An Analysis of Negative Youth Representation in Media and Its Impact

This essay critically examines the negative portrayal of youth in various media forms, including television shows like "Skins" and "The Inbetweeners," and films such as "Kidulthood." It argues that the media often presents a skewed and detrimental image of young people, depicting them as antisocial, involved in crime, and lacking responsibility. The essay explores the impact of these representations on public perception and the self-image of young individuals, particularly in Australia, where a significant portion of the population is youth. It also discusses the role of technology and social media in amplifying these portrayals and the potential for political manipulation. The author emphasizes the importance of a more balanced and positive representation of youth to foster motivation, ethical behavior, and development within society. The essay concludes by highlighting the media's power to influence public opinion and the need for responsible reporting to avoid perpetuating harmful stereotypes.

REPRESENTATIONS OF
YOUTH

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................1
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................6

INTRODUCTION
In this essay this is described that media is representing negative image of youngsters in
minds of public (Auerbach and Said, 2013). In this respective essay it is shown that TV shows
like “Skins”, “Interbetweeners” and films like Kidulthood are portraying youth and teenagers as
an negative role.
MAIN BODY
It is truth that the media is continuously targeting the youth people. The statement
defining young people largely affects the perception and mind set of people in country. About
71% of the people in Australia are young individuals. They are the main development powers of
the nations. Media should reflects image of young peoples in right manner in order to bring
higher motivation and passion in youths to work efficiently in environment and bring ethics and
values in their actions and behaviours. The Media representation of youth is having great impact
on the fact that how we are considering younger generation in nation. Media always represent
young people as an collective and integrated group, who are negatively portrayed by media
continuously in Australia. Bout 71% of the group of young people are residing in country who
are main innovative and development power of nation which are negatively shown in Australia
(Chan and Ting, 2012). Media is criticised by citizen of country as they are negatively
illustrating the dominant group of nation who is most important asset for an country development
in world. While youth of any nation are the future for the country who is having full of
enthusiasm and courage to bring new development and innovation in Australia. Teenagers are
having most vulnerable and impressionable powers and strength in the existing environment of
nation. But media is only showcasing the negative sides of young people and they are defining
teenagers as most distributive minds and disgraceful parts of society. This negatively affects the
young minds and their growth in social and unable to develop good values in actions.
The media should be responsible towards their duty and positively representation youth
people of country so that their representation bring higher enthusiasm in youngsters. Media is
most of the time illustrating the young minds as antisocial groups who are always found be
engaged in crime, smoking, drinking underage and committing to suicide and illegal activities in
practices. The media is portraying the teenagers as most destructive part of nation as they are
considering that youth is not responsible towards their values and responsibility. In today world
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the young people, are defined as lazy person and not interested in making good future or
attaining good results in schools and colleges. Instead of this they are engaged in smoking and
drinking or other unsocial activities which are not accepted in social life at such a small age. The
Youngster of country are mostly considered as they are acting irresponsibly in society and
engaged in crime, sex at small age or other ill habits. The results of the teenagers are always
salted and judged by teachers, parents and peoples as they are not focussed about studies and are
involved in hanging out with friends late night, roaming around etc. which largely affects the
exam results of youngsters. Even standards of exams and question are decreasing but young
people are unable to score good in these exams too. Media is not responsible towards their duties
in today existing scenario. Media is engaged in printing false and wrong news in order to gain
higher popularity among people and earn more profit (Czoli, Leatherdale and Rynard, 2013).
They are publishing news by representing them wrongly only and only to make higher
profitability and publicity in marketplace.
In order to develop an impression media marketplace they are involved in showcasing
bad news as a good new. Which largely affects the perceptions and mind set of country people
and also largely affects their trust and expectation from teenagers for future growth of nation. As
the data collected from surveys this can be reviewed that about 4,374 regional stories out 8,629
approximately news published in newspapers of country are found to be based on illustrating that
young boys are involved in higher rate of crime activities last years. The media is only coming
up with such news which are representing young people as evil fro social and national
development. As the Media is having large powers of communicating or expressing their views
in front of citizens of country.
Media is effective in representing their news against citizen fob country so that they have
to believe on publication published by various newspapers and shows telecast in news channels.
Due to this power of the media is able to showcase the teenagers as group fop crime and most of
the people are considering all most every youth as an criminal yob of country and trying to
socially discard this group from society. While the media is applying differentiated
representation of criminal activities an negativity on the basis of different sex also (Evans,
Whipp and Lay, 2012). They are illustrating man as having more negativity and commitment to
more criminal actions as compared to women in nation. Media is representing them as that male
youth of country are more notorious and destructive minds in comparison with to girl teenagers
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in country (Representation of age. 2017). This criticised and negative illustration and portraying
of young people by media in country can be developed as political tool. This is considered as an
political tool for media as these type of publications, representations and news headlines helps in
brining higher level of publicity among people and also able to influence the minds, thinking and
perception of large number of public in nation. This is representation of youngsters and youth
people by media can also be utilised by the various political parties in order to make out
differences in their policies and actions to improve the conditions of youngsters in country
(Levinsen and Wien, 2011). As the technology is expanding with such a large pace scale world
wide, this is providing media an huge amount of powers and authority to express and represent
their views in front of large mass of people. The technology like social media, online news etc.
extended powers of media group in country and they are able to reach large of numbers of public
at once. So, this largely brings efficient in the showcasing media efforts of representing youth in
front of citizens over the medium of internet. In today's marketplace most of the newspapers are
developed their own websites to upload news over the medium of internet which provided easy
and faster access to people which will results in faster expression of youth people image in mind
of mass public. The stories are reviewed and read at faster rate online as compared to the
physical mode of delivering news to the people.
Youth of country are also wrongly illustrated and represented in TV shows, movies etc.
TV should in today largely affects the lives of people. They also influence in perception and
mind set of people ton large extent. Most the daily drama shows are wrongly and negatively
representation the youngsters in TV shows, they are illustrating teenager as most destructive part,
irresponsible, full of unsocial habits in behaviour. Most of the TV dram shows like “Skins”,
“Eastenders” portrayed youngsters in negative role and skins of negatively. The “Inbetweeners”
is another TV show which also showcased young people of country as negative powers of the
society. “Inbetweeners” is an comedy series which telecast that the young people are engaged in
doing stupidity over the camera (Liu, 2011). This Show is focuses in describing the youngsters
and teenagers activities. This selects some of the groups and act like studies and involved in
carrying out stupid activities in actions. But the higher age group peoples not found this Show
interesting for them. They consider this show as literal and they start believing that the younger
generation is really stupid and insensible as shown in this particular TV series “Inbetweeeners”.
But the people of society are biased in nature they are reacting like they were never young and
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never did this type of stupid activities. They are only looking at single side of coin and they have
forgotten that they are also youth some time ago. In TV show Skin Youth are representing as full
of lust, sexually active and rebellious in nature which also an negative illustration of teenagers as
being sexually active in such a small age is not accepted in society. This also bring higher level
of stress and put the youngsters in trouble because of higher sexual arousal. In movies and TV
shown the youngster are also portrayed as victim inn society (McInroy and Craig, 2015). As my
views Skins is representation of youth people in country is bold look and also defines that lives
of teenagers are living hectic lives.
Kidulthood is an film which illustrated an youngster as negative role and is is habitual to
drinking and involved in large numbers of criminal activities. The representation of youth in
films can be depended on the genres whether teenagers will be negative or positive. Kidulthood
is movie which is based on younger generation of country. The used language in this particular
file is chosen to target only and only young public of nation. The older people watching this film
feels that teenagers are negative powers of society and are criminal. But as the aim of the movie
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Illustration 1: Representation of Youth in TV shows
Source 1: Skins Series 3. 2017

is not to represent youngster in such a way. This is only based on the stereotype mockery and
only made for the purpose of entertainment (Shary, 2014). In today's world most of the film are
illustrating youth of country as committing to large numbers of crime, addicted to drugs,
smoking and drinks and are sexually active. But all the TV shown, media representation and
films are not portraying this negative image of youth in society. Movies like Spider man,
Lemonade are illustrating the youngsters as power of development, confident and more
passionate in behaviours and actions and youth of country are more ambitious.
CONCLUSION
In this respective essay this can be ended with the conclusion that media is most
important power of representation of their views to large number of public. The media is most
efficient body in expression their thoughts and changing mind and perception of people as they
are want to represent in news. Youngsters are distracted with such a misrepresentation of their
image by mass media and the movies and TV shows. They start behaving aggressive towards
such news headlines. These news and published articles negatively affects the mindset of society
and citizen of nation start believing younger yob as negative power for development of country.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Auerbach, E and Said, E. W., 2013. Mimesis: The representation of reality in Western literature.
Princeton University Press.
Chan, C and Ting, W.F., 2012. The deficit representation of youth at different levels of
curriculum-making: A case study on the liberal studies curriculum in Hong Kong.
Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education. 33(4). pp.529-544.
Czoli, C. D., Leatherdale, S. T and Rynard, V., 2013. Bidi and hookah use among Canadian
youth: findings from the 2010 Canadian Youth Smoking Survey. Preventing chronic
disease. 10.
Evans, J. D., Whipp, P and Lay, S. B., 2012. 'Knowledge Representation and Pattern
Recognition Skills of Elite Adult and Youth Soccer Players'. International Journal of
Performance Analysis in Sport. 12(1). pp.208-221.
Levinsen, K and Wien, C., 2011. Changing media representations of youth in the news–a content
analysis of Danish newspapers 1953–2003. Journal of Youth Studies. 14(7). pp.837-
851.
Liu, J., 2011. Deviant writing and youth identity: Representation of dialects with Chinese
characters on the Internet. Chinese Language and Discourse. 2(1). pp.58-79.
McInroy, L. B and Craig, S. L., 2015. Transgender representation in offline and online media:
LGBTQ youth perspectives. Journal of Human Behavior in the Social Environment.
25(6). pp.606-617.
Shary, T., 2014. Generation Multiplex: The Image of Youth in American Cinema Since 1980.
University of Texas Press.
Tanana, M and et. al., 2011. Legal representation and education for minority youth intervention.
Journal of Forensic Social Work. 1(2). pp.110-123.
Zeldin, S., Camino, L and Calvert, M., 2012. Toward an understanding of youth in community
governance: Policy priorities and research directions. Análise Psicológica. 25(1). pp.77-
95.
Online
Representation of age. 2017. [Online]. Available through:
<http://www.bbc.co.uk/education/guides/zx6qsg8/revision/1>. [Accessed on 15th
September 2017].
Skins Series 3. 2017. [Online]. Available through:
<https://www.madman.com.au/series/home/15112/skins-series-3>. [Accessed on 15th
September 2017].
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