How do the contemporary media represent youth and youth culture in different ways?

In society today the media represent youths as negative beings and create a sense of moral panic through the stereotypes formed from visual examples of teenagers in the news, magazines and TV programmes. These media platforms initiate stereotypes of teenagers which can have serious implications to how people perceive youth and can have a dramatic effect of the lives of teenagers when it comes to finding work and being socially accepting.

The media as a whole tend to represent youth as rebellious, failures and asbos this is evident the TV programme ‘Misfits’ the teenage characters are all asbos who do community service on a daily basis and get up to no good together they illustrate Richard Jenkins theory of us ‘interacting with other people in order to form our identity’ as they are all different beings but they hold many similarities they are able to form their own unique identities and characteristics. Similarly in ‘Skins’ the characters are all rebellious as they all take drugs and live wild lifestyles as they interact with others their identities are projected.

Many adults protest that ‘children are the future’ and that they are being mis-represented are often correct this is a significant issue as the media rarely portray positive representations of youth. This is partially because the media are only interested in entertainment and stories that can have a dramatic effect on audiences and consumers. However in the magazine ‘Young Voices’ youth are represented as positive achievers and positive influences to society. This magazine highlights successful teenagers and portrays them as talented young beings. This is illustrated by young music artists such as Tine Tempah and Katie B featuring on the front cover of the magazine as many youths have the same aspirations as them.  Stuart Hall said that ‘the media as a principal form of ideological disseminations, produces representations of the social world’ the London Riots can be related to this theory as The media represented youths as deprived out of control beings. The news coverage was significant as the BBC focused on the youths looting and violent protests, they showed horrific pictures from scenes of youths  from all ethnic backgrounds creating trouble instead of focusing on the minority of adults and people who society would consider as respectable beings who were also taking part in looting. The media created an overall moral panic which has left adults devastated and also with a solid negative stereotype of youth as a whole.

In the past youth were represented as negative but the representation wasn’t embodied into society as it is now as the media now acts as a hypodermic needle constantly in our daily lives.  Facebook is social network that was created by Mark Zuckerberg in his film he is represented as a successful young person who is at university and trying to reach his goals. The representation of him has an impact on society as it subverts from the common negative stereotypes. Merleau Ponty said ‘we have an embodied experience and anything in which we use our bodies to create it builds our identity’ this is shown in the creation of facebook as Mark Zuckerburg built his identity and became the youngest millionaire through creating Facebook.

Overall the media represents youth in a negative way through the representations for different sub cultures in society which forms an ideology in society. However this is constantly being manipulated through the uprising numbers of different identities being formed and the number of youths achieving and enhancing society through their talents and aspirations.