Teens Are Short is supposed to be a trope that occurs when a series depicts teenage characters in general being shorter than adults, even though people in real life often hit their adult heights in their teenage years. Live action films or TV series do this by hiring shorter actors while animated series' will draw teenage characters shorter than adults. This is generally done to show a difference in power dynamic.

The trope is often misused to say that a specific teenage character in a series happens to be shorter than other characters in the series, even other teenagers. It's often found on character pages when this isn't intended to be a character trope.

I performed a wick check back in 2021 and while a couple of examples have fallen off, the pattern remains consistent. The results from the wick check back then:

• Correct Use: 11.8%
• Teen character who is just short, or the shortest in the cast: 45.1%
• Other Incorrect use (averted examples, ZCE, really another trope like Height Angst or Older Than They Look): 35.3%
• Unsure: 7.8%

I can't imagine the misuse has gone down drastically since the wick check and doing a quick comparison of the examples against the Teens Are Short wick list, most have still remained.

Possible solutions: Not sure, to be honest, since the misuse is so rampant. The name could be updated to address the Reality Is Unrealistic aspect and make the power dynamic and taller = older aspects more clear. Something like Teens Are Unrealistically Short, but less wordier?

A clean-up on misuse would likely wipe out most of the wicks, Though I get the feeling this trope is pretty common.

• Film.Rebel Without A Cause: Most teens are played by shorter-than-average actors, such as 5'7" James Dean and Dennis Hopper, 5'5" Sal Mineo and 5'1" Natalie Wood. Corey Allen at 5'10" is an exception, but he's not especially tall either.
• KimPossible.Tropes S To Z: Despite being seniors and probably past puberty at the end of the show, neither Kim nor Ron pass an adult's shoulders ^note barring Mr. Stoppable in terms of height.
• Manga.No Matter How I Look At It Its You Guys Fault Im Not Popular: Adults tower over the predominantly teenage cast without fail, even teenagers in the 17-18 age bracket. And poor Tomoko is dwarfed by most of her own peers.
• Podcast.Actors Life Podcast:
  • Dawson Casting:invoked Discussed a few times.
    • Bobby was chosen over an actor who was the same age as his character in Victories but was Younger Than They Look, because of Teens Are Short.
• Series.Greek: All of the freshmen (Rebecca, Rusty, Calvin) are shorter than their "bigs" (Casey, Cappie, Evan). Averted with Lizzi, who's shorter than most of the ZBZ sisters even though she's older than all of them. Don't think the Lizzie bit fits. The rest seems okay, though being in a college setting may be pushing it.
• VideoGame.The Sims 2: Teen sims are shorter than those at the adult stage. Though young adult sims (seemingly about 18-21) are just as tall as normal adults. The teen stage does include all of puberty, though, and since the sims don't grow within individual stages, it would have to be somewhere in the middle of the range (so it wouldn't look weird growing from Child or to Young Adult/Adult) and is thus reasonably justified.

• Characters.Academy Of Merlin Graduated Tomas: Din Munrin
• Characters.Avatar The Last Airbender The Avatar: Aang. Korra is also listed as this in a shoehorned, 'averted' way, because she (5'7") happens to be shorter than her love interests.
• Characters.Black Clover Asta: Asta
• Characters.Danganronpa Kill Cure: Listed under the shortest male and female characters in the cast.
• Characters.Gemstones Plumbers And Hunters: Ari Caro.
• Characters.Gossip Girl: Eric van der Woodsen. This seems like one character just happens to be played by a short actor.
• Characters.Hang Time: Rico Bosco. Played straight and subverted, James Villani, who played Rico Bosco in season four, was the shortest of any of the 20 cast members in the series. Which says a lot considering most of the actors were close in height, with the sole exceptions of Reggie Theus, Dick Butkus, Kevin Bell and Robert Michael Ryan, who were relatively taller. This example is oddly written but looking up a few names of some of the male actors seems to indicate that some actors were 5'9", which isn't short among teens.
• Characters.Hunie Pop: Nikki Ann-Marie.
• Characters.Knights Of The Otherworld: Gabriel "Gabe" Lighthart/Kamen Rider Gai the Rhino Knight.
• Characters.Model Ronpa: Rika de Silva.
• Characters.My Family And Me: Melina "Midge" Amelia Mayhan.
• Characters.My Huntsman Academia Criminals: Neopolitan.
• Characters.The Heaven Cycle Applicants: "Mint".
• Characters.True Tears: Noe Isurugi.
• Characters.We Are Our Avatars: Seine Miyazaki.
• Characters.Your Wonderland: Shiki Hoshino. The page got removed, but the example was incorrect at the time
• Fanfic.Star Force DXD: 14-year old male character at 5'3", but only compared to one other teenage character.
• Roleplay.Wizards Vs Muggles: Played straight with Lita, who is shorter than all the commandos, Chess, Jay, Jamie, and Karla, and Charmdrummer, and Neville, and his wife...and Hermione... and the Malfoys...
• Series.Broadchurch: Chloe is a full head shorter than her (not particularly tall) mother.
• Series.Im In The Band: Tripp is notably shorter than everybody else.
• Series.The OC: Hilariously inverted with the girls. While Summer (5'1") and Anna (5'4") are both pretty short, the ones actually played by teens Marissa and Kaitlin are 5'8" and 5'7" respectively.
• StarTrekDeepSpaceNine.Tropes Q To Z: Jake and Nog. Both cases ended up subverted by Real Life Writes the Plot, as detailed on the trope page.
• YMMV.ARMS: Moe: Mechanica, the little Brainy Brunette who always has the happiest victory dance. Pothole at 'lit'.

• Characters.CDT Characters KM: Lists two characters as averted examples because they're around the height of adults.
• Characters.Com Media: Lists an averted example.
• Characters.Gemstones Plumbers And Hunters: Yatsuhashi Daichi. The example on the character discusses teens in general in this fanfic being shorter than adults, which would make more sense on the main page. The character is listed as averting this though.
• Characters.Motorcity: Averted with Mike, Chuck, and Dutch, who are about as tall as most adult men; played straight with Julie and Texas. The image on page doesn't actually depict Julie and Texas as being that much shorter than the other three characters.
• Characters.The Otherworld: Savannah Levine.

• Big Guy, Little Guy: Trinket and Cissy from Pepper Ann, the closest this series has to an Alpha Bitch (they're vain rather than mean, and lack the numbers and power to constitute a posse). Cissy is a Dumb Blonde Huge Schoolgirl. Trinket is short, although compared to her other classmates not by much; and as the one with the most common sense of the two (which again is not saying much), she's undoubtedly the leader. And you can count with one hand the number of episodes where they don't show up together, or at least one alongside the other. Pothole. Most of the 'teen' characters are about 12 years old and actually aren't much shorter than adults. They still have a few years to grow.
• Characters.Danganronpa Zero: Yūto Kamishiro. Actually is Older Than They Look.
• Characters.Fate Zero Humans: Waver Velvet. Seems to be Older Than They Look.
• Characters.Knots Landing: Olivia Cunningham. ZCE.
• Characters.Pokemon Reset Bloodlines The Main Group: Anabel. This is just Height Angst for a female character who really isn't that short (5'3").
• Characters.The Little Mermaid Titular Protagonists: Melody. Listed as downplayed trope, but Melody is just a 12-year old girl who likely hasn't reached her full height, as stated in the entry.
• Characters.Total Drama Comeback Series: Carol, the Excitable Enthusiast. ZCE.
• Characters.Welcome To Beacon Ultimate: Iris Melody Aurion. Female teenager listed as 5'7" being shorter than her parents.
• Creator.Elle Fanning: Averted example listed on a creator page.
• Creator.Sophia Lillis: Example listed on a creator page. The example got removed on the page sometime after the wick check was performed
• DependingOnTheArtist.Comic Books: Kitty Pride.
  • There's also her age. It's not so bad these days, and it wasn't so bad right after her introduction, but for the middle years? Sometimes she looked 12, sometimes she looked 20, sometimes she looked shorter than Rachel and Meggan but still 20 and the writers clearly thought she was being made to actually look younger (leading to strange instances where what you've thought of as a grown woman for the past 10 issues reminds us she can't drive). Pothole. Somewhat ZCE. Hard to tell whether Rachel and Meggan are also short characters or if Kitty Pryde is just a bit shorter than them.
• Series.Stranger Things: Played straight with Nancy and her parents (and somewhat with Barb and her father, as Barb and her mother are tall women but Mr. Holland is a giant of a man) and justified in the case of some of the younger kids as they are growing in real-time. Naturally this is defied by Season 3 where both Jonathon and Will are taller than Joyce (played by the petite Winona Ryder)and Cara Buono (Karen Wheeler) has highlighted the difference in height between her and Finn Wolfard (Mike Wheeler). There's a lot of things discussed here that ultimately boils down to characters aging in real time to due their actors aging. Nancy also isn't much shorter than her mother (5'4" vs. 5'5").
• WesternAnimation.Barbie Star Light Adventure: Vague Age: Due to their height it's easy to assume they are all teenagers but it's never stated outright how old any of the assembled team are. Instead we simply know that they are younger than the king and Barbie's dad. Pothole, but the discussion here about height and comparison of female characters who may either be teenagers or young women to adult men (who tend to be taller) doesn't really point to Teens Are Short.

• Characters.Despicable Me The Gru Family: Margo. She only turns 12 by the 3rd Despicable Me film. A 13 year old boy is also shown being this short, but for Margo, is this possibly Pint-Sized Kid instead?
• Characters.The Nostalgia Chick: This seems to talk more about the actress's height instead of any kind of story-telling convention.
• SelfDemonstrating.Damian Wayne: On the one hand, he's 14 years old at 5'2"-5'4", but this seems to just be one character in the Batman universe. The page got removed
• Toys.LEGO Friends: The entry on this page states that the Lego characters seem to be the same heights for adults and teens, though adults are taller in the show. Seems more appropriate on the Friends page or the entry could be rewritten.