Category talk:Teenagers

This discussion of one or several categories is now closed. Please do not make any edits to this archive.

Category:Teenagers

Human stages of development in Wikimedia Commons Child (birth to age of majority) Young child (birth to puberty) Infant (birth to first walking) Toddler (first walks) Adolescence (puberty to age of majority) Adult (age of majority or above) Young adult (18 to 40 years) Middle age (40 to 60 years) Old age (60 years till death) All figures above are approximate. Definitions come from, but are slightly modified from, the Wikipedia articles of respective age groups.

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Rename Category:Teenagers to Category:Adolescent children (edit: probably too simplistic approach, more nuance called for, see below) In keeping with the parent category Adolescence and its primary sub-categories (Adolescent boys / Adolescent girls). The primary division for human stages of development is Adult humans / Children but "teenagers" is problematic because it is mainly a children category, but contains two years (18 & 19) of the adult categories. Thus I would propose not a simple category move at first, but instead create two new categories (Adolescent children and Teenage adults) to sort contents into, ultimately making Teenagers into a dab between those two. Alternatively, instead of Teenage adults being created, we could simply move them to Young people (covers 18-40 yo) and do the same process, but I think having the adult teens have their own spot, at least during the transition, would be better. (@Trade: ) Josh (talk) 22:26, 29 September 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose. Adolescence and Teenaged have overlap, but are not equivalent. The first is a physiological process. The second, by definition, is numeric, but also has cultural connotations. Age of adolescence can vary (usually but not always starting shortly before teen years and continuing into early teens). By late teens, in many places the people are legally and culturally no longer children but adults. -- Infrogmation of New Orleans (talk) 23:30, 29 September 2023 (UTC)
  • @Infrogmation: Yes, I know adolescence and teenage are not equivalent, that is exactly the problem. They are currently being mashed together as an intermingled categorization tree and I would like to unmingle it. You say oppose, but what you write seems to indicate they should not be treated as they are now. Since my proposal has a few moving parts, perhaps you can clarify if you think the current mish-mash of adolescent/teenage is really best kept as the mess that it is, or if maybe you have some different ideas on how we can structure things? Josh (talk) 00:03, 30 September 2023 (UTC)

 Comment In the table at the right, "adolescent children" is listed, but actual category names are typically "adolescent boys" and "adolescent girls", although "teenage" (in various forms) is used for several categories as well, so no single terminology has been consistently applied. The stage corresponding with 13-17 year-olds, regardless of name, is widely used as a stage of development under Children in most people categories that are sorted by stage of development. Josh (talk) 00:10, 30 September 2023 (UTC)

• Lean toward keep. I see it way more as a cultural matter than a biological one. The concept of "teenagers" makes sense mainly post-WWII (certainly not earlier than the Victorian era) and also mainly in countries with a certain level of economic development. It involves having a somewhat distinct culture between that of childhood and adulthood. - Jmabel ! talk 01:39, 30 September 2023 (UTC)
• I'd say keep as is, a person is normally no longer considered a child when they reach adolescence even if some legislation uses the term "child" otherwise. And yes the term "teenager" is a definite age and most people reach adolescence before 13 but some will still be children at 13. Crouch, Swale (talk) 14:49, 30 September 2023 (UTC)

@Infrogmation, Jmabel, and Crouch, Swale: It is sounding like it makes sense to keep Category:Teenagers. What Crouch is saying is making it sound more like we need a third top level break, instead of just children and adults, we should have children, teens, and adults. Or are Teenagers just an additional parallel track to the 'stage of development' or something else? So I guess maybe the first question to address is, what is Category:Teenagers:

1. A 'stage of development' to be fit into the structure at right
2. A 'chronological age' (or group of ages) that overlaps some portions of the 'stage of development' structure, and important to maintain as its own grouping due to (particularly post-WWII) cultural implications.

I would lean towards #2 based on what I am reading here. It seems that it is worth keeping for the reasons above. A couple of follow-on questions:

1. Should we continue to apply our current bright line dividing all into children (everyone under 18) and adults (everyone 18+)? It seems the word 'children' gives some pause as some do not apply that term to adolescent minors. It's probably why the law doesn't use the term, instead using 'minor' for non-adults. Do we need a third group between children and adults for age grouping? Should we limit the term 'children' to pre-pubescent minors and use a different term for all under 18s as a group?
2. Some users have mentioned legal definitions around some of these terms. As far as I am aware none of these categories are bound to reflect any given legal system's definitions and we have no categorization of people based on legal status (in the age arena anyway), nor are any age-related categories intended to offer any legal statement one way or the other. So since legal age definitions seem completely irrelevant to our current categorization scheme, but yet people still bring it up, is it something we should care about, and how would we go about doing so if we were to take that into account? I can't see a workable way to do this, but am interested in what you might think.

Josh (talk) 21:29, 30 September 2023 (UTC)

A person can reach adolescence at different ages, from what I can remember at school its normally between 8 and 14, if someone reaches puberty at 7 they would technically not be classified as a child but if they hadn't at 15 they technically would still be. I think the concept of "Teenagers" is more useful as its a crisp definition as people won't normally know if someone is a child or not and we can't expect users here to define that. Crouch, Swale (talk) 08:12, 2 October 2023 (UTC)

 Comment Not proposing a particular solution here, but I've always been uncomfortable with most of the "stages of development" as we've had them. "Babies" for pre-toddlers and "children" for toddlers up to adolescence make sense to me; after that (maybe even there?), these distinctions vary across cultures, and our current approach reflects a Euro-centric industrial and post-industrial culture: very culture-bound and hence era-bound, but it ends up treated as if it were universal.

I'm 68 years old. I don't particularly think of myself as an "old person" (though there are days...). I find it very weird to classify, say, Angele Merkel as an "old woman" or Vladimir Putin as an "old man." Conversely, I'm told that in much of Africa 40 is considered "old". In Jewish law, a boy becomes a man at 13; in the South Sea islands, I gather that it is considered simply normal for both of the leading genders to begin an adult sexual life at puberty. In the U.S., the age of majority is 18 for some purposes, 21 for others. It's really hard to homogenize this sort of thing.

I do think teenagerdom as a cultural phenomenon deserves a category, but with the understanding that (for example) there is no such thing as a 17th-century teenager any more than there is a 19th-century hippie. - Jmabel ! talk 02:25, 1 October 2023 (UTC)

Oooh... the 'old' person category, I agree I am not enthusiastic about that for one, but in general anything beyond child/adult has been a hard one for me. I don't know who came up with that guideline I put there, but I've only been attempting to live within it as it seemed a pretty established standard for categories. 'Stages of development' do seem to make a bit of sense for children as of course, they are developing. But looking at the articles on the subject, it is not like there is some universal standard (or even generally broad standard) in the world, but just various schemes by academics based on their particular academic focus and what fits with the research they work on.

I think the influence of English-centrism and more broadly Euro-centrism in categories is quite strong, and I think you are right that it gets presumed to be some universal thing. The list at right may not be my creation, but I did add one bit, "as categorized on Wikimedia Commons" because I wanted to highlight that this wasn't some universal standard, but just the way it happens to be currently structured here on Commons.

When you talk about categorizing Merkel or Putin, i.e. categorizing individual person categories, that is also problematic. It is one thing to sort a picture saying the person in the picture is a woman, and put it under Women. But if one sorts a category of Angela Merkel, saying that she is, as of this moment a woman, so her whole category goes under Women sounds fine, but she wasn't always a woman (presumably she was a baby like most of us at one point), and when she announces she has transitioned to a man one day in the future, then what? Does her whole category get moved to Men? I don't know, but I generally stay away from doing this kind of categorization because I am not comfortable with placing people categories under things based on their momentary current state (even if it seems unlikely to change much). Anyway, that's probably too far off on that tangent.

You are right that the concept of a 'teenager' as a group at all is relatively recent. That would indicate it is not really a pure 'chronological age', as a 15-year-old is a 15-year-old no matter where or when they are from, but it seems rather silly to talk about 'Teenagers of the Roman Empire' or something since that would be an utterly irrelevant concept at that place and time. I do think "Teenagers" are a legitimately recognized phenomena.

One additional think I note is that the word teenager is expressly an English-language creation. The concept of covering the 'teen' numbers (13-19) is dependent on how English names those numbers, using unique number words through 12 before transitioning to 'ones-plus-ten' format from 13 on. In Spanish for example, this doesn't make sense, since they number uniquely through 15, and only from 16 on does Spanish use a 'ones-plus-ten' format, so even the linguistic concept of 'teenager' being 13-19 doesn't make sense. "Teenagers" are "adolescentes" in Spanish, but really that is the word for "adolescent" of course, and as we know, the two are not synonyms. So yeah, I complete get that this category, and probably the whole range of age groupings that we have are probably the result to a large degree of English-language and Euro-centrism influence on our structure.

I would actually be okay with binning the entire young/middle-age/old categorization for adults. It has always seemed rather arbitrary at best, and I do not understand how exactly they should be populated. If they really are just a chronological age grouping, then why bother? The chronological categories can do that just fine. I'm not sure why a 39-year-old is better categorized in with 18-year-olds than with 41-year-olds. Also, on what grounds do we determine which group for those we don't know the actual age of, is it just 'oh this one looks old' or what? There are may be distinct developmental traits and mile-stones that identify babies from children for example, but for adults at best there are some general trends and changes that indicate aging, but no bright lines. I know this would be kind of a bold thing to do, but I would say if we know the age, categorize in chronological age categories, but if not, then its just adult, not old/middle/young based on what users think the person looks like. Josh (talk) 04:07, 1 October 2023 (UTC)

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 Not done: No consensus for a change, (and it would be a massive undertaking to do so). --The Squirrel Conspiracy (talk) 09:15, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

This discussion of one or several categories is now closed. Please do not make any edits to this archive.

Category:Teenagers

A problematic category name that has caused a lot of headaches at Commons:Categories for discussion/2025/02/Category:Nude teenagers. There was a proposal by Joshbaumgartner at Commons:Categories for discussion/2023/09/Category:Teenagers, but it was opposed by users. So, this CFD is intended to implement either one of the two proposals:

Option 1	Option 2
Move Category:Teenagers (13-19) to Category:Adolescents (13-18)	Create Category:Adolescents (13-18) as a subcategory of Category:Teenagers (13-19).

Note: my proposed adolescent range of 13-18 is due to a bilateral discussion at Commons:Categories for discussion/2024/07/Category:Humans by stage of development. Pinging users from previous discussions.​​​​​​​​​​​​​ Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs • uploads) 08:56, 7 February 2025 (UTC)

• As mentioned "teenage" is easy to define namely by age but people become an adolescent at different ages so I don't think renaming would be helpful especially as many people under 13 will be adolescents rather than children. Crouch, Swale (talk) 08:59, 7 February 2025 (UTC)

  So, do you think Option 2 would be good for this? Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs • uploads) 09:03, 7 February 2025 (UTC)

The ‘nude teenagers’ discussion is quite long; the key point here is that ‘teenagers’ and ‘adolescents’ are both ambiguous, particularly with regard to whether they include people aged 18 or older. Also note the discussion at Template talk:Category navigation/people/sidenote#Proper citation needed.

Commons:Categories for discussion/2023/09/Category:Teenagers mentioned various age thresholds that might cause issues, but 18 years old is a key threshold with regard to certain nude or sexualized images, so a ‘nude teenagers’ category tree (and especially some of the subcategories mentioned at the ‘nude teenagers’ discussion) is obviously problematic. Brianjd (talk) 09:09, 7 February 2025 (UTC)

Pinging @The Squirrel Conspiracy (fixing broken hidden ping). Brianjd (talk) 09:29, 7 February 2025 (UTC)

 Comment I'm not sure I have a strong preference here except that I see no reason at all for categories that refer to adolescents to be direct subcats of Category:Teenagers. Also that we should keep the word "teenagers" away from categories that are implicitly or explicitly about sexuality, and WTH is Category:Clothed teenagers?? We do not normally tag pictures of people with the fact that they are clothed, that is simply the very preponderant default. - Jmabel ! talk 21:09, 7 February 2025 (UTC)

@Jmabel: Actually, we seem to have a fairly thorough category tree starting at Clothed people. Brianjd (talk) 05:49, 8 February 2025 (UTC)

@Crouch, Swale, Jmabel, and Brianjd: Not suggesting any conjectural age ranges for "adolescents", but I think the categories for human stages of development would be something like this:

• Minors (from birth to the age of majority)
  • Children (from birth to the onset of puberty)
    • Babies (from birth to first toddling)
    • Toddlers (first toddling to first proper walking)
  • Adolescents (from the onset of puberty to the age of majority)
• Adults (from the age of majority to death)
  • Young adults (will be eliminated)
  • Middle-aged people (will be eliminated)
  • Old people (from 60/65 to death)

"Teenagers" will be kept, but it won't be considered a stage of development. Instead, it should be considered a mere "age group" for people aged between 13 and 19, like "centenarians" for people aged 100 or more. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs • uploads) 07:34, 8 February 2025 (UTC)

I don't think adolescents should come under children, the definition of a child is normally someone from birth to puberty in which case they then become an adolescent so I'd have adolescents as a separate category from children. Crouch, Swale (talk) 07:55, 8 February 2025 (UTC)

@Crouch, Swale: Got it. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs • uploads) 08:00, 8 February 2025 (UTC)

Guess I'm ancient, by your standards, but not dead yet, thank you. - Jmabel ! talk 08:19, 8 February 2025 (UTC)

@Sbb1413: I’d rather see a ‘complete’ category tree:

• ‘Children’ should have a subcategory for children more developed than toddlers. The parent category ‘Children’ would then be reserved for files where it is not possible to move them into a more appropriate subcategory, or no one has gotten around to it yet.
• Similarly, ‘Adults’ should have a subcategory for adults less developed than ‘Old people’.

Brianjd (talk) 09:17, 8 February 2025 (UTC)

I’d rather see a ‘complete’ category tree:

• ‘Children’ should have a subcategory for children more developed than toddlers. The parent category ‘Children’ would then be reserved for files where it is not possible to move them into a more appropriate subcategory, or no one has gotten around to it yet.
• Similarly, ‘Adults’ should have a subcategory for adults less developed than ‘Old people’.

@Brianjd: I initially wanted a complete category tree, but later I realized (and Joshbaumgartner told me) that a complete category tree is not always optimal. I'm giving the answers in bullets.

• Category for children more developed than toddlers (say "play-age children"): I see a "bright line" between babies and toddlers, that is the ability to walk. However, I can't find such a "bright line" between toddlers and play-age children. So, I don't see the need for a separate category for play-age children.
• Categories for non-old adults ("young adults" and "middle-aged people"): I see a "bright line" between adolescents and adults, that is the age of majority. I also see a "not-so-bright line" between middle-aged and old people, that is the visible signs of ageing. But what about the transition from young adults and middle-aged people, which is so gradual that it is difficult to draw any "line" between the two, let alone any "bright" one. So, I no longer see the need for "young adults" and "middle-aged people" categories.

Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs • uploads) 09:42, 8 February 2025 (UTC)

Also, while having a "bright line" is the main thing I'm considering here, there should also be categories for related topics. For example, we have categories like Elderlycare and Senior sports related to old people, or categories like Human babies learning to walk for toddlers. But I can't find such categories for young adults (Young adult literature is actually targeted towards adolescents) or middle-aged people. Of course, you can argue that Early childhood education is a valid topic for children more developed than toddlers, and we can create Category:Preschoolers if needed. But I think categories like Category:Preschoolers should be restricted to children in preschools or similar. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs • uploads) 09:58, 8 February 2025 (UTC)

@Sbb1413: We have Kindergarten students. Brianjd (talk) 10:07, 8 February 2025 (UTC)

(Edit conflict) @Sbb1413: You say that there is no ‘bright line’ between ‘toddlers’ and ‘play-age children’, so we shouldn’t have a category for ‘play-age children’. But that seems to imply: (1) we also shouldn’t have a category for ‘toddlers’; (2) we should have only ‘babies’ and ‘children who are not babies’.

(And similarly for the adults categories.) Brianjd (talk) 10:04, 8 February 2025 (UTC)

@Brianjd: I think you've ignored my second comment, which tells my reason to keep the category for toddlers. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs • uploads) 10:06, 8 February 2025 (UTC)

@Sbb1413: You mean the related categories? Actually, that was an edit conflict, but also, I’m not convinced by that argument. (I might need to spend some time thinking about it.) Brianjd (talk) 10:09, 8 February 2025 (UTC)

Pinging @Trade: , whom I see is adding the old definitions of human stages of development in new categories. The old definition (female version) is as follows (excluding the "Definitions" heading and the category links):

1. Babies (birth to 24 months)
2. Girls (2–13 years [puberty])
3. Adolescent girls (13–17 years)
4. Women (18+ years)
   • Young women (18–39 years)
   • Middle-aged women (40–59 years)
   • Old women (60+ years)

Definitions come from, but are slightly modified from, the Physical stages of human life as found at Wikipedia:Human development (biology).

Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs • uploads) 11:58, 10 February 2025 (UTC)

What is the difference Trade (talk) 12:21, 10 February 2025 (UTC)

I think I proposed "children" as a subtype of "minors" as per Crouch, Swale's comment. While that proposal makes more sense, I found problems with the words "boys" and "girls", which can refer to both pre-adolescent children and adolescents. Even if I treat "boys" and "girls" as male and female equivalents of "minors", what would be the equivalents for "children"? I think it would be "young boys" and "young girls" (as opposed to "adolescent boys" and "adolescent girls", and also the fact that "children" is the human equivalent of "[taxon] (juvenile)" in organism names). Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs • uploads) 12:04, 10 February 2025 (UTC)

A boy or girl is a child or adolescent so a child isn't the same thing as a boy or girl its part of it. A boy or girl would be a minor regardless of if they're a child or adolescent and would become a man or woman when they reach the ago of majority. Crouch, Swale (talk) 12:08, 10 February 2025 (UTC)

For USA law, a "child" is whoever did not reach 18 years of age yet. Including teenagers. User:G.dallorto (talk) 20:18, 10 February 2025 (UTC)

@Crouch, Swale and G.dallorto: I found several different definitions of the term "child" from the Wikipedia article child:

• "a human being between the stages of birth and puberty".
• "[a human being] between the developmental period of infancy and puberty".
• "the legal definition of child generally refers to a minor, in this case as a person younger than the local age of majority".
• UN Convention on the Rights of the Child definition: "A human being below the age of 18 years unless under the law applicable to the child, majority is attained earlier."

The current category follows the latter two definitions, with the "age of majority" set at 18 globally. However, some also makes a distinction between "childhood" (ending at puberty) and "youth" (starting from puberty). Not only that, but puberty is also a "bright line" in human development, similar to the first walking of kids, or the ageing of adults. So, that's why I've decided to end childhood at puberty instead of at the age of majority. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs • uploads) 11:15, 12 February 2025 (UTC)

Considering that there are no objections to create a separate Category:Adolescents category, I've boldly created one, categorizing it under Category:Children by stage of development. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs • uploads) 11:17, 12 February 2025 (UTC)

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This category discussion has been closed.
Consensus	Resolved by consensus
Actions	Separate category is created for Category:Adolescents. Opened a separate CFD for Category:Children at Commons:Categories for discussion/2025/02/Category:Children.
Participants	Brianjd (talk · contribs) Omphalographer (talk · contribs) Trade (talk · contribs) G.dallorto (talk · contribs) Jmabel (talk · contribs) Crouch, Swale (talk · contribs)
Notes	So, the discussion was about creating a separate category for adolescents, but has quickly become a discussion to define children. So, I've decided to close this discussion and open a new one.
Closed by	Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs • uploads) 11:44, 12 February 2025 (UTC)