How does the media represent teenagers? Do you think it’s fair?

The media represents teenagers in a number of different ways. I personally think that they are represented as drunken yobs and chavs. The media represents teenagers in this way due to the number of stories you hear in the news about crime and violence associated with teenagers such as stabbings, theft, drug taking, murder and many more. You hardly see a TV series of a bunch of teenagers who are really clever, that aren’t having underage sex or taking hard drugs. It is always the complete opposite, negative never positive. I don’t think this is fair as a lot of teenagers are the complete opposite, not every teenager is a drunken yob, taking drugs or in a gang stabbing and mugging people.
A lot of programmes these days show teenagers taking hard drugs, having underage sex, smoking and doing things that are illegal. One of the programmes that puts this message across is ‘Skins’. Programmes like ‘Skins’ have caused some problems with parents as they think it shouldn’t be shown on the television as it is a bad influence on their children and many other teenagers. Some parents children have even started to take drugs, have sex young and get paralytic all the time as they think it is cool and a normal every day thing to do thing due to watching programmes such as ‘Skins‘.
It has always made people think that teenagers are all drunken yobs, having underage sex, taking hard drugs and stealing when in fact the reality is that only a small majority of teenagers do this and this negative side that is being highlighted in the media is what gives people a biased opinion which is in fact only one side of the story.
On the other hand, there are programmes like ‘The Inbetweeners’ that show some sexual scenes but mostly positive scenes. There is a character called Will who is always trying to get good grades, always revising, getting angry because he doesn’t get a really good grade, never smoking and always doing the right thing. So there are some programmes that a negative and some that are positive but people automatically pick the negative one and judge teenagers by that.
Overall we can say that the media represents teenagers in a negative way due to TV programmes that contain underage sexual interaction, violence, drug taking and many other illegal things. Programmes like ‘Skins’ has made a massive impact on teenagers and has made a lot of other people think that teenagers are all the same, chavs and yobs. Because of this, elderly people automatically hold their bag firmly towards them when they see a group or a few teenagers walking towards them as they think they will mug them. I don’t think that this is fair because there is a lot of teenagers that aren’t like this.