Main Character a teen?

So, perhaps it was reading Harry Potter 7 that did it to me, but I really got to thinking about making the main character a teenager. Late teens, like 18 or so.

EVERYbody does shows with main characters in their 20s and 30s. It's the prime of life; that's what we want to see.

Except it's not always, as evidenced by Harry Potter. Some young characters are far more exciting than older ones -- youth brings with it some inherent vulnerabilities -- and plenty of protagonists have been young. Tom Sawyer & Huck Finn, the Narnia kids, Ender, Rogue, Jim Hawkins... you get the picture. Their stories are often aimed at kids (with Ender being an exception, though I first read it when I was a teen), but remain exciting to adults as well.

Adventure has no minimum age requirement.

So I'm thinking a teenage boy may be the protagonist. I'd consider making it a girl, because then you've increased your vulnerabilities even more, but there's a terrible tendency to sexualize any teenage girl on TV. Plus, our TV adventures seem full of heroines -- Alias, Dark Angel, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Claire in Heroes, and the upcoming remake of The Bionic Woman... it just seems that adventure favors women on TV. Why make a plain old adventure when you could make an adventure... WITH SEX!

So my main character will be a young man. Maybe even as young as sixteen.