Marginalised Group Youth Culture: Disrespectful or Disrespected?

What is the first thing that comes to mind when you picture a teenager? Is it a well-mannered and behaved or is it a disrespectful and immature teenager? The media is a powerful, mass communication source with the ability to broadcast their views to millions. However, there reaches a point at which the media unethically abuses and takes advantage of their position. A prominent and ongoing issue is the media’s depiction of youth. Teenagers have long been portrayed in such a way that characterises the youth culture as violent and reckless, with a focus on uncontrollable partying and illegal alcohol consumption. However, this is a stereotype promoted by the mass media dramatizing facts and making false accusations, for no purpose other than to sell the story. It is apparent that this media treatment of teenagers needs to be addressed as the inaccurate depiction of teenagers detracts from the positive societal contributions of youth and impacts the community’s views and respect for young youth. This biased viewpoint is evident through the way the majority of media outlets only report negative or sensationalised stories and are able to influence the public’s beliefs, without any regard to how this impacts teenagers.

An article published by 9 news.com bore the titled ‘Teenagers are Australia’s most arrested people.’ This title has not only been highly dramatized but exploited in an inaccurate story to achieve the maximum reaction from the audience. Instantly this makes the reader form a poor opinion on teenagers just by reading the big, bold title. The author’s biased stance can already be deduced from the title but is further compounded through the rest of the story by using inaccurate and old statistics. ‘The offending rate for people aged 15 to 19 was three times that of all other offenders’[Koubaridis.2017] is the information supposedly supplied by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, as stated in this article. However, the actual statistics gathered by the Bureau of Statistics in 2017 states ‘Persons aged 25 to 29 years had the highest imprisonment rate.’[ABS.2017] This Completely contradicts the author’s fabricated article and proves that adults are in fact the most imprisoned. The article, just like those produced by most mass media outlets, utilises scare tactics as ‘clickbait’ in order to gain the most attention from every story. It has become the norm for media outlets to twist and inaccurately feed information to reinforce their bias and inaccurate construction of youth. In the media doing this, no one realises the negative effects that the grossly distorted news is having on teenagers. The media is to blame for only seeing reckless, immature and disobedient stories concerning teenagers. It is apparent the media must be held accountable for the inaccurate, manipulating news they are able to broadcast.

Imagine being a part of a demographic that is constantly portrayed as immoral, dangerous and careless, and the impact that would have on your self-image. That is the position millions of teenagers are in right now. A persistent negative stereotype of young youth is having detrimental effects on their chances of gaining employment. Four out of five teenagers (85 per cent) believe they are portrayed in a negative way [demos.2014]. With the media painting such a negative picture of teens, it is little wonder that employers display hesitation in hiring them. Jonathan Birdwell, head of the citizenship programme at Demos and author of the report, said, “People think of teenagers as apathetic, lazy and self-centred, with a sense of entitlement; that’s the dominant negative stereotype. But our research shows the reality is that more young people are volunteering in the community, and the most common words used by teachers to describe them in our survey were ‘caring’, ‘hard-working’ and ‘enthusiastic’. This statement further proves that the media is only telling a small part of a story in only raising the issues of teen crime and violence. This bias and unfair stance by the media needs to stop before its effects on the new generation become bigger and permanent.

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Television shows, movies and the media do not only sell copies of their stories but ideas, concepts, views and to some extent inaccurate depictions. Thirteen reasons why one of the most popular and controversial shows about teenagers in recent years depicted rape, violence and bullying as a repeated theme throughout the series. The violent portrayal of teenagers was established during this series as it all centred around how teenagers pushed a girl to suicide. As a means of exposing the actions of her peers and making the teenagers look bad and guilty for her death rather than exploring the nuances of mental illness. An already bias stance is taken against teenagers within this show as they try to create the visual that horrible teens are what lead to her death. They make the audience subject to the story line of teenagers doing drugs, rampant emotional bullying, getting drunk, vulgarity of speech and constant partying. A scene shows teenagers starting a violent fight in the hallways, the visuals highly dramatise the fight and put it into an unrealistic context just to gain the most sensationalised reaction out of viewers. This imposes the perception of teenage bully cliques; however, it is really just the series refusing to flinch away from the nasty side of teenagers. The trigger effect was achieved by the show as it had nonetheless compelling viewing techniques, with highly exaggerated scenes and reckless behaviour, the drama was higher and more sensationalist. Reinforcing this idea to the audience, who have said themselves ‘13 reasons why was uncomfortable and so visually real.’ [Nixon.2018] The overwhelming number of movies portraying teenagers as though they all behave this way has the ability to pollute the minds of the millions of viewers. Teenagers are now judged by the fact they are a teenager, they have become a stereotype. The media has a lot of influence on this because they are selling these ideas. Media depiction on screen has become a serious issue that needs to be addressed because they are now viewed the same dramatised way they are in movies.

Gangsters, thieves, binge drinkers, lethargic individuals and thugs are just a few of the common cliché portrayals of teenagers. The media’s relentless coverage of youth culture depicting them in this predominantly negative way, has made society grow accustomed to the stereotypical view. Where recklessness and immaturity are the only notable attributes of a teenager. This can be easily displayed, by just looking at the top news headlines in relation to teenagers. “Teens arrested after string of violent car-jackings in Brisbane” “The teenage 'Northsides' gang terrorising Brisbane, Cash, drugs and a hatred for police: Inside Brisbane's 'Southside' teenage gang.” A news story by nine news “Perth teen rampage” This title already establishes the journalist’s negative position, by using emotive language like rampage. As well as, the language used by the reporter including violent, crime spree, terrorising, this only reinforces the medias’ constructed view. They display explicit clips of girls fighting each other countless times to get the most reactions out of viewers. Further only interviewing people who have something bad to say about teen like how scary they are or ‘teenage girls are violent,’ they do not coverage anything from the teenage girl’s side of the story. 9 news was able to position the audience against the teenagers, by sympathising with the victims and only showing the story in the most emotional and destructive way. For the purpose of entertaining and gaining reaction from viewers. However, this imbalanced portrayal is subsequently damaging and needs to change, as this reporting has ruined the representation of youth and created only a negative generalisation of the whole youth culture.

A revolution must occur in the relentless cycle of biased and dramatised stories, to alleviate the damaging impact this is having on the self-image of teens. The representation of youth by the media needs to be changed as it inaccurately depicts teenagers in a negative light detracting from the positive contributions of youth and impacts the community’s views and respect for youth. More positive stories about teenagers need to be portrayed in the media. The media only showing negative and inaccurate show and news about the minority of teens who choose to do drugs and commit reckless crimes and should not form the basis by which society judges all teens. When will the media start focusing on the millions of other teenagers? The ones who are hardworking and honest? They exist.