Youth Representation

Stanley Hall (1904) argued that “ Adolescence is inherently a time of storm & stress when all young people go through some degree of emotional and behavioural upheaval, before establishing a more stable equilibrium at adulthood." 

He also argued that:

• The common mood of teenagers is a state of depression
• Criminal activity increases between the ages 12 & 24 
• Young people are extreme and need excitement; “Youth must have excitement and if this is not at hand in the form of moral intellectual enthusiasms it is more prone to be sought in; sex, drink or drugs.”

Bill Osgerby argues that the portrayal of ‘youth’ in the media has not altered much in the last 100 years and is by-en-large pessimistic; “We do not have to search too hard to find negative representations of youth in postwar Britain. Crime, violence and sexual licence have been recurring themes in the media’s treatment of youth culture, the degeneracy of the youth depiction as indicative of a steady disintegration of the UK’s social fabric” (Osgerby, 1998).

However, Osgerby goes onto argue that; “The portrayal of youth is not entirely pessimistic,” he argues that “Mixed metaphors” appear when analysing the representation of youth. He claims; “Dual stereotyping of youth,” creates these mixed metaphors that Dick Hebdige (1988) termed; “Youth as fun,” and “Youth as trouble maker.”