Teen Vogue surprise! Teenage girls care about politics

It's hard to decide whether people are more surprised that Teen Vogue published a piece on politics, or that teenage girls might have read it.

US Teen Vogue's target audience is the same group of people who are frequently dismissed for having zero attention span or being obsessed with selfies.

But these same people tend to be better educated than their grandparents, while facing challenging job prospects.

And as a group, they are more racially and socially diverse.

So when Lauren Doca's Donald Trump article went live, the biggest surprise seemed to come not from the regular Teen Vogue audience, but from people who possibly haven't read it that much in a while.

David Folkenflik tweeted: "Did not expect this exegesis of gaslighting and its relationship to current day politics from Teen Vogue."

Helen B Holmes tweeted: "Teen Vogue when I was 15: photos of Jennifer Aniston's niece's pony's birthday party. Teen Vogue now: YAAAS COMRADE DISMANTLE THAT OPPRESSOR."

Doca's article isn't the first political piece to feature in Teen Vogue.

In the last few weeks alone, reporters have covered the young population in US prisons, the North Dakota pipeline protest and got Zendaya Coleman to interview Michelle Obama.

Teen Vogue shared a link to its video of young people putting questions to Donald Trump.

A number of commentators suggested that politics and make-up tips were incompatible in one magazine.

Lily Herman tweeted: "I love how Teen Vogue insults are like, 'Go back to writing about acne treatments!' I can have flawless skin AND slash the patriarchy, thx.

In criticising Donald Trump, Teen Vogue has aligned itself with the more liberal end of US politics.

The Republican president-elect has attacked reporters at the New York Times and other media outlets, saying their coverage is biased against him.

Research since the election suggests he actually lost the youth vote to Hillary Clinton.

His Democratic rival scored particularly highly with demographics such as young unmarried women and young people from ethnic minority groups.

This is not to say that Donald Trump didn't have a significant young following, especially among young white men.

So although Teen Vogue may not reflect the opinions of every teenage reader, its liberal leanings do correlate with the opinions of the majority of its target audience.

Tavi Gevinson tweeted: "Why should it be shocking that mainstream pubs reckoning w/ accountability culture & the rising currency of feminism are suddenly feminist?"

That many young people are politically engaged should come as no surprise to people in the UK.

More than 100,000 teenagers aged 16 and 17 registered to vote after being given the chance to do so for the first time during the Scottish referendum two years ago.

A lot of young people were motivated to vote by Brexit

There were a lot of conflicting statistics around young people's voting habits during this year's EU referendum, but a report by the London School of Economics revealed that 64% of young people registered to vote, did actually vote.

That's the highest turnout in two decades.

Young people can also have a massive impact on outcomes, with that same study suggesting that if 16 and 17-year-olds had been allowed to vote, it would have been enough to swing a "remain" result.

Supporters of the article say people are not only undermining the age of Teen Vogue readers but also their gender.

Roxane Gay tweeted: "The condescension and surprise directed toward @TeenVogue for publishing great writers is a measure of how women/girls are underestimated."

Deb Chacra tweeted: "Impressed by @TeenVogue? Now imagine where we all might be if our society didn't consistently undervalue and denigrate teenage girls."

Regardless of gender, many teenagers are disillusioned with party politics and instead express their views through social media, direct action and other forms of campaign.

And one of the biggest themes which has come out of the US election and Brexit results is that young people are looking for change.

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