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When I was in fourth grade, circa 2015, I went to a school that required uniforms. Instead of outfits, your loudest fashion statement was your backpack. My prized possession was my sequined backpack with a zebra-print letter “A” that I got from Justice. I was ELATED when my mom finally succumbed to my begging and bought it for me over the summer.
After all, this was peak fashion. Everyone my age knew the dynamic duo of it-girl stores was Justice and Claire’s. If it had sequins, zebra print and a neon color, or a silly little phrase, the gals were buying. I had a shirt I wore with pride that was neon pink and said “Tacocat spelled backward is Tacocat.” Iconic, I know.
Well, fast forward to 2025, and both Justice’s and Claire’s parent companies have filed for bankruptcy, with the Justice brand being thrown a bone by Walmart. You may be thinking, “OK, and? Companies file for bankruptcy all the time; what’s the big deal?” And you’d be correct, there’s nothing inherently special about two clothing brands closing their doors, especially at a time when Americans have significantly less wiggle room in their budgets. However, these closures are a small part of a larger, more unfortunate phenomenon that I and many others have noticed: the death of the preteen.
Now, obviously, there are several layers of nuance to this change. It would be unfair for me to sit here and pretend 1 + 1 = 3, that because the clothes and jewelry offered at Justice and Claire’s were the end-all, be-all for tween fashion in 2015, their lack of popularity in 2025 means that tween culture is dead. No, we have to zoom out and look at the bigger picture.
In 2025, thanks to an influx of younger children on social media sites, tween “culture” is a microcosm for pop culture at large. This wasn’t the case in 2015. At that time, tween culture was its own entity, with its own media, its own celebrities and its own fashion. Tweens had their own little echo chamber of what was hot and what was not. Whenever I talk to my friends about late elementary or middle school, the most commonly used descriptor is “cringe.” We cringe at the idea of us sporting Bermuda shorts or capri leggings and Bobby Jack tee shirts from Sears (also bankrupt, by the way). We cringe at the thought of us reading TigerBeat magazine or Wattpad stories about One Direction or whatever new heartthrob Disney Channel had pumped out. We cringe, we cringe, we cringe. And looking back, was it cringy? Sure. But isn’t that kind of the point?
Tweendom is the awkward middle stage between being a kid and being a teenager. However, the rise of social media has caused the middleman to be cut out, essentially. Just as we college students are constantly inundated with video after video about what to buy and where, what skincare product to use, why you should be intermittent fasting and so on, tweens are too. The results from a survey-style study conducted by Common Sense Media confirm the obvious: tween social media usage is increasing… rapidly.
With tweens, teens and young adults all consuming the same media, there’s a funnel effect occurring where we’re all being told what’s hot and what’s not by the same people, leading to all of us buying basically the same things. This is why we’re seeing nine-year-olds in Sephora begging their moms for Drunk Elephant, and it also brings us back to the collapse of Justice and Claire’s. The peak of these stores, and tween fashion at large, came at a time when a brand’s popularity relied on tween culture and foot traffic throughout malls. There were no brand sponsorships or influencers; there were just vibes. The rise of both childhood social media usage and online shopping, respectively, has diminished Justice and Claire’s bread and butter, so it’s no wonder that they’ve been forced to close their doors.
The death of tween culture is a homicide. Social media and the consequent squashing of long-form media brutally murdered the wonderfully silly rite of passage for Gen Alpha. None of the things that make me nostalgic for my tween years have survived to 2025. Justice and Claire’s: gone. TigerBeat: gone. Cable TV, specifically Disney Channel, is still kicking, but it’s lost its luster. “Disney Channel High” doesn’t exist anymore; the shows are no longer a breeding ground for teen icons like Miley Cyrus, Selena Gomez and the Jonas Brothers. It’s kinda just… there. And let me be clear, I know that trends ebb and flow. I’m not expecting an 11-year-old today to be fawning over Zayn Malik like I was back in the day (and right now, too, let’s be real). It’s not about One Direction, Justice, Claire’s, TigerBeat or any of the aspects of my tween experience being gone. It’s the fact that they’re gone and there’s no replacement.
There’s not a tween experience at all anymore. By lumping tweens in with teens and young adults, kids are hyperaware of themselves, often jumping headfirst into adult clothing, culture and content. Looking back to 2015, I was cringy, but at the time, I didn’t know I was. I was cringy and free. I don’t know if tweens today are either of those things, and that makes me sad.