The negative news focused around teenagers drastically outweighs any positive news about teenagers. The media has constantly criticized teenagers for a period of time only to be showing that the teenagers bring a negative impact to the public, but they have not showed anything positive about them at all. As a result of this, this gives the impression that all teenagers behavior negatively.
The media plays a major role in society as it tends to represent and show media the public wants to hear and see without it being true. Violence, alcohol, drugs, bullying, gangs and even social media can change the way your teenager or any teenager behaves. According to a recent poll being record by more than one thousand people, four-fifths of fourteen to seventeen-year-old feel their age group is unfairly represented in the media (Huffpost, 2019). Also, eighty-five percent of teenagers are finding it hard to get a job as the negative impact of the media stereotyping them affects their ability to succeed.
Do teenagers use alcohol safely or even drugs safely? No! They use this as an advantage to attack the public, they blame the alcohol, they blame the drugs, but they were the ones who put themselves into this mess. Adults are more mature when it comes to handling these types of substances, but teenagers just seem to think that they can act like an adult when it comes to drinking. Thirty five percent of teenagers who are 15 years old have consumed alcohol. 15 years old! At such a young age like that drinking should not even be going through their heads at this stage, but that is what the media shows, and this is how we think of teenagers as monsters to the world as they have nothing to offer but fear for families. Drugs… Yes, I know what your all thinking, teenagers and drugs nah they would never do such a thing but that is where we are all wrong. Teenagers are the main source when it comes to taking drugs or even providing drugs as approximately 50% of teens have misused drugs.
Violence is a major issue that teenagers seem to represent a lot as they are known as violent predators. The word violence can be represented by the behavior involving physical force intended to hurt, damage or kill someone or something but violence can be presented by the strength of emotion given by that person. Teenagers have a rising number of violent incidents as experts have pointed to the public that fights on social media are the key reasons behind why teenagers are influenced to behave the way they do. General violence and assault committed by children at the age of 13-17 has risen by 6.5% between the years 2008 and 2012. Teenagers have shown the media that they are ruthless, and they do not care about anything or anyone besides themselves, many different articles and stories around the world are all about how teens have committed an assault of some sort of crime. One story that appeared on the local nine news of Brisbane showed that three teenagers attacked a disabled man because he would not give them his mobile phone. Now you tell me what that is supposed to mean? Are we meant to protect teenagers like this? Are we meant to forgive them for the actions they have done and believe that they can change?
Gangs and teenagers, more like gangs who are made up from teens. Most teenagers but not all are involved in some type of gang in some type of way but why do they do this? Gangs are the reason why majority of violence in different countries are increasing as teenagers are the easy target but also peer pressure has also been known to make teenagers do what they do not want to do. Australia has a group well-known to everyone in this country as they go by the name of ‘Eshay’. Eshays are teenagers well known to the public as they are a group of teenagers who think it is okay to assault anyone, to steal valuables and also verbally attack someone, this group is becoming more and more of an issue as we are losing our innocent teenagers to something that is just disgraceful. A news article that appeared on a current affair, ‘The ‘Wannabe Gangsters’ Filming Brawls and Bashing’ is all about how groups of school-aged kids are uploading videos and images online of their own acts of violence, theft and drug use, prompting calls to take on juvenile criminals.
The media really does show how teenagers act in a negative way just, so they can fit into the society, not only have they made it worse for themselves to be in this position in the first place, but the influence of alcohol, drugs, violence, bullying and gang related issues really do show how powerful they are to make a teenager perform horrifying actions.