The youth market has always been defined as tweens, teens, and sometimes college students, but Viacom’s recent “Golden Age of Youth” study reveals that marketers should begin including the 25-34 age group as part of their youth target. Call it the Peter Pan syndrome if you will, but the survey found that contemporary twentysomethings prolong their youth and delay “the onset of adult responsibilities and stay emotionally and physically younger for longer.”
Why do you think the “youth market” has expanded? Boomeranging millennials moving back home? Youth culture as pop culture? What’s behind this alleged case of arrested development?