Maybe it's all the year's I spent in therapy working through my own childhood/teen issues. Maybe it's being married to a psychologist. There has always been a strong connection between psychology and marketing/advertising (think: Freud), but I believe that in order to really understand youth, and more importantly to be able to empathize with them (key to reaching them), you must understand developmental psychology as it relates to adolescents and young adults. MIT researcher A. Rae Simpson has created an invaluable resource to help us with this task. It's the MIT Young Adult Development Project, and it literally breaks out all of the characteristics, milestones and limitations adolescents and young adults are experiencing. See the press release here. There is so much great information in this site — click through it, print stuff out, post it next to your desk. No matter how many market research reports you buy, nothing will help you understand this demographic more than this.

Categorized under: Youth Marketing

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