As algorithms rip through traditional tween culture, brands are reasserting the importance of the messy, sometimes awkward inbetween.
Even before social media saturated the lives of tweens, there were concerns that this formative period – roughly between the ages of nine and 13 – was collapsing. In the 1998 article Tweens: Ten Going on Sixteen, Kay S. Hymowitz reported how teachers, psychologists and researchers across America were noticing children skipping this crucial developmental stage. “There is no such thing as preadolescence anymore,” declared Henry Trevor, middle-school director at New York’s Berkeley Carroll School. “Kids are teenagers at 10.” Hymowitz added: “Marketers have a term for this new social animal, kids between eight and 12: they call them ‘tweens’.”
The term “tween” emerged in the 1980s to describe what Nathalie Coulter later called “capitalism’s most valuable customers” – children old enough to shape their parents’ spending habits, yet young enough to remain deeply impressionable. By the 1990s and early 2000s, magazines such as Bliss, Shout, Girl Talk and Elle Girl had built entire editorial worlds around tween aspiration. Today, YouTube lifestyle content, TikTok Shop, sponsored posts and influencer beauty brands have pushed tweenhood into something even more commercialised, but far less mediated.
As tween-targeted TV and film disappears – Disney shut down its UK channel in 2020, while CBBC ended live broadcasting in 2025 – YouTube and TikTok have become default entertainment systems. Dictated by algorithms, young users are funnelled toward the loudest voices and most addictive content, often spiralling into increasingly harmful rabbit holes.
In 2024, research found a fourfold increase in misogynistic content appearing on TikTok For You pages over just five days, with young boys identified as especially vulnerable to radicalisation. When discussing tween culture, it’s easy to focus on girls – perhaps because so much of the market still targets their insecurities with militaristic precision. Lip glosses, moisturisers and “clean girl” routines are sold as shortcuts to popularity and desirability. But as Netflix’s Adolescence demonstrated, tween boys are equally vulnerable online, particularly to extremist rhetoric packaged as self-improvement.
Earlier this year, Italy’s Competition Authority launched an investigation into Sephora and LVMH-owned Benefit over concerns the brands were marketing anti-ageing products to children as young as 10. Regulators accused the companies of “insidious” advertising strategies involving very young influencers. The move followed the rise of “Sephora Kids” on TikTok: endless videos of children displaying luxury skincare hauls and elaborate beauty routines. According to Razorfish, 68% of Gen Alpha own a luxury product by the age of 10. Psychologist Alberto Stefana has labelled the phenomenon “cosmeticorexia” – the compulsive, age-inappropriate use of cosmetic products and procedures. Most unsettling is how often parents appear behind the camera, directing the performance.
