In 1967, S. E. Hinton published "The Outsiders," a novel that focused on the coming of age of poor inner city teens and their struggles. The book took the world by storm with its real-life scenarios, relatable characters and the way it had been written so that teenagers and young adults would especially emphasize. This is generally accepted to be the first real member of the Young Adult Novel, one of the newest genres of literature. Young Adult, usually shown as YA, is tailored to resonate with teenagers and young adults through characters and settings that these young readers who are going through the most important (and confusing) part of life can relate to more easily than other varieties of literature.

Ever since the early 2000's, YA has dominated the writing scene with it being at the top of the bestsellers list. This giant leap has heavily propelled by the Twilight series written by Stephanie Meyers. While the Twilight franchise is better known for its movies now, its books were the catalyst for a drastic change in reading. YA novels started popping up everywhere with hundreds of millions of teens being sucked into not just the Twilight series, but also the Hunger Games, Divergent, Maze Runner, John Green's books, The Uglies series, The Mortal Instruments and so much more. After nearly two decades of this, it seems that the YA phenomenon is finally losing steam though. The sudden drop off of the genre has occurred nearly as fast as its rise and has many people puzzled as to how it rose and fell so quickly.

How Did It Grow So Fast?

The reason that the YA explosion happened can be chalked up to three key contributors: Teenagers, The Internet, and Movies.

Teens and Young Adults often find themselves feeling alone and misunderstood as they transition from child to adult. As someone currently going through that phase, I can tell you it is a scary time and with the world becoming more and more connected and more and more adult every day it is only getting scarier. Teenagers are constantly reaching out for something that seems to have similar feelings to them, something that can ground them to reality and make sense to them since nothing else seems to during these years. YA is literally made to do this. Everyone from 12-20 could find a way to relate to something in YA novels like Twilight or the Hunger Games. They quickly became dedicated to the YA series that they read and ensured it would have a strong fan base.

Teens and Young Adults also use the internet a lot. Since YA is so new it has had the advantage over other books to use the internet to its advantage. Through clever social media marketing, references in books and catchy taglines YA books could get the attention of far more people than any other genre could before. This combined with the dedicated fan bases the series had created a positive feedback loop. Teens would go on social media and see something about the book they like. They would share it and other teens see it. Those teens read the books and like them. They share things involving them. The cycle just keeps going with more and more exposure.

The final reason is that in recent years there has been a kind of mingling of art forms. Books and film are no longer two separate entities. Movies and television shows are now so popular, so influential and so easy to make comparisons that it only makes sense for popular books to be made into films or shows. Not all teens and young adults like to read, but almost all of them like to watch movies or television shows. YA books were in a sweet spot when the film-book mingling began and because of this were able to quickly become not only book series but movie franchises. This brought the books to the attention of not just more YA readers, but the general public. My parents who are in their late 30's have never read a YA novel, but they can still tell you the plot to The Hunger Games, Maze Runner or Twilight because they saw the movies. That outreach is amazing compared to how books and franchises usually circulate.

Why Did It Fall So Quickly?

There are three reasons that YA is now starting to disappear. Teenagers, The Internet, and Movies.

You know that loyal fan base I just talked about? All of those 12-20-year-olds in 2004 and 2005 who were spending every second reading Twilight? Well, those kids are now in their early 20's and 30's and they can barely remember Twilight. The thing about teenagers is that yes, they are extremely dedicated, but they also have horrible attention spans. Once they grow out of their teenage phase they have zero care for the things they liked back then. By the time most people are 18-20 they have learned what person they are and no longer need that feeling that YA gives them to feel real. Because of this the fan bases and markets of many YA series are literally growing out of them. The teens that are replacing this last generation also have little care for YA. This new generation just can not relate to the same stuff as the one 4-5 years before them.

Just like how the Internet can cause something to become famous over night, it can absolutely kill something over night. As the fan bases matured they began to be able to see the flaws in the YA series that they liked. Soon people were not sharing those catchy #TeamJacob or #TeamEdward post, they were sharing videos of people making fun of Twilight and how outrageous some of its ideas are. Since YA franchises were following such a specific formula during this time they were incredibly predictable in terms of plot and this has made them easy targets for critics and general audiences who need something to make fun of. This combined with the fact the newer generation of teens and young adults now going online does not like these YA franchises create a negative feedback loop that only polarizes the demographic.

Cinema has taken an interesting turn in the past few years as well. It seems that Hollywood was smart enough to predict the fall of YA before even YA could and it dropped YA quickly. There are few movie companies still making movies based on YA novels as they have come to realize how risky of a venture they are and that the money is leaving. On top of this, movies have entered their own new age of remakes and reboots that YA just does not fit into. General Audiences no longer care about YA books and therefore even fewer people are reading them.

What Comes Next

So what is going to be next fad in literature since YA is on its way out? I honestly have no idea. There are many different directions that literature can take from here. The remake/reboot Renaissance could leak out of the cinema and into literature with people creating new takes on classics. Or since technology is being integrated more and more into life and we could see a rebirth of Science Fiction. Or authors will begin copying traditional Fiction writers to capitalize on the popularity of shows like Game of Thrones, which also has books. We won't know though, until we are on the other side.