Different age groups tend to be represented in different ways in the mass media. Children (up to the age of about 14) are often presented as consumers of toys and games, are generally presented in a positive light. However, the youth (from around the age of 15 to the early 20’s) are often portrayed as a ‘problem group’ in society, and as a major source of anti-social behaviour, particularly youth working-class, and especially African Caribbean, males. This is highlighted in Item C as it is encouraging the idea that the youth are being portrayed as a source of a lot of problems and crime in today’s society.
Exciting stories and sensational headlines help to sell newspapers and attract TV viewers. The mass media often generate this excitement by creating stereotypes of young people as troublemakers, layabouts and vandals, and by exaggerating the occasional deviant behaviour of a few young people out of proportion to its real significant in society. For many people, the mass media provided the only source of information about events, and therefore, distort people’s attitudes and give a misleading impression of young people as a whole.
The Term Paper on Youth Young People
... Article 12 (group of Scottish young people) More youth groups and clubs More youth groups at the weekend Lower age limits for entry to pubs ... widely drawn to be proportionate or necessary in a democratic society. Liberty, The National Council for Civil Liberties, 2001: web (not ... victim surveys are often less dramatic than these. Provide a source of comparison with police generated statistics. Act as a ...
This is brushed upon in Item C as in Item C it mentions that this labelling of young people brings in bigger audiences but only because of the fact that it is the only source of information. Old people, who tend to be more home-based, are particularly vulnerable to believing such stereotypes as their impressions are likely to be formed strongly by the media. Cohen (2002) argues that young people are relatively powerless, and an easily identifiable group to blame for all society’s ills.
Consequently, young people, particularly young African Caribbean males, have often been used as scapegoats by the media to create a sense of unity in society, and uniting the public against a common ‘enemy’. As a result of these media-generated moral panics, all young people may then get labelled and stereotyped as potentially troublesome or as an anti-social ‘problem group’ as mentioned in Item C that the youth are the cause of social problems. There are generally two very broad ways in which young people have been targeted and portrayed by the media in Britain.
There is a whole media industry aimed at socially constructed youth in terms of lifestyle and identity. Magazines are produced specifically for young people. Record companies, Internet music download sites, mobile telephone companies and radio stations all specifically target and attempt to shape musical tastes of young people. Networking sites on the internet, such as Facebook, Bebo and MySpace, allow youth to project their identities around the world. Youth are often portrayed by news media as a social problem, as immoral or anti-authority and consequently as folk devils as part of a moral panic.
The majority of moral panics since the 1950’s have been manufactured around concerns about young people’s behaviour, such as their membership of specific ‘deviant’ subcultures (e. g. teddy boys, hoodies) or because their behaviour (e. g. drug taking or binge drinking) has attracted the disapproval of those in authority. Wayne et al. (2008) conducted a content analysis of 2130 news items across all the main television channels during May 2006. They found that young people were mainly represented as a violent threat to society.
They found that it was very rare for news items to feature a young person’s perspective or opinion. They note that the media only delivers a one-dimensional picture of youth, one that encourages fear and condemnation rather than understanding. Moreover, they argue that it distracts from the real problems that young people face in the modern world such as homelessness, not being able to get onto the housing ladder, unemployment or mental health and that these might be caused by society’s, or the governments, failure to take the problems of youth seriously.
The Term Paper on Young People as a Social Problem
In the wake of the alarming rate of juvenile delinquency and the accumulating cases of teenage suicide since the mid 90's, it's not surprising to see that the majority started to accuse young people as a source of social problem. Nowadays, some may even consider young people as a group of easily-agitated gangsters euipped with the potential ability and the desire to disrupt the present social ...
Overall, due to moral panics and the use of the media, the youth have been and are stereotyped negatively as if they’re lazy and deviant individuals. However, as mentioned in Item C, this is often simplistic and far from accurate due to the fact that GCSE grades are fairly high, therefore, young people must be trying hard in school.
