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A teenager is a person whose age is a number ending in "-teen" in the English language: that is to say, someone from the age of thirteen to the age of nineteen. The word is of recent origin, only having appeared in the mid 20th century. The term adolescent is roughly equivalent.
During this period of life, most children go through the stages of puberty, although it often begins before a person has entered the teens. Most cultures regard people to have become adults at various ages of the teenage years.
Puberty is the stage in the human lifespan when a child begins to develop adult secondary sex characteristics as their hormone balance shifts towards an adult state. Briefly, this is caused by the hypothalamus gland that secretes hormones into the blood stream which trigger growth in the gonads: the girl's ovaries and the boy's testicles.
In women, the first menstrual period is called menarche.
Fiction about teenagers:
See also: teen magazine, teen idol, youth culture, sex education, sexual abstinence, tween, teenage pregnancy