Using material from Item C and elsewhere, assess the view that the mass media represent young people as a problem group (18 marks)

Thesis: Media bias has influenced the minds of young Americans while withholding veracious facts causing the rate of American teenagers who watch the news to go down.

FOA – Representation of teenagers rebelliousness and the stereotypes that are associated with them through the media?

The purpose of this report is to talk about the sexualisation of youth and to discuss what this issue is doing to our children and to our life’s. The sexualisation of our children is effecting more than just the children affected is effecting

The article “On Punishment and Teen Killers,” by Jennifer Jenkins, explains why teens should be punished as adults and how the media is influencing the youth to commit serious crimes. The author, Jennifer Jenkins, shares her case where her sister with her unborn child, were murdered by a teen with a gun. She explains that there are advocates who wish to minimize the offender's culpability simply because of their age. Jenkins add that in America, weapons are easily available to our youth, and that they grow in a violence-loving culture. She says that the Inuit people of northern Canada had no juvenile crime at all until 1980 with the introduction of television into their culture, which influenced the teens to commit crimes. Jenkins affirms that if brain development would be the cause of the teens to commit crimes, so then the whole world should have the same rate of juvenile crimes.

Young people have been a main focus in society. Since 1960 there has been an increase in youth crime which is the reason as to why there are major adult concerns (Newburn, 2013). “Government became more harsh and intrusive in dealing with young people who were seen to be a problem” (France, 2007, pg.19). Older generations perceive young people as having less morals and respect in comparison to what they did at their age (Newburn, 2013). In particular, society views the youth of today as troublemakers, lazy, untrustworthy and unreliable. There are different theories that provide an explanation between involvement in offending and different factors such as family factors and wider social factors which will be discussed below.

Societies tend to view the youth as the future and hope of a nation. To a certain extent, societies observe the behaviours and potential of the young people to ‘estimate’ the political and socio-economic future of a nation. When there is what societies view as a deviance from the norm when in it comes to young people – often there is what is viewed as a ‘moral panic’. I will be looking at the ‘moral panic’ of youth crime or juvenile delinquency, the role of its ‘moral

This paper will help my paper because I will have numbers and proven facts that support my thesis and topic. I am able to use this to be able to expand what I want in the paper. The numbers show that many of the things that teens watch have a bad influence on them. The more often they watch the violent things the farther down the road the act on what they had seen. I will be able to explain why and how the media is making young teens act out in bad ways.

In different news media, there is often a focus on young people as perpetrators or at the centre of criminal activities, particularly those who hang around in groups. However, through observation it can be seen that those who come from ethnic and/or low socioeconomic backgrounds or neighbourhoods are particularly targeted as a result of journalistic bias and popularised negative stereotyping. For example, it has been seen in different reports that ‘the media often focuses on

In addition, as Foucault (1983, in Kelly, 2000, p.466) believed, ‘not everything is bad but everything is dangerous… if everything is dangerous then we always have something to do’ and since youth-at-risk are considered particularly dangerous, adults have taken it upon themselves to keep these ‘dangerous risks’ at a minimum by keeping young people under surveillance in any way possible. The method of stop and searches has unfortunately resulted in more disputes and complaint from the youth of the community targeted at constables rather than coalition between the two (Kelly, 2000). As Kelly (2000) points out, the idea of ‘youth-at-risk’ surrounds all activities and behaviour involving young people and Ogden and Germinario (1988 in Kelly, 2000) go a step further and claim ‘all children are at times students-at-risk’. Unfortunately, this mentality about young people has not only increased surveillance around them, but it has, as a result, increased the conflict between young people and adults (Kelly, 2000).

Kelly(2003) in her persuasive article, expands on the societal fear of youth becoming more dangerous. This is apparent by the excessive use of security measures taken such as security camera and introducing sniffer dogs to combat the use of drugs. Furthermore, youth are considered at risk when they threaten their normative development experiences necessary to achieve a heathy adulthood; in order words when they disturb the linear path of transition (Furlong et al., 2005; Kelly, 2003 ). Failure to complete year 10, unemployment and dependency are all considered as youth “risking” themselves. This knowledge is essential as it depicts that government are blaming the youth for societal problems such as lack of full time employment and class-based

When one thinks of at-risk youth often times “criminal activity, alcohol and drug use, one’s sexual conduct and diseases related to such conduct” (Folleso, 2015, p. 243) comes to mind. Another term used interchangeably is ‘troubled youth’. The author points out, that during the study conducted the youth involved in this participatory-research study reacted to the term “at-risk” as it pertains to youth, with discomfort. The youth expressed that the term made them feel as though they were “being labeled as bad or difficult” (p. 240). The term also displays “youth and risk, as a collective term, in turn placing emphasis on what the youth do not accomplish” (p. 245). The author provides the reader with examples such

Goldson explores the question of whether images of contemporary youth gangs, violence and crime are distorted and exaggerated by the media's presentation to present a generation of youth in crisis. In exploring this, Goldson draws upon the work of other authors on female violence (Susan A. Batchelor; Tara Young), the history of youth (Geoffrey Pearson), youth gangs and late Victorian society (Andrew Davies) and youth territorial behaviour and violence. This source is useful as it formulates a discussion around what Pearson discusses in his book to quite some extent, making a great source to begin to grasp some understanding of Pearson's argument by intertwining it with other arguments laid out by other authors on the

Youth are often portrayed in the media as negative. They are often portrayed as related to crime, violence, arrest, death, or some other bad thing. Here are some of the headlines by the media concerning youth: Teen Smoking Down, Synthetic Drugs, Up, Five Teenagers Charged With Murder in Woodbury Drug Overdose, Drugs, Heat and Alcohol Send Boston Concertgoers to the Hospital. However, according to polls, youths related to these negative incidents are few. Though these are serious issues, they are somewhat sarcastic because it is ironic that the people whose delinquency, the media so exaggerates, are hardly related to these

Many people have agreed and disagreed when it comes to what may be the causes to juvenile crime. There are many reasons and causes as to why children turn to the act of committing violence and crimes. In the following quote, Nakaya speaks about the two different viewpoints as to why media is the issue, “In the following two-part viewpoint, the authors maintain that the media should be held responsible for increasing incidences of violence and crime among youth. In Part 1 Joe Lieberman argues the media aggressively and deceptively markets violent products to children, products that have been proven in hundreds of studies to greatly increase the risk of violent behavior. In Part 2 Jeff McIntyre maintains that the media have an extremely powerful influence over youth, and that the children quickly learn to imitate the violent behavior that they have seen portrayed in the media.” (Nakaya 16) Both of these causes of violent behavior were from media sources. Knowing that this is one cause of how juvenile criminals become the

It seems to be gripped with a fear of children, blaming them for much of society's ills: crime, vandalism, drugs, drink, sex, teenage pregnancy. The list goes on. But if these theories are true, where do these rebellious attitudes stem from? The obvious answer would be from the upbringing of children, but in my opinion the media also plays a substantial role in the attitudes, behavior and physical aspects of youth today, in particularly that of young women.