The Media and Teenagers

Negative View

The press portray a very negative view of teenagers - because of this, many people believe that all teens are violent and they are all want to cause as much trouble as possible. Teens are expected to behave stupidly and irresponsibly because they are immature and cannot face the consequences of their actions, however this is mostly not quite accurate.

Stereotyping

The main problem that fires up the criticism is stereotyping. Teens are often stereotyped to all doing the same thing. It is thought that if one teen decides to do something bad, all the other teens will automatically copy them without a thought.

Commercial reasons

One of the main reasons that teens are criticised in the media is because it sells more. As the saying goes 'bad news is good news for newspapers'. The media like to ignore all the 'good teens' and just shed bad light on the ones who have gone wrong. People would rather read about teens 'gone wild' rather than teens with an A* in English. Thus as the newspapers fly off the shelves much quicker, many newspapers like to do this.

Recent Riots

There have been quite recent riots back in August and these have further increased the negative portrayal of teens in the press. The press make it sound like all teens took part in there riots; however only a small proportion actually did. The press therefore exaggerate the problem to make it sound much worse than it actually is.

Teen and press relationship

The press don't really have a relationship with teenagers as a whole and they don't really think they are very valuable. Journalists don't really approach teenagers because they don't know how and what to say to them to get their views accepted. Instead the press take the easy way around and portray teenagers as useless slobs, all of which are either overweight or pregnant and spend hours in front of the television or computer drinking Alco pops and smoking and only going out to cause trouble.

All in all it seems that teens can never win. If they get good exam results, it's because it is easy. If they don't they're lazy. If they stay inside they're going to be overweight and if they go out they are going to cause trouble. The media needs to listen to the views of actual young people to see what they think.