Since the 1950s, teen magazines have helped young people — girls, especially — navigate the rollercoaster that is adolescence. By the late ’90s, they reached a sort of peak, with titles like Seventeen, Sassy, YM, CosmoGirl, Tiger Beat, Teen and Teen People flying off newsstands. But with the sharp rise of digital content between 2004 and 2010, teen media all but faded away. Tavi Gevinson then made a formidable attempt to bring it back in a modern, digital-meets-analog format with Rookie , but even that met its end by 2018.

While growing up, Millennials managed to experience a bit of both worlds: print magazines and social media, landlines and iPhones, CDs and streaming apps. But for those born after Y2K, the world was digital-first. With (seemingly) everything in the palms of their hands, teens have had less motivation to pick up a glossy IRL, hence the medium’s sharp decline.…