The invention of the "teenager".

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It was an early 20th century invention. At that time "teenager" was coined and there came the concept of the teenager.

This is what I think, thought ever since at 13, I developed the ability of abstract thinking, not changing later on as such in this respect but barely developing and deepening what there already was in me and will always think.

"Adolescence is a 20th-century invention" as the Governor in The Walking Dead says at one point when someone (Andrea?) protests against the fact he wants to have guns to anyone who had turned 13 to protect Woodbury. You see, throughout the whole history of our human species it looked like that: when you were not a child, you were an adult. Just younger and less experienced, that's all.

My country, Poland had a twelve year old queen, Jadwiga - I know it was back in the 14th century but still, human nature doesn't change per se. She ruled without an adult regent, just with advisors in spite of her extreme youth. As Jan Długosz wrote in his Chronicles, "whatever the queen said or did, had the maturity of an old age". She was actually the king of Poland and not the queen, her husband Władysław Jagiełło was like 25 years her senior. She died at about 25 in childbirth and the baby named Elżbieta Bonifacja died with her. Baldwin IV in turn, the leper king, was 13 when he became the king of the Kingdom of Jerusalem and the same was for Gordian III, the emperor of Rome. Speaking of the emperors of Rome, also Heliogabal and Alexander Severus became ones at merely 14. Back in the Middle Ages, one was an adult at 14; a woman of 12 and a man of 14 could get legally married. It worked like that up until quite recently

The concept of being labelled as a teenager was invented for a good reason. Because 13 to 16 year olds don't have the reasoning power of mature adults. Just because it was ok in the "ol' days" (and less progressed countries today) to marry your daughter off at 13 or send young boys off to die fighting in a war at 13 years old does not mean that it's now or ever was OK.