I just finished reading http://www.rushkoff.com/essay/sportswearinternational.html, an article on why companies will profit economically by focusing their energies on coming up with more creative ideas/designs instead of looking to kids for what’s cool.

Here is one of the author’s more interesting points:

“The problem with being the center of attention is that it gives [teenagers] nowhere to turn, themselves. When even their parents long for the adolescent sexual utopia of the Abercrombie and Fitch catalogue or the idyllic and equally adult-less Dawson's Creek, kids have nothing left to aspire towards. None of them are experiencing anything close to the good times suggested by these brand-image universes. They are teenagers, for God's sake. It's a terrible, terrifying time. But they have been put at the very center of the universe. Marketers want to please them. Their parents want to *be* them. All eyes, and all cameras, are trained on the teen.”