It should actually be written, "15-year-olds" (with hyphens). This is what we call a compound adjective or compound noun, created when we combine words to create a single adjective/noun (e.g., "one-way street," "state-of-the-art technology," "mother-in-law," etc.). The hyphens show that the words the connect are all acting as a single adjective.
In your example, "15-year-olds" does refer to those teens who are 15 years old. With all compound adjectives/nouns, we remove the plural in the individual words when we connect them, so "years" becomes "-year-" (e.g., "a two-foot piece of wood" or "a six-day war").