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The marketing discourse of perpetual adolescence, describes the ways in which the advertising industry trains all people, young and old, to be consumers of youth in a marketplace that privileges adolescence over adulthood; with ultimate goal of achieving access to an adult wallet that is controlled by a consumer with child-like sensibilities. The discourse of perpetual adolescence has always been present in advertising but came to prominence after WWII when drastic changes in population and the emergence of a new middle class were influential factors in shifting ideologies surrounding what it meant to be a child, a teenager, and an adult. One of the largest advertising agencies of the twentieth century J. Walter Thompson, and their practices in consumer research with Behaviorist John B. Watson, the Consumer Panel, and the Personality Profile Project, suggest that in the Post War period advertisers aimed to further expand the youth market into the more profitable age category of 25-44 year olds by selling youthfulness to adults. The result was the creation of a youth market based not on age but on feelings and lifestyle.

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Stephen Gennaro is a cultural historian of media and youth. His scholarship connects the study of popular culture and media with longstanding intellectual questions about relationships of power surrounding youth in society. Stephen teaches Children´´s Studies at York University in Toronto, Canada, where he lives with his partner and children.

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