One thing that I would say has really shown up in the media is the portrayal of teenage boys. Boys are now wearier of others now after the media addressed them as ‘yobs’. Figures show more than half of the stories about teenage boys in national and regional newspapers in the past year (4,374 out of 8,629) were about crime. The word most commonly used to describe them was “yobs” (591 times), followed by “thugs” (254 times), “sick” (119 times) and “feral” (96 times). Other terms often used included “hoodie”, “louts”, “heartless”, “evil” “frightening”, “scum”, “monsters”, “inhuman” and “threatening”. The research – commissioned by Women in Journalism – showed the best chance a teenager had of receiving sympathetic coverage was if they died. Now what sort of impression does that give us as the victims? No matter what we do or who with it will always be the same. They felt reality TV – with shows like The X Factor and Britain’s Got Talent – portrayed them in a better light – with fewer than 20 per cent believing they were being portrayed negatively. The teen boys’ ‘brand’ has become toxic. Media coverage of boys is unrelentingly negative, focusing almost entirely on them as victims or perpetrators of crime – and our research shows that the media is helping make teenage boys fearful of each other. How can they expect boys to no rebel after that?
We are as a generation portrayed slightly differently on all of the media platforms. In newspaper, it’s generally bad press unless someone dies. We might get occasional recognition regarding statistics (Uni etc.), but they will mostly be negative. On the radio, we are portrayed as modern, careless people who drive our cars dangerously, listening to exceptionally loud rave music, trying to win tickets to an actual rave. With the exception of stations like Radio 2, which we can’t bare to listen to as it might be slightly educational. Also, because it is mainly talking, there will be more news headlines. Then, of course, more stories about us. On the television, it is pretty much a replica of the newspaper, but a bit snazzier. Just adds to the story in the paper- with all the music channels and programs like ‘Skins’ or ‘Waterloo Road’. Again not the best show if you want to look respectable to your elders. Finally- the internet. Oh that great big world that the older generation refuse to except. The only reason we are associated with it is only because we bother to understand it. Yes, things do go viral now; obviously they couldn’t 50 years ago. But that doesn’t mean to say something incriminating wouldn’t go viral if there was the internet then. But as we will never know and nobody would accept it, we have to accept it. The adult media in this country has spent far too long convincing people that we’re useless, good for nothing yobs. It’s about time they woke up and realised that young people do buy their papers, we do take offence to the way they write about us and we do care what the rest of the population thinks of us.
As a young person you can’t help but question the attitude of large media organisations when you consider that we are tomorrow’s newspaper readers. With print media losing consumers rapidly, a negative attitude is simply not good business sense. I hope one day I can sit next to an elderly person on the bus and they do not cower away.