Why Teen Magazines May Be Poised for a Comeback

As a Gen Xer, I was raised on teen magazines — I had a Teen subscription when I was 11 and switched to Seventeen just before high school, poring over every word of every article and Noxzema ad the second each issue arrived. Now, as a mom, I’ve tried for years to lure my 17-year-old daughter to the world of print magazines. But she’s never quite understood the nuanced joy of picking one up and leafing, instead of scrolling, to learn about the world.

So, I’ve been thrilled to learn that things are changing fast — and that suddenly, all signs point to a big shift in that Gen Z-print disconnect.

On Tuesday, W said it was launching WYouth, its “teenage sister publication,” in September, with Sofia Coppola and her 15-year-old daughter Cosima Croquet serving as contributing editors. The announcement cited a 2025 Harris Poll which found that 71% of consumers believed print magazines felt more authentic than digital ones.

And that’s not all. According to an Instagram post from Gen Z trend expert and “teen magazine scholar” Casey Lewis, WYouth is, she said, “believe it or not, the fourth teen magazine I’ve heard is in the works in the last month alone.”

It all had her reminiscing about what she calls the “golden age” of teen magazines — the early 2000s, when CosmoGIRL!, ELLEgirl, and Teen Vogue came along and made it “such an amazing time to be a teenage girl,” said Lewis. Although by 2014, “the whole category essentially evaporated,” replaced by digital alternatives and social media.

“Now the competition isn’t five other teen magazines, it’s the entire internet,” said Lewis, whose popular Substack is After School. “But with all the interest in analogue and experiential, maybe now is the time.”

Why Might Now Be the Time for a Teen Magazine Comeback?

Since they were first created in the 1940s, teen magazines “helped young people make sense of the world in a unique way” and navigate culture when it “was more centralized,” says Drew Mitchell, U.S. Lead with the researchers at Edelman Gen Z Lab. But then the internet and social media took over. “It was more participatory and more immediate, but it also fragmented everything,” he said.

“There’s no shared starting point — and algorithmic overload is real,” he adds. “Now, young people are looking for ways to get offline and reset.” Print, Mitchell says, “offers a break from the feed. It’s finite, intentional, and doesn’t feel like it’s just designed to keep you scrolling.”

But there’s even more to it, believes publishing pioneer Jane Pratt. Now the creator of Another Jane Pratt Thing, she was founding editor of the legendary Sassy magazine, started in 1988 as the edgy counterpoint to Seventeen and YM. She says she’s not only heard about the other teen mags brewing recently (and would love to help in any way she can), but has had more people ask her to restart Sassy than she can count.

“I’m not saying no to it at all,” she says. “It’s not something that I’m actively working on, but I think it’s absolutely needed.”

That, she explains, is because of today’s political climate — something that gave rise to Sassy in the ’80s, aka the Reagan-Bush years, and may just be giving rise to the possible resurgence now.

“Sassy started as a form of rebellion against what was going on politically in the country — and culturally, the way that teenage girls were being treated,” she says, recalling the magazine’s early involvement in a pro-choice campaign. “I was thinking that was the worst it was ever going to be for girls and abortion rights,” she says. “Look at where we are now and how needed it is — that kind of advocacy, that kind of sense of making teenage girls feel empowered to take control of the issues that affect them.”

Pratt, who went on to helm Jane and XO Jane, believes it’s a big reason why now might be the right moment for a new crop of teen magazines.

Gen Z’s idealization of the ’90s and all things analog, of course, is another.

“The idea of returning to print magazines, to me, is the equivalent of returning to vinyl records, and it seems that it’s gone beyond being just a novelty,” she says. While people will often share with her photos of old Sassy mags preserved in plastic, “people now want print magazines back in their daily lives, in the same way they have with vinyl.”

Pratt admits there will be a learning curve — not only with teens like my own, but like her 23-year-old daughter who “never went through a phase of wanting print magazines,” or even looking at her mom’s old Sassies.

“Like a song versus an album, they’re not used to seeing something in its entirety, but to endless scrolls. They’re not used to a story ending at the end of the page,” she says of Gen Z consumers.

Still, in light of constant news about the dangers of social media, says Pratt, “I think it’s a really healthy thing to go back to considering something that you hold in your hands, that’s only between you, the reader, and the people that wrote it, and is not a portal to the world.”