Twice a year Piper Jaffray publishes their Taking Stock with Teens research. It's become something I look forward to, especially at this time of the year as the holiday shopping season shifts into high gear. Given that today is Black Friday, it seems appropriate to consider how teens are thinking about brands and where they're spending their money.

If the events of the past few weeks are any indication, 2017 promises to be a year of change that marketers will need to closely observe to remain on the pulse of culture. Teens themselves will be at the center of the action, both spurring on certain evolutions and serving as a key demographic in determining which changes stick and which are merely fads.

Earlier this month, Time devoted a cover not to the presidential election, but to the burgeoning teen mental health crisis. The figures are staggering. Out of about 25 million teens 12 - 17 living in the U.S., about 3 million (or 12%) have had at least one major depressive episode in the past year. More than 2 million have depression so severe that it affects their ability to function. Just over six million teens (or 25%) have an anxiety disorder, with girls 50% more likely than boys to experience one. And experts consider these figures to be conservative since so …

Millennials have been the dominant generation on the marketing landscape for more than a decade. Researchers have poked, prodded, and dissected on this generation native to technology. Now the youngsters are about to overtake them in terms of capturing the attention of brands and marketers. Generation Z, those aged 11 to 21, is the largest generation yet and, thanks to their parents, they have a remarkable amount of purchasing power.

It seems like every day there's a new study on Gen Z's digital habits. Regardless of the source, the numbers make one thing clear: It's a smartphone world. By 2020, a whopping 92% of teens are expected to own a smartphone, according to eMarketer. It's also not entirely unfair to say they're media-addicted. A study cited by the "Los Angeles Times" noted that the average number of hours spent watching media per day is six for teens and nine for teens. Nine hours. That's a full-time job!