Who says the youngsters out there don’t read? According to a Quartz piece, teenage magazines are not just doing well, but some thrive. I take a look to see what’s so special!

The opening of this piece had me intrigued:

The glossy teen magazine is like the tardigrade of the media world. Despite the harshest of conditions—a brutal advertising climate and shifting media consumption trends—it persists, and even thrives.

Well, first I had to look up tardigrade: Tardigrades—also known by the cuter monikers “water bears” and “moss piglets”—are estimated to have been on this planet for more than 500 million years. And with their freakish ability to survive in the harshest conditions, they’ll undoubtedly be around longer than us.

In any case, it’s a new word and I know that every newspaper publisher I know would like to turn his/her publication into a tardigrade. But back to teen magazines, what is the formula? Here is an old teen magazine: the formula has not changed much.

Seventeen, for example, continues to publish both in print and also digital. Yes, 74 years later, it is still here, and has seen some of its fiercest competitors, such as Teen Vogue kill their print editions.

And there are new teen titles popping up in the market as well. This, too, in the Quartz piece:

Last summer, Bauer Publishing, the media group behind US supermarket checkout standards like In Touch and Life & Style, launched a print-only magazine called Teen Boss aimed at entrepreneurial-minded girls ages 8 to 15. Unlike its teen mag ancestors, the ad-free publication is less concerned with what girls buy than with how they can make money themselves

What makes teenage girls turn to Seventeen? The magazine promises those who read it : LIFE-CHANGING BEAUTY ADVICE AND SECRETS. It is also not too expensive to get “life changing” advice. See the subscription card:

I visited the website and found such headlines as:

Things No One Tells You About First Gyno Visit

Advice for the best and cutest graduation dresses

Cheap short prom dresses.

I am sure that those three stories could have been told for the past 74 years, with variations. There must be something the editors are doing to keep the interest of teenage girls who I suspect are glued to their phones most of the time.

I can’t reveal any findings that will illuminate us on the subject, except that perhaps by focusing on a specific segment of the audience, and catering in a relentless way to what they know those readers want, they have been able to survive and even thrive. The secret may be that these magazines have not taken detours into la la land, perhaps fueled by doubt and marketing surveys. Sometimes a stubborn resilience may be the right formula when it comes to knowing your audience and not letting anything keep you from satisfying it.