Friday 5 February 2010

2000 Words Essay Draft.

To What Extent Are Male Teenagers Negatively Stereotyped In The U.K News Media ?

Crime, alcohol, and general bad behaviour, almost every time you hear the news today, there seems to be endless supply of stories about teenagers in the UK doing negative things. Although, is this all a true reflection of teenagers life’s today, and how do they feel they are represented? A percentage of male teenagers causing crime in the UK is of course an important issue which affects various people, but does the media over exaggerate, or possibly make things worse for these teenagers by negatively stereotyping them? As part of my obligation, this is what I am trying to investigate and show good understanding about the extent of male teenagers being negatively stereotyped in the UK news media. I am going to be looking at representations of male teenagers, contrasting and comparing teenagers in the UK with teenagers out of the UK and clarifying why young males living in different countries behave the way they do. I will be looking in different contemporary and historical texts and examine the purposes as to why teenager today may act more differently to teenager 30 to 40 years ago. Whether today’s teenagers are a lot more mature than they are expected to be, but they are simply attacked and are negatively stereotyped by the UK news media. "Watch out! - I am from the evil and hated generation. Believe it or not, not every single teenager around my age goes around beating up people and smashing up cars. Can you seriously claim that today's youth are that much worse than the mods and rockers of the former generation? My generation never gets a positive thing said about them - GCSEs for example - we do better than the past generation and the courses must be getting easier - obviously. Is it really any wonder then certain youths rebel?"[1] This quote gives an insight from a teenager themselves, telling us that not all youths are alike. Could this be true? Here I will be investigation whether the media do purposely aim to stereotype male teenagers in a negative way in the UK news media.

Crimes committed by teenagers today include things such as theft and robbery, knife crime, gun crime and vandalism. These are of course one of the worst forms of crimes, and it is a huge offence to the society for male teenagers to be getting involved with so much chaos. But it could also be argued that male teenagers may be committing these crimes as they may be in hatred from the news media, as to why they deeply negatively stereotype them[2]. "There has been a great deal of public discussions of the link between media violence and children's aggressive behaviour." This is one of the quotes, quoted from a book which clearly states that the link between violent teenagers and the media is really strong. Some people may argue that the media may not be broadcasting negative news about teenagers in order to teach male teenagers a lesson or make them feel dreadful, but most likely because negative and shocking news is what mainly gets people attracted to the news (bigger audience) and teenagers are the ones to fill that spot. In a way, this could suggest that adults are not showing the younger generation any kind of respect what so ever.

When contrasting teenagers in the UK, with teenagers outside the UK, there are of course a lot of general similarities, as therefore being a teenager naturally includes being a little hyper and curious about the world, which is therefore a motivation of ending up doing things that may be illegal. However, there are countries in the East of Europe, such as Ukraine and Russia, where we have had evidence of teenagers committing crimes that are 10 times as serious as crimes being committed by teenagers in the UK. [3]“3 Guys, 1 Hammer” This an incident that started back in the summer of 2007, in Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine, when Igor Suprunyuck, Viktor Sayenko and Alexander Hanzha otherwise known as ‘The Dnepropetrovsk Maniacs’[4] decided that the best way to commemorate their departing childhood was to kill 40 people with hammers, pipes and screwdrivers, and record the whole thing on their phones. Around the halfway point to their lofty goal, the kids were arrested, and somehow, one of the videos managed to make its way onto the Internet. Not only did these 3 teenage boys kill people, (generally the elderly), but they also killed animals, such as dogs and cats, and took pictures of the animals and their dead bodies. This does clearly show that as innocent as some teenagers may seem, they are of course capable of committing the worse crimes there is to commit. This could also indicate that because of incidents like this, typical incidents like this that happen in the Eastern European countries, may have strongly affected the minds of adults and the news media, always portraying each teenager as a dangerous thing. It could be that after finding out so much harmful material caused by teenagers, that adults may now have a huge fear, and the best way to tackle those fears is to negatively stereotyped teenagers on the news, for every single bad thing they do.

Apart from different teenagers in different countries, there are also other things that we could compare, like for example the fact that in the UK, mainly within London showing itself to be a multi-cultural society, you’d think that the percentage of people from ethnic minorities would be quite high. Although Britain is made up of many cultures, in London alone there is a total of 37% of ethnic minorities, much less than there is of Whites. Therefore, all these different cultures and backgrounds being together are bound to have some kind of conflict with each other, which may not always have something to do with racism, but possibly different teenagers from different countries competing against each other in all negative forms possible. These would include fighting, stealing, selling illegal drugs and even prostitution. This would of course cause more chaos, affecting crime rates, reputation and danger in London. Accordingly, the UK news media is somehow forced to broadcast news about teenagers and crime, as it is happening right there in front of them, but it always gets questioned whether the media overly stereotype them in a negative way, and possibly over exaggerate the primary information given to them, meaning that some time the UK news media are mentioning incidents that may not have happened or possible happened differently.

“Every time I go to the supermarket, I see another magazine cover saying there's something wrong with teens. After teens shot their classmates at Columbine High, Newsweek's cover showed the face of a troubled teen that looked angry and dangerous. His eyes were cold and mean. The headline stated in bold, white letters, The Secret Life of Teens."[5] It is more than clear that adults in our society experience finding out about one major destructive event committed by teenagers and then hold the bitterness for an extremely long time, sometimes forever, and then they bring up the old news almost every time something that is not so major happens. In all fairness, grudges are not only held for teen age kids committing crime, but also for other occurrences such as political matters and other things which may have a little more importance. But negative stereotypes do not only affect the way all adults will think of teenagers, but it will also affect what teenagers think of themselves.

"An important issue is how adults treat me just because I'm a teenager. Sure there are bad ones out there but I'm not one of them. It doesn't just hurt but it's disrespectful when security figures follow me around like I'm some kind of loser or criminal." [6]Negative stereotypes not only affect how adults see teenagers, they also influence how teenagers see themselves. The feeling that the rest of the world doesn't respect or understand you does little to encourage a positive sense of self-worth. Other minority groups in society, such as blacks, native people, women, gays and lesbians (homosexuals) have all experienced the effects of negative stereotyping and lack of positive images in the media. Therefore, to a certain extent, young adults/teenagers and homosexuals have something things in common. Difference are that homosexuals get criticised and sometimes violently attacked by the public, people in the society, whilst teenagers tend to get attacked by the news media, where in some cases teenagers are hurt by what is being said, or sometimes disrespected.

Generally, I think that the media has created a moral panic to the society about young people, where they only see teenagers as criminals, young boys wearing hoodies, who just love to spend their time robbing, attacking people, and spend most of their days on the street. [7]"Gangs are often reported in the media as a modern issue, the number of teenage members of gangs has increased in many countries in the past 20 years."Although, I certainly do not think that this is the case for all young people, and I also think that the media does not effectively show enough achievements in young people. For example, I do not think that there has been an occasion where a teenager has successfully managed to influence the media to cut out all the negative stereotypes being made, and manage to fight off all the issues that concern them. This, I do not think is because a teenager does not have the ability to persuade the media, but because the media simply does not choose to follow or undertake anything serious that a teenager would have to say. I believe that there is a huge number of young adults, youths and teenagers out there who are very well behaved and are of course very intelligent, but in most circumstances, adults, parents and especially the media do not think to take time and seriously compliment them, showing teenagers that they too have had some achievements in life. Making a public remark about the excellence of teenagers would be a good example. Sometimes I feel as if youths and teenagers are discriminated and not taken seriously by other adults, and that is not at all reasonable. To get through to young people, you have to listen to them, trust them, and most importantly respect them. While it is very understandable as to why the media commonly loves to emphasise and sometimes over exaggerate the horror stories that are going on out in our society as these types of stories obviously sell, so I do agree that to e certain extent, these negative stereotypes of teenagers link with business in the media. But I do not agree that it is fair for the media, to be constantly stereotyping teenagers, for the one main reason of making a lot of money and attracting a bigger audience.


[2] Kings, Chris Ed. (2000): Media Violence Alert.USA:Dream Catcher Press.

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1 comment:

  1. Char Paul5 February 2010 at 13:28

    Is this all a true reflection...
    teenager's lives
    ...feel they are represented by the media.
    [state the percentage and what the source is] of males ....[state explicitly who "various people" are and how exactly they are affected]

    Hope this helps.

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