19.5 yo to be at a youth event if not in a leadership role and vetted as an adult would be. 

[Ausmumof3]

13-19 but for 18-19 I might use older teen or young adult.

[fairfarmhand]

2 minutes ago, teachermom2834 said:

Strict definition of course 13-19. 

. I wouldn’t expect a 19.5 yo to be at a youth event if not in a leadership role and vetted as an adult would be. 

Ran into this problem at some homeschooling stuff. They wanted the 18 yo to be grouped with the younger teens and were not interested in the older teen leading but insisted on the 18 yos being background checked and fingerprinted.

[Lang Syne Boardie]

I can't imagine an 18yo who would want to be in an activity with 13-14yos. It is a problem for a 14yo to learn that he is too old for the teen class - but he doesn't want to join it because it's mostly 10-12yos, anyway (seriously, many times). But none of my 18yos wanted to do teen homeschooled activities, anyway. Again, if it's mostly much younger kids, in a completely different developmental stage, they wouldn't be interested. As fairfarmhand says, it's different if they can be in leadership with their peers, such as in Civil Air Patrol or scouts.

[fairfarmhand]

Just now, Tibbie Dunbar said:

I can't imagine an 18yo who would want to be in an activity with 13-14yos. It is a problem for a 14yo to learn that he is too old for the teen class - but he doesn't want to join it because it's mostly 10-12yos, anyway (seriously, many times). But none of my 18yos wanted to do teen homeschooled activities, anyway. Again, if it's mostly much younger kids, in a completely different developmental stage, they wouldn't be interested. As fairfarmhand says, it's different if they can be in leadership with their peers, such as in Civil Air Patrol or scouts.

It was a large group of kids with a huge age range. So 13-18 but lots of 16,18 yos too

[Arcadia]

The libraries here unofficially define their teen room/center inside the library to be for 7th to 12th graders. For teen activities, they would specify age if it is required that all kids be at least 13 years old, if not it is usually opened to middle school and high school students. Teen activities are usually things like movie night, board games night, pizza night, exam cram night.

[Pen]

13-19.  The younger part of the teen span overlaps with “adolescent” and the older part of the span overlaps with “young adult”. 

[Pen]

So, now, what was the irl situation?!?

[Lang Syne Boardie]

1 minute ago, Danae said:

 

I wonder if, for the library at least, it comes from publishing categories. My understanding is that "teen fiction" is aimed at ages 12-14 and "Young Adult" is 14-18. 

Oh! I hadn't thought of that. Thank you. 

[Terabith]

Our library's teen departments run a D&D program that my kids and husband are actively involved in.  (Husband runs a game at one of the libraries on Saturdays.)  When friends first invited my older daughter, she was only in fifth grade, so late ten, maybe early 11.  I was like, "She's not old enough for teen activities," but in reality the target audience was middle and high school kids, and mature older elementary kids were welcome.  The teen librarian confirmed to me that she was very welcome, especially since she had already played and was old enough to be focused on the task at hand.  My younger one joined the following year, in fourth grade, but ten years old, but she was VERY enthusiastic and knowledgeable.  I still wouldn't have felt okay about it except for knowing all the adults running it, and there are usually 3-4 games going on at any particular time.  Each game tends to self divide roughly by age, although there are exceptions.  I think my younger one is still the youngest, but I'm not sure about that.  

Teen, in my mind, is 13-19 but often excluding 18 and 19 year olds.  Youth seems a better descriptor to me, and that tends to encompass 6th-12th grades.  That's a very wide developmental span, and I like it if they are subdivided.  But that isn't always what works best for the groups or the specific kids involved.  

[Jenny in Florida]

4 hours ago, Tibbie Dunbar said:

I don't mind the ambiguity at the high end, but I would like to know why the library, the YMCA, and the church all label their activities for "teens" when they really mean "tweens and people no older than 13 to 15." Seriously! So many activities for teens, they literally meant age 10 to 13!

 

Because that is the age group that actually shows up to activities at places like the library, the YMCA and the church. Young people older than about 13 or 14 seem to lose interest in such organized activities.

[Farrar]

I'm curious about the IRL situation too. My guess is that it's people referring to their 11 or 12 yos as "teens" or a "teen" group that includes the 10 and up crowd, like someone mentioned. Because I feel like I'm seeing that a lot lately.

Like everyone else, I'd say teens are 13-19, but that 13-14 is on the young end and that some "teen" things are high school specific, so they'd be out, while 19 is an adult and probably not interested in things that are for "teens."

[Liz CA]

Behaviorally or chronologically?

[catz]

29 minutes ago, Jenny in Florida said:

 

Because that is the age group that actually shows up to activities at places like the library, the YMCA and the church. Young people older than about 13 or 14 seem to lose interest in such organized activities.

Well to be fair, I think there would be less chance of losing interest if they held to a hard line on their age ranges.  Kids who've gone through puberty do not mix well with 10-12 year olds for sure and some 13 and 14 year olds are young for age.  Said as someone who sets up lots of events for teens and now specifies age and says there will be no exceptions up front.  Events will get a lot more takers if they are advertised as JUST being for teens.  

And I'm not speaking specifically to this YMCA situation.  If they're offering like a super structured activity more appropriate for 10-13 year olds, well that's a different matter.  They should fix the age range in that case.  This would irritate me too.

I do like middle school/high school break down.  Though some 13's would do fine with the olders.  I don't like excluding older teens that are still actually in high school.  I do understand why they might need to be treated differently from a liability standpoint for some things.  

[Jenny in Florida]

22 hours ago, FuzzyCatz said:

Well to be fair, I think there would be less chance of losing interest if they held to a hard line on their age ranges.  Kids who've gone through puberty do not mix well with 10-12 year olds for sure and some 13 and 14 year olds are young for age.  Said as someone who sets up lots of events for teens and now specifies age and says there will be no exceptions up front.  Events will get a lot more takers if they are advertised as JUST being for teens.   

 

Speaking as someone who works at a library, we bend over backward trying to get teens older than 13 into our classes and programs, but they just do not show up. (The one exception is sewing camps. They like those.) So, instead of running programs and classes with zero attendance, we expand the age range to include the audience enthusiastic about participating.

[SKL]

Depends on the context.  My kids are 11 but I need to search "teen" sometimes depending on what I'm looking for.

Normally I would say "teen" means 13-19.

It does seem misleading when they say in the news that a "teen" did xyz and you find out it's a 19yo man.  Especially when the same news feed refers to an 18yo mom as a "woman."

What I find weird is "young adult" literature, which is geared to a 14yo's maturity (if that), but contains R-rated content ....

[Petrichor]

When you give birth as a married woman at age 19, they count you in the teen pregnancy statistics.

A teen (for the purposes of community programming for teens) 13-18.

A tween is 9-12. Our library offers teen programs as well as tween programs, and I think what I listed above are the age ranges for those programs.

Our community rec center includes ages 12+ with adults. Most fitness programs are for ages 12+ when they are geared towards mainly adults. They might have a stipulation that kids between the ages of 12 and 15 need to be enrolled in the class with a parent though.

Our library allows ages 13+ to be unsupervised (no parent on premises) in the library

[DawnM]

On 8/27/2018 at 5:00 PM, Crimson Wife said:

This is why I find it better when activities label themselves as "middle school" and/or "high school". If they want to include older 'tweens or exclude older teens, then labeling it by stage rather than a generic "teens" label is useful.

There can be liability issues for including teens who are legally adults so I have no problem with excluding 18-19 y.o.'s.

 

Sigh.....then we had moms saying, "My 10 year old is SO advanced, she is doing middle school work, so I will bring her."  Um, no, no you can't.  We had to change our teen group to TEENS only!  13-18.  Then we decided to TRY to allow 11-12 year olds IF the mother would stay in the room with the kids and watch.  That didn't go so well.  They would peek in, come back out to hang out with the adults and say, "Oh, I looked she is fine."  But it would be hard on the older ones not able to play the more difficult games because the 11 and 12 year olds would either not get the games or quit half way through because they were bored.

 

[Janeway]

Someone who hates you one day, loves you the next, who you love with all the intensity, but cannot stand at other times, can really smell, but has all of your heart.