Then we lose them around age nine. Some come back in high school, but then we lose them again until they become parents and bring their kids in. It's become our unwritten goal to never lose them. From a marketing standpoint, that's not insightful. Mary Kay Chelton maintains that most libraries are not in step with the needs of teens.
Teens travel and work in groups.
Sometimes they arrive on skateboards, dress in attention-getting ways and are boisterous. Most of the behavior that librarians typically abhor and try to discourage is normal for teens. Access to computers, she noted, has attracted more urban adolescent boys to public libraries. The computers, however, are almost always installed in one-person work stations. According to Chelton, an expected change in demographics will make providing adequate and flexible services to teens an even more pressing issue.