Parents are not alone—North American teenagers have the admittedly divided but substantial attention of a whole lot of adults.
Parents are not alone. A million middle school and high school teachers, instructors and coaches look after North American adolescents throughout the school year. Add to that figure, half-a-million church-based youth workers, three million after-school employers and 16 million retailers, marketers, officers of the court—and, of course, demographers—and teenagers have the admittedly divided but substantial attention of a whole lot of adults.
As long as we’re playing with numbers, let’s add that North America kids are just a fraction of around 1.2 billion teens scattered around the globe.
Let me repeat that another way so we don’t miss it:
Right now, 1.2 billion teenagers call this world their home.
Is it just me or does that seem like an awful lot of kids hanging out after school? Or fighting wars...or spreading disease...or building and buying things...or solving planetary problems.
A bit more counting: Depending on who’s numbers you like, starting around 1961, American Boomers introduced somewhere around 45 million babies into the mix. They were followed by a cohort of about 60 million younger siblings—the Millennials as folks like to say when pigeonholing people.
from Raising Adults by Jim Hancock