16th Birthday
Gift shopping for sixteen-year-olds is weird. You want to get them something awesome, but are they really still kids? Capable of using lotion? Writing themselves a thank you note? It feels like crossing that bridge is a rite of passage that no-one talks about. Either that or we’re all just terrible uncles and aunties.
Sixteen-year-olds aren’t little kids. But a lot of gift ideas are pitched at that lower age and just miss the mark. Get something too childish and they’ll cringe at your gift. Go too old and you’ll miss them completely.
We’ve given sixteen a lot of thought because a sixteenth birthday is special. They might not be officially an adult, but rest assured that your sixteen-year-old knows exactly how special they are and the gift should match that.
We wanted things that respected where a sixteen-year-old is right now. Not tween but not yet teen; they’re young adults with young adult tastes. Someone who has strong feelings about the items they’re actually interested in and none of the things you spent your time listening to growing up. Knowing that narrows your options considerably.
So we looked at what a sixteen-year-old spends their time doing. Identifying who they are and want to be; sure, but that in practice means they care about how they look, what music they listen to, what their friends think, what their room looks like and who they’re becoming. We wanted gifts that touch on those things without dictating what they should be. Things we felt had been chosen with care, not convenience. Gifts that the receiver will remember getting rather than politely storing away.
Speaking of storing…This is a special birthday. A milestone that both you and your teenage spend will want to celebrate. That certainly doesn’t require an expensive gift. But a voucher or one of those generic stocking stuffers that ‘everyone’ seems to buy feels cheap for such a moment.
There’s less here than you’ll find in the birthday aisles of department stores. Because we picked every item here based on one question. Would we buy this for the sixteen-year-old we know and love? If we weren’t sure about the answer then it didn’t make the cut.