the.com/tween
too old for the kids' table, too broke for the eye-rolling they've already perfected
means A child roughly between ages 9 and 12 — past little-kid stuff but not yet a full-blown teenager.
from A blend of 'between' and the '-teen' of teenager, popularized by marketers in the late 20th century who needed a label (and a wallet) for the not-quite-teen crowd. Tolkien used 'tween' earlier and differently — for hobbits in their twenties, between coming-of-age and 'coming of age' at 33 — but the modern shopping-mall sense grew independently from 'between.'
- age range
- roughly nine to twelve, give or take an attitude
- coined
- term boomed in 1980s marketing to mine wallets
- brain stage
- prefrontal cortex still wildly under construction
- spending power
- influences billions in family purchases yearly
- the limbo
- named literally for being between everything
percy jackson series — rick riordan's novels starring 12-year-old demigod percy, primary audience ages 8-12
nickelodeon's all that — sketch comedy show (1994-2005) that defined tween entertainment culture in the 1990s