Teens in the '50s
The teenagers of the 1950s were the children from the postwar baby boom. They were the first generation raised on television, rock music, and economic affluence. In the past, there was no such thing as teenagers. If you weren't a child, you were an adult. This was the first time that teens were being recognized as their own separate demographic group. The main groups among the teens were the Greasers and the Preppies. The Greasers wore tight jean, leather jackets, and put grease on their hair. The Preppies were more like nerds, they did everything proper. They had proper clothes and seemed like the perfect teenagers. Some common slang at the time was: wheels, passion-pit, square, dig, hip, chick, and smooth.
Before the 1950s, teenagers would work and make money to contribute to the expenses and would give that money to help support their parents, but since these 50s teens had no real memory of the depression, they would spend their money on TV’s, phonograph records, pimple cream, and lipstick.
The generation gap between these teens and their parents didn’t seem as big at first but then there was a high rise of juvenile delinquency and with teens having an allowance from their parents or by having a part-time job they created their own lifestyles. During the depression, parents saw automobiles, televisions, record players, and cameras as luxuries. But by the midfifties teenagers were buying 43% of all records, 44% of all cameras, 39% of all new radios, 9% of all new cars, and 53% of movie tickets. Teenagers had a big impact in the economy, they had money and they spent it on whatever made them happy or popular.
By the mid-1950s there were 16.5 million teenagers in the United States. About half of them were crowding the nation’s secondary schools, while the rest had entered college or the work world.
With the popularity of rock and roll, parents became strongly opposed to having their kids listen to it. For example rock music was banned in most radios stations and in some towns, parents would burn piles of rock records.
