“What’s the matter with kids today?” is the traditional lament of parents. Nowadays publishers and editors of teenage magazines are asking the same question.

This category of publication, once hotter than a Christina Aguilera video, has cooled. Single copy sales of these titles, the key to their circulation profitability, has plummeted by more than a million copies in the past four years.

The biggest of these magazines – Gruner & Jahr’s YM, Hearst’s Seventeen, and Time Inc.’s Teen People – have dropped 43.1% at the newsstand. And advertising pages are falling as well, even though teenagers and $95 billion in spending power are a prime market. For the first nine months of this year ad pages are down 4.8% for the category – though the glossy teen fashion magazines ElleGirl and Teen Vogue are up and the vivacious Cosmo-Girl is holding its own.

YM is the problem child in the category. Last year the magazine admitted to overstating its newsstand sales, which is sort of like cheating on the SATs. But in the early 1990s under a young Canadian editor named Bonnie Fuller, YM was the most popular girl in the crowd. Ms. Fuller transformed it from a staid publication into a bright, flashy magazine brimming with celebs, fashion, and boys, boys, boys.

Last week Gruner & Jahr USA President and Chief Executive Russell Denson told employees that the company was “exploring” the sale of YM. A possible buyer is American Media – owner of the National Enquirer and Star – where Ms. Fuller is now editorial director.

And it’s not only the girl books that are having problems.

Last week Dennis Publishing, which publishes the “lad” magazines Maxim and Stuff, gave pink slips to 15 of its employees, including some top editors and executives. It also closed its West Coast operation. Though Dennis Publishing’s chief executive, Stephen Colvin, claimed the firings were “part of the natural evolution of a successful company,” both newsstand sales and advertising are down significantly for Maxim. Just a couple of years ago, it was an enormous success bringing its “booze and babes” formula over from England.

Why are teenagers tuning out these magazines? The author of the “Modern Girl’s Guide to Life,” Jane Buckingham, says “Girls, especially, love magazines but they are just so busy. There is so much media vying for their attention including web sites, instant messaging, online shopping, DVDs, computer games. Besides they are busy with homework, extracurricular activities and after-school jobs. It is hard for them to focus on just one magazine.”

Teenagers are also fickle, and what is popular one season – whether it’s a clothing style, a pop tart entertainer, or a magazine – can be out of fashion the next. Susan Toepfer, who spent the last year developing a couple of titles for young women at Gruner & Jahr notes, “There are just so many magazines for these readers. I think a lot of girls have moved from teen magazines to the celebrity magazines like US and In Touch, which are really in today. They are fascinated by the young stars. They don’t want to read an article about anorexia when they can read about Mary Kate Olsen’s anorexia.”

Still teen magazine editors are trying hard to keep or lure back their readers who Ms. Buckingham says feel like “the most entitled of all media consumers.” The October Teen People is borrowing an idea from the newly popular shopping magazines such as Lucky. The next issue will include a perforated sheet of “shopping tips” for vintage fashions, fragrance, and eye glasses that readers can bring to stores or use as a guide to shopping online.

At Seventeen, editor Atoosa Rubenstein recently added a “faith” section to the magazine she is currently revamping, which includes inspirational passages readers can clip and tape to a locker door. Ms. Rubenstein said she added the section because “faith is a multimillion dollar business that no one is talking about.” And because so many e-mails she received from readers ended with the words: “God Bless.” This month’s issue includes quotes from C.S. Lewis and Pope John Paul II.

CosmoGirl seems to be holding on to its readers by focusing on the old reliable: boys. The magazine has more features about relationships than any of its competitors and more photos of “hot guys.” Just check out its Web site. CosmoGirl’s staff seems to believe that even the busiest teenage girl still has time to learn her “astro love sign,” decide whether a couple should make-up or break-up, find out how deep is his love – and vote for the hottest guy on television!

And some publishers are looking towards a slightly older female audience in a less crowded field. Hachette recently announced the test of a new magazine called For Me aimed at what they claim are underserved readers, women in their late 20s.

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And now for something completely different.

How about a magazine that doesn’t have to sell itself to readers because it is sent to them free – but only to about 2,000 “opinion-makers in the Englishspeaking world.”

That’s In Character: A Journal of Everyday Virtues, which is being launched this week with a party at the Trustee Room of the New York Public Library. Funded by the John Templeton Foundation, each issue will focus on a different virtue and investigate that virtue through a variety of disciplines.

The first issue includes a piece by Damian Cave, a New York Times reporter, on the rediscovery of the American thrift shop, an interview with Steve Forbes about thrift investing and the history of his own family, a piece by City Journal contributing editor Kay S. Hymowitz on today’s affluent children, and one by Deirdre McCloskey, a professor at the University of Illinois, called “What would Jesus spend?”

The editor, Naomi Schaefer Riley, says “We have tried to explore thrift from several different angles – religion, public policy, education, science.” Other virtues she plans to examine in upcoming issues include loyalty and modesty.

The John Templeton Foundation was established in 1987 by the international investment manager Sir John Templeton who, though born in Tennessee, is now a British citizen and lives in Lyford Cay in the Bahamas. Mr. Templeton, 92, was termed by Money Magazine “the greatest global stock picker of the century.”

He sold his various funds in the early 1990s and now manages the foundation’s endowment, which has grown from $250 million to $850 million over the past decade.

The Foundation is particularly interested in character education and the relationship of religion and science. It gives away about $40 million annually. Foundation executives came up with the idea for the magazine in order to make opinion leaders more aware of the virtues or principles that Mr. Templeton considers important.

Ms. Riley, 27, is also the author of “God on the Quad: How Religious Colleges and the Missionary Generation are Changing America” which will be published by St. Martin’s in January and was partly funded by the Templeton Foundation. “I know that this is a dream job for an editor,” she says, “and that I don’t have to worry about selling on the newsstand. But it is a challenge to make very important people want to pick up a copy and read it.” She will present her first issue to, perhaps, her most important reader, Sir John, next week in Lyford Cay.

Who are the “influentials “who will be getting the magazine? They include the presidents of Georgetown, Johns Hopkins and Cal Tech, editors Rich Lowry and Victor Navasky, writers Toni Morrison, E. L. Doctorow, and Malcolm Gladwell, publishers Jason Epstein and Jonathan Galassi, as well as Diane Ravitch, Gertrude Himmelfarb, Sherwin Nuland, and Susan Sontag. Oprah Winfrey is also on the list.

Check your mailbox next week and find out if you are an opinion-maker.