Opinion: Revealed! The 2025 WOTY

When I was a junior in high school, my English teacher, Mrs. Donaldson, told my class that she’d been browsing in a book store and found a book that perfectly described the typical American teenager. Of course, she was not talking about us, as we were all superior human beings. The title of the book was “Where Did You Go? Out. What Did You Do? Nothing,” by Robert Paul Smith. According to Amazon.com, it was a “hugely popular bestseller when it first appeared in 1957.” 

I don’t remember any specifics about the book, but I’m sure that one-word answers to parents’ questions were the norm of teenage culture in those days. A generation later, I had to be sure that I was sitting down if I asked my son a question because I knew that I was in for a long answer. Being my son, of course, meant that he had a responsibility to point out all of my shortcomings and direct me to a path of rehabilitation.

Typical American teenagers have probably been an enigma to adult minds since the early-twentieth century. Before that, teens were young adults. They worked on farms, and they labored in factories before child-labor laws were formulated. They took up arms when America went to war. In other words, the typical American teenager (if such an expression even existed) had a defined role in adult society. But things began to change as we approached the mid-twentieth century, especially among the upper classes. The middle classes that burgeoned after World War II followed the same pattern. And a teen subculture developed, ensuring that every parental cohort is completely mystified by its teenaged kids.