I always associated it with adults and funerals. But I can totally see how a depressed or grieving young person would also relate. Come to think of it, the song is practically an ethos statement for the “Goth” kids.
Okay, NOW you’re reaching. That would be pretty damn oblique for a Jagger-Richards lyric.
Next, you’ll be telling us the Walrus was Paul.
I’ve seen too many open graves. Fresh earth is reddish.
Maybe in Arkansas you have a lot of iron in the soil. Is this something Mick Jagger would have been seeing?
Not here. Pretty black.
I thought it was about an HOA enforcer unhappy with non-standard exteriors.
I don’t hear the actual singers (sure sounds like more than one) as being teens, but the lyrics to me sound a lot like teenage stuff. So I do interpret the speaker (in the poetic sense) to be a teen. In other words, it’s adults playing a teen singing about teen angst.
I’m not sure which answer I should pick for this, or even if I should pick one at all, since this is the first time I’ve ever heard this song. But I think you might like my response anyways. Apologies if you didn’t.
What? I mean really, WHAT?
You’ve never heard “Paint it Black” before now?
May I ask how old you are?
I’ve always thought it was about a funeral. I don’t know how else to interpret “I see a line of cars and they’re all painted black”. I’ve never associated attending a funeral to be associated with being a particular age, so option #3 for me.
Always struck me as a guy in mid-life crisis
Never thought it was age specific.
Not in the UK, or in fact most places in the northern temperate zone. Red soils are mostly found in warm moist climates (as in the southern US or the tropics). Someone from Britain would be unlikely to refer to a grave as a “red door.”
Actually, we do have quite a few areas of noticeably red soil in the UK. Example (It looks even redder in person there, it always stands out when I go there), but yeah, that does read as a bit of a stretch.
It had never occurred to me the song was about death until I read it online. I always thought of it as being a song about a man who has psychopathic and destructive thoughts and struggles to keep them in check when he sees people enjoying their lives in a way he can’t.
I’m 32, born in 1985. The song apparently predates me by 19 years.
I honestly don’t know much from the Rolling Stones. My parents didn’t listen to anything but Christian music growing up. I also got exposed to the music on Disney Channel, and some MTV, including apparently a ton of one-hit wonders. But only stuff that was popular during the years I was alive.
I also don’t currently really listen to music in the way some people seem to. I can enjoy some music at times, but not to just listen to it in the background or anything. I don’t stumble upon things unless people mention them and I check out a YouTube link. (Or it’s from Weird Al or some a capella group.)
In other words, I’m a perfect storm for not having heard most of the “classics” that everyone else will think everyone should have heard.
I thought the “I have to turn my head until my darkness goes…” was about dark urges that the sight of the girls bring up in him, but by the rest of the lyrics (some of which hadn’t clicked for me) I may be wrong, and it was about grief.
This is how I have thought of it.
I never thought of a specific age but if I had to hazard a guess I’d say somewhere in the 20s. A teenager would likely be angrier and, while maybe depressed, less aware of it. Whereas someone in their 30s who still has a bleak outlook will most likely know that no one wants to listen, and a lot of people also feel that way so you’re no one special, so why bother writing the song. Whereas someone in their 20s might have the self awareness to know what their mindset is but angsty enough to have to write about it.
They were arrested if Fordyce, AR in 1975, but that was after Paint It, Black. 
It is clay here.