Argumentative Piece: Undermining of Teenagers By The Media

How many times have you had an elderly person shoot you a dirty look for playing your music just a little too loudly on the tube? How many times has a shop assistant neglected to give you help because they are too busy dealing with ‘proper customers’?  These scenarios happen everyday, not even just from people we don’t know, we are swallowed up in them.  As a teenager myself, I feel constantly frustrated at how adults judge my friends and I as we walk down the street.  Just because some teenagers stir trouble, doesn’t mean all of us should be grouped in the same bag. Instead of highlighting the bad teens the media should reflect the outstanding work that a lot of teens do.  Young people are ten times more likely to be voluntary in the community then committing offences, and unless the media show positive propaganda like this, older people are going to continue to prejudge teenagers.

Not only does the media play on teenagers being disruptive, the law does too.  I have often played witness to policeman asking groups of teenagers to move along when they are on the street, despite them being completely sober, not smoking or causing trouble in any way.  It is often simply because they may be wearing hoodies.  Policeman shouldn’t be allowed to generalize like this.  WE are the generation of the future, WE are the people who will have to deal with major issues like global warming, left behind from past generations, so WE need to be given respect.

We can’t do anything right.  Teenagers today do better in their GCSE’s then past generations did in their exams, but this is because their exams were harder right? Anything good we do seems to have an excuse, and people are ignorant towards the fact that the youth of the day are going to be the faces of the future.  

Times Articles : 

Bibliography: