Time’s List of 30 Most Influential Teens Didn’t Take Much Effort

Watching the legacy magazine business die is merely a matter of watching every decades old publication turn to lowest common denominator celebrity culture listicles. Nobody dies like Chess King anymore, with a quiet leathery dignity.

Time magazine started a run up to their Person of the Year award everybody stopped caring about years ago with their list of the 30 Most Influential Teens around the globe. Whatever was the deep dive Time magazine journalism staff is now a couple Millennial chicks out of SUNY Binghamton cobbling together the names of famous Hollywood teens and a couple Google search nods to an Asian or African kid who was in the new for activism this past year. The selection rationale came in at rather rudimentary justifications:

Chloe Grace Moretz: For speaking her mind and slamming Kim Kardashian’s nude selfies on social media

Kylie Jenner: For willingness to experiment with outsize looks, plumping her lips, dying her hair and using bright makeup in bold combinations.

Jaden Smith: For rebelling against mainstream culture

Maisie Williams: For speaking out on a number of social and political issues, including feminism 

Fifth Harmony’s Camila Cabello: For penning an anti-Trump essay about her experience when she arrived to the United States in the 2000s as an immigrant.

While you must give sad but true recognition to the fact the celebrity social media stars are technically the most influential teens in the world, if your list is the same as Teen Vogue’s payola list of thirty teens you must follow now on Instagram, it’s probably time to stop calling yourself Time magazine. You already own Entertainment Weekly. There’s no need for a second one of those with occasional stories on Syria nobody’s reading anymore in your periodical.

The only shame in whoring is when you insist on framing it as something loftier. Like news magazine or Presidential candidate.

_{Photo Credit: Splash/Instagram}