Document 25.6 Richard Gehman, The Nine Billion Dollars in Hot Little Hands, 1957

Richard Gehman | The Nine Billion Dollars in Hot Little Hands, 1957

In the 1950s, teenagers were identified for the first time as a distinct and important consumer market. Advertising agencies and manufacturers studied teen spending habits on products such as movies, clothes, and records, and as the following article suggests, teenagers influenced purchases and popular culture well beyond their own experiences.

WHOLE INDUSTRIES are devoted exclusively to pleasing teenagers. Relatively untalented performers have become the highest-paid stars in the country simply because teenagers idolize them. Our eating habits have changed drastically; many families now eat the way teenagers do—from trays, in front of the TV set.

Currently there are three organizations in New York devoted exclusively to polling teenagers, discovering their opinions and tastes, and selling this information to manufacturers and advertising agencies. . . .

One watch company, whose products had not been striking the fancy of the nation’s youth, designed a whole new line of wrist watches. Before long, word got around that this company’s watches were the ones to have, and sales began to rise—even, to the manufacturer’s surprise, in its adult line.

“The adults heard the kids talking about the watches and decided they must be pretty good,” one dealer explains.

This illustrates another huge factor in the teens’ influence. Kids are better-educated, better-informed, and, in the majority of cases, more alert today than at any previous time in history. Also, they are more articulate. Schools encourage them to express their opinions and preferences. Consequently, adults respect them more, and listen when they talk about new inventions and products. A manufacturer of farm equipment tells of a salesman who visited a farmer to try to interest him in buying a tractor. The farmer said that if his teenaged son approved of the tractor, he would buy it. “This is going to be a cinch,” the salesman thought—but to his surprise, the boy’s reaction was negative. “That tractor of yours just won’t do the work we need to do,” he said. No sale.

Many of the innovations in Detroit-produced cars in recent years have come about as a result of the teenagers’ interest in hot rods, says a publisher of motor magazines. “Four-barrel carburetors, twin exhausts, and the so-called ‘power packages’ found in many new models stem directly from hot rod activity,” the publisher says.

Home design, too, is directly influenced by what teenagers want and don’t want. A New Jersey contractor last year decided to build himself the house he had always wanted. It was to cost $200,000 and include all the ultra-modern features a house can possibly have. He hired an architect and set men to work on the foundation. Then one day his daughter came home from high school in tears. “Daddy,” she said, “is it true we’re going to have the biggest house in town? Everybody’ll think we’re snobs and climbers!” Then and there the contractor abandoned his plans for the house.

Nowadays, that contractor and hundreds of his contemporaries build houses with teenagers uppermost in their minds. They provide separate entrances to bedroom wings, so that the children won’t track mud through the main part of the house; they build in special playrooms. The furniture manufacturers follow suit with special pieces that are sturdy enough to withstand teenage sprawling and covered with dirt-resistant fabrics. “There is no question about it,” says one builder; “teenagers have taken over the house.” He might well have carried it a few steps further. They’ve taken over everything.

Source: Richard Gehman, “The Nine Billion Dollars in Hot Little Hands,” Cosmopolitan, November 1957, 72, 77–78.