Originally Posted by
Revolutionary_Jack
Either case, the fact is that Marvel themselves have chosen the hill that "teenage" means high school/classwork and so on. You can see it by Bendis' Ultimate Spider-Man, the Marvel Spider-Man cartoons of the last decade, the MCU Spider-Man. Lee-Ditko's Spider-Man is less "teenage" than that, evidenced by the fact that Jonah and Betty have far more diminished roles in those versions than before.
Marvel's misinterpretations however limiting it is (not to mention condescending) has had real-time effects for some 20 years now and it's impossible to ignore or get past that when considering the question because Marvel bet the bank that their idea of teenage Spider-Man was at the heart of the Lee-Ditko era and if you look at it closely that's just not true. If you look at the Lee-Ditko run and break it down it's not in the least bit surprising the character grew up not only by the end of the run but continued to do so long after that. There wasn't any break between Ditko and the later writers in that respect.