Young People In The Media

The British right wing press has given young people a good bashing today.

Forget Generation X or Generation Y, The Daily Mail has decided to sneer and deride youngsters by branding them “Generation Sex” and dedicating a whole double page spread – and a sizeable amount of its front page – to an article all about how teenagers are living depraved and meaningless lives in cyberspace.

The Mail Online has run yet another article on teenage pregnancies and obesity, loudly shouting (as if we didn’t hear the first time) that Britain has the worst statistics in Europe.

The Telegraph takes a subtler tone in its derision as it gives space to a British Social Attitudes report, which found “most young adults do not share the views of their parents’ generation on the importance of marrying a long-term partner or the role of women in the household”.

This, alongside the knife crime stories, would make you believe that Britain has no hope in its young people and that they were nothing but a problem waiting to be solved.

I know this isn’t true and I look forward to young people getting some positive media coverage in the right, as well as left, wing press!