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YOUTH MEDIA CORPS Youth Stereotypes Young people are portrayed by the media as alcoholics and drug abusers, criminals, bludgers, lazy, complaining and aggressive, according to research commissioned by the Federal Government. (The Age) The Roy Morgan survey of 600 people, conducted in August, found that more than half thought stories about young people were negative and only 18 percent could remember positive stories in the previous 12 months. (The Age) A national youth media award was unlikely to make a difference. It was useful for society to regard young people as outsiders and objects of fascination. (The Age) The 21-word lead-in to a Washington Post (12/22/92) report sums up today's media image of the teenager: 30 million 12- through 19-year-olds toward whom any sort of moralizing and punishment can be safely directed, by liberals and conservatives alike. (Extra!) Today's media portrayals of teens employ the same stereotypes once openly applied to unpopular racial and ethnic groups: violent, reckless, hypersexed, welfare-draining, obnoxious, ignorant. (Extra!) Almost as ubiquitous - and blatantly stated by interviewers, TV anchors, boomer parents, liberal intellectuals, right-wing attack panelists, teachers, parents, and anonymous callers - was the notion that the American young are valueless, apathetic, and culturally impaired. (Hotwired) Teens are All Having Sex & Getting Pregnant Just under 49% of young males reported that they were sexually experienced, down from 57% in 1991. Just under 48% of girls reported that they were sexually experienced, down from about 51% in 1991. Data was collected from teens attending high schools across the United States. (YouthInfo) Teen pregnancy rates have been decreasing significantly with all of the 42 states with available data reporting declines between 1992 and 1995. (YouthInfo) Imagine how different these stories would be if the media told the decidedly un-sexy truth about pregnant teens: the large majority are impoverished girls with histories of physical, sexual and other abuses by parents and other adults, and most are impregnated by adult men.(Extra!) California and United States vital statistics reports show that men over age 20 cause five times more births among junior high-age girls than do junior high-age boys, and 2.5 times more births among high school girls than high school boys do. Even though many more pregnancies among teenage females are caused by men older than 25 than by boys under 18, media reports and pictures depict only high schoolers. By their choice of terms and images, the media blame the young and female while giving the adult and male a break. (Extra!) Teens are all Violent and Dangerous The percentage of students who report carrying weapons has declined steadily since 1991. (YouthInfo) 98% of San Francisco's youth did not commit a violent crime last year. (Coleman Advocates) 81% of 5,000 San Francisco teens surveyed agree that youth crime could be reduced if kids had more safe places to go and things to do. (Coleman Advocates) The SF juvenile probation budget is 5 times higher than the recreation budget for teenagers. Less than 1% of San Francisco's General Fund goes to programs for teenagers before problems arise. (Coleman Advocates) The adults polled estimated that youth were responsible for 43 percent of violent crimes. The truth? FBI statistics show that juveniles are responsible for 13 percent of violent crime, less than a third of what the adults polled thought. (SF Chronicle) News stories often portray youth as perpetrators of crime but rarely report when youth are victims of crime, especially when they are victims of adult crime. Almost three-quarters of the news stories examined depicted youth as perpetrators of crime. (SF Chronicle) For every violent or sexual offense committed by a youth under 18 years of age, there are three such crimes committed against a youth by adults. (SF Chronicle) 83% of murdered children, half of murdered teenagers and 85 percent of murdered adults are slain by adults over age 20, not by "kids"--or, in President Clinton's stock phrase (AP, 11/14/93), "13-year-olds...with automatic weapons." In fact, FBI reports show 47-year-olds (people Clinton's age) are twice as likely to commit murder than are 13-year-olds.(Extra!) Teens are Disrespectful of Adults In commercials, teenagers are depicted as individualists above all else, hostile to any authority (parental or otherwise) that impinges on their self-expression. In real life, they're more apt to disdain than admire those who break the rules. (Adweek) In a study, when asked to identify the major causes of problems in schools, 64% of teens said "students who don't respect schoolteachers and authorities." When asked what the major causes of the nation's problems, 56% said "Selfishness, people not thinking of the rights of others," and 52% said "People who don't respect the law and authorities." (Adweek) Teens are Apathetic and Don't Care About the Future 95% of San Francisco's public school youth did not drop out of school last year while 4,500 graduated from public high school. (Coleman Advocates) "Teens in America work harder than their counterparts anywhere else in the world," the survey found. More hold jobs (58 percent) and do housework regularly (69 percent). (Hotwired) More than 78 percent say they enjoy learning, and 75 percent "definitely" plan to go to college. (Hotwired) (It's a) myth that teens care about nothing but fun. In truth, found Moses, the number one worry of teenagers is getting a good job, and their number one expectation is completing their education. (Hotwired) Teens are all High A study by the US Drug Abuse Warning Network found that 95% of the drug-related deaths in 1994 were adults over the age of 26. (Crimson & Gray) The 23rd annual Monitoring the Future (MTFS) survey of drug use among adolescents shows that, after years of dramatic increases, illicit drug use among young adolescents leveled off from 1996 to 1997 and decreased slightly for marijuana, cigarettes and certain other substances. (YouthInfo) SOURCES YouthInfo, a website developed by the US Department of Health and Human Services Extra!, March/April 1994 "Bashing Youth: Media Myths about Teenagers" By Mike Males San Francisco Chronicle, October 9, 1998 "When Perceptions Are Not Reality: Youth role in crime exaggerated" The Age 11-17-98 "Media Slate Youth: Study" Hotwired Media Rant Feb 26, 1997 "The Kids Are All Right" by Jon Katz Adweek 12-14-98 "Seeing Beyond the Stereotype of the Defiant Teen" by Mark Dolliver The Crimson & Gray Online, 10-5-97 (The Student News magazine of W.F. West High School, Chehalis, WA) |
