Are today's teenagers really teenagers? The case of North West that's angering Millennials and Gen Z

While one segment of the internet-dwelling public keeps asking itself when adolescence truly ends, exploring the grey areas of the web and questioning the behaviors and habits that seem to have led us to reject adulthood, on the other side there is a new generation, Generation Alpha, that seems to have made something different out of adolescence. A shortcut, perhaps, that fast-tracks the milestones, irreverent and apparently immune to the rules we grew up with. Among the new darlings of the internet, overexposure, and success, one name stands out: North West, the twelve-year-old daughter of Kim Kardashian and Kanye.

Her public appearances have sparked considerable controversy over her looks — often designer, complete with fake piercings, eyeliner tattoos drawn on her face, black grills following in her father's footsteps, and turquoise hair. The most recurring comment is always the same: «She doesn't look twelve.»

Yet she is far from the only one playing with her own aesthetic and, by extension, with the very meaning of what it means to be a teenager today. Her friends do it too, and more broadly, so does an entire generation raised with and through social media. Which leads one to wonder whether this is truly a negative sign, or whether the adolescence we once knew is simply a memory that, for better or worse, we need to leave behind.

The North West Case

North West is a twelve-year-old girl born into America's "royal family," the Kardashian-Jenners. She has always been the subject of criticism ranging from her aesthetic choices to her physicality, all the way to what appear to be the new hobbies of privileged teenagers: making music, attending Paris Fashion Week accompanied by her mother's stylist, posing with the most influential celebrities of the moment. This is, of course, not the life of the majority of teenagers. It belongs to a tiny sliver of the population living in a condition of enormous privilege, but also of intense exposure. In this sense, North represents something of a caricature of what it means to be a teenager today, while still embodying certain traits that clearly illustrate the difference between Generation Alpha and those that came before.

Gen Z teenagers, and Millennials to some extent, grew up at the dawn of digitalization. The internet was still a tool to be explored with curiosity and a degree of skepticism. People were trying to figure out what the languages of the future would look like, without being fully immersed in them yet. North West, on the other hand, like many of her peers, grew up inside new technologies. She is the product of languages already shaped by social media, of a culture of image, relevance, and constant performance.

If yesterday's teenagers feared loneliness and being misunderstood, today's seem to fear irrelevance. A relevance that, in North's case, was not sought but inherited. It should also be said that, beyond appearances, her experience is not as anomalous as it is often made out to be. Kim Kardashian is a constant presence in her digital life: she supervises her live streams on Twitch, monitors her TikTok account, and keeps an eye on the content she posts with her friends as well as that dedicated to her early music projects.

There is constant talk about her looks, but if you are the daughter of Kim Kardashian and Ye, it is hard to expect anything different — especially when a certain artistic inclination emerges, one that also uses aesthetics as a form of expression. Moreover, we very often end up attributing to a child the responsibility for stylistic choices that are, in reality, made possible by the environment she grows up in, and not solely by her own will.

Because, let's be honest, at twelve years old one is not yet fully equipped to understand all the implications of a world as ruthless as it is full of possibilities — especially when privilege risks blurring the line between what is authentic and what is constructed. The real ruthlessness may lie with an adult audience that places on a child the burden of representing an entire generation, when in reality she is simply its product, whether we like it or not.

But Who Are Generation Alpha Teenagers, Really?

Generation Alpha teenagers are not children playing at being adults. They are young people growing up in a hyper-exposed reality, with tools far larger than themselves and an enormous potential — both positive and negative. Unlike previous generations, who encountered "human cruelty" primarily in offline life, today it manifests online as well. Instagram, TikTok, and comment sections have become battlegrounds where ethics, morality, and identity are debated — topics these young people cannot yet be fully aware of.

It is true that today's teenagers have far more tools to inform themselves, express themselves, and explore the world, but this very abundance can become overwhelming. If the pace of contemporary life already throws young adults into crisis as they search for their place in work, relationships, and the construction of their own identity, it is easy to imagine how difficult it must be for those still navigating a delicate phase like adolescence. Even entertainment has changed radically. Where once there were channels like Disney Channel or youth programming on Rai, capable of building a shared imaginative world of adolescence, today that distinction has almost entirely disappeared.

Content has changed, and attention spans have shortened too. Browsing the internet is no longer an occasional activity but the place where one lives, communicates, and builds one's identity. Yet those same contents that once arose spontaneously are now embedded in a market that monetizes attention and interaction. Platforms like Twitch or TikTok live streams allow people to build a direct relationship with their idol through virtual gifts, tokens, and continuous interactions. The distance that once separated audiences from public figures has almost vanished.

At the same time, social media has made everything more visible. It is no coincidence that several governments are attempting to regulate minors' access to digital platforms. Australia, for example, has passed a law banning social media use for under-16s, while France has introduced a requirement for parental consent for under-15s. In Italy, too, the debate over greater protection of minors online is growing increasingly heated. And yet, following the same logic, for a teenager every rule also represents a limit. And a limit, by its very nature, is something to be tested — if not outright broken. That is why the solution cannot simply be prohibition. Just as previous generations learned through mistakes, the same will inevitably happen with Generation Alpha.

Now It's Us Who Don't Understand Teenagers

Rather than trying to remedy a rapid and apparently uncontrolled coming-of-age, we should learn to understand that growing up today is no longer regulated solely by family or school. The internet has become a third educational actor, present every day in the formation of an individual. The question, therefore, is not about restricting teenagers, but about helping them develop the critical tools they need to navigate a digital ecosystem that offers infinite possibilities but also infinite distractions.

There is, in fact, a clash between two ideas of adolescence. On one side, the version told by traditional entertainment — more romantic, slower, and almost idealized. On the other, the one described daily by social media, where millions of people share experiences, opinions, and fragments of life, collectively building a shared awareness.

The problem is that within that collectivity, individuality is often lost. The individual blurs. Just as young adults struggle to find themselves in an increasingly scattered reality, teenagers face the same sense of disorientation. With one crucial difference: they have been trained by algorithms to expose themselves, to take positions, to defend values whose full weight they often do not yet understand, but which they feel compelled to embody — as though, at twelve or thirteen, those values already define their identity. Perhaps it is precisely here that the misunderstanding of today's teenagers originates.

Previous generations never truly had these spaces for self-expression, at least not during their adolescence. Reality was less accustomed to diversity, less willing to accept that an individual could become a point of reference for a community or influence public debate. Generation Alpha, by contrast, grows up knowing that every gesture can be observed, shared, and judged. And perhaps that is precisely the trait that sets it apart most: not having stopped being adolescent, but being adolescent under a constant gaze.

North West, when all is said and done, is not the symbol of an adolescence that ended too soon. She is the symbol of a different adolescence, built within a context that no previous generation had ever experienced. To criticize her is, more often than not, to criticize a system of which she is merely the product. The question, then, is not whether today's teenagers are still truly teenagers. The real question is whether we adults are still capable of recognizing and learning from an adolescence that no longer resembles our own.