How 'Teenage' Became Another Stage Of Life

This might be hard to imagine, but there was a time -- not too long ago -- when teenagers didn’t exist. Yes, there were people between the ages of 13 and 19. But the term “teenager” didn't enter pop culture until the end of World War II, in 1945. Matt Wolf is the director of a new documentary called Teenage, and joins us to talk about how the term and the concept behind it came about -- and the role that music played in its worldwide spread. 

On the coining of the term "adolescence" by psychologist G. Stanley Hall in 1904: 

It was a huge thing. It really came with the abolition of child labor. Before, you were just a child, and then you'd go to work like an adult. But when youth stopped working, there was all of a sudden this second stage of life. Young people had a lot of time on their hands and they were getting into trouble. So all of a sudden youth became a kind of social problem. And forever after, adults have been trying to figure out what to do with them. 

On using a contemporary soundtrack written by Bradford Cox of Deerhunter for the film: 

I wanted to combine archival imagery with contemporary music, because it's really transformative. Instead of it feeling stodgy, like these are the clothes and dances my grandparents would have done, it makes you see yourself in the material. 'I could have been that flapper kid.'

On the importance of music in the spread of teenage culture worldwide: 

It was critical. I would say that swing and jitterbugging was the first full-fledged youth culture.... I was fascinated by the jitterbugs. I could totally see myself being part of that and being one of them. And it's also something that had its origins in black culture, and then became a youth phenomenon, but then the mass media caught on. And it became this bigger thing that spread to Europe, and it took on this political dimension for youth abroad.