The print media often portrays the youth of today in a negative or over exaggerated way. Article 1 uses adjectives such as “out of control” “out of hand” and “irresponsible” to generalise youth. This is unfair as not everyone is participating in the actions that cause people to assume that all teenagers are going to act this way. Melissa, the girl who the story in article 1 is based around, now older, looks back and frowns upon her younger self; this promotes the general feeling of irresponsible young teenagers, if even themselves later on in life are going to feel bad about what they did. The message that this sends to young people could also be that even if you are irresponsible, you will eventually be more responsible and successful later on in life. Articles such as this may encourage teenagers to participate in these irresponsible activities as the article says that the “eyeballing” is the latest drinking game to “sweep through Britain’s universities.” This may encourage students waiting to go to university to think that university is all about mental drinking games and that it is perfectly expectable to act this way. The article does mention about the effects of “eyeballing” which although may not work as a deterrent for teenagers, but it could act as a way to scare parents and other people into thinking that all teenagers are obsessed with dangerous drinking games.
Article 2 starts with an even more demonising title “Hoodies, louts, scum”. These are common words that we hear day to day when a story is run about youth. This article comments on how the media makes teenagers scared of each other, which to an extent is true. When a story is covered about knife crime, teenagers from that area may think that they need a weapon to protect themselves which causes a domino effect of gangs forming. The article says how the press have caused the nation to believe that “the country is awash with yobs, thugs, sick, feral, hoodies, louts and heartless, evil, frightening scum.” This is of course not the case for most of the teenage population, but because the press does not seem to report on any positive stories about the youth in Britain, the public just become more and more scared of this large group of horrible teenagers that could be lurking around any corner.
The third article is all about the over sexualisation of our “pre-teens”. However, instead of attacking the youth of today, this article seems to be having more of a go at not only the retailers, but also the parents who are apparently involved in “corporate paedophilia”. The article creates sympathy for these pre teens -particularly girls- who are being “groomed” by adults to want to wear “vulgar” clothing that should be worn by older people. This provides a clear contrast from the first article which attacks young people as this one makes pre-teens innocent, whilst as soon as they become teenagers they are these out of control animals.
In conclusion, the negative view that the press sends about teenagers could cause some to believe that everyone is like that and this bad behaviour is expected of them, so they try to live up to this expectation. It also makes the public scared and untrusting of teenagers as all they hear is negative stories about them.
