Unfinished essay

How do young people create their own representations? How are these different to those created and aimed at adults?

Everyone is different, including teenagers. However, the media seems to have the effect on people that teenagers are one big group this isn’t true. Teenagers have their own collective identities and are quite different to adults.

Teenagers have their own sub-cultures which they cannot helped being grouped into such as ‘nerds’, ‘goths’ ‘chavs’ and others. When represented in the media, some television shows do portray this such as The Inbetweeners. The main characters are portrayed as nerds trying to break into the ‘popular club’ and always failing. The main characters are portrayed as being friends with each other because of their similarities thus having a collective identity. In reality teenagers are under all sorts of peer pressure to do things that others are doing and The Inbetweeners represents this in each episode. Peer pressure can have a big impact on teenagers, especially if a teenager is seen as ‘different’. They will make the effort to change their image just to fit in.

It is possible for what is ‘cool’ currently to change instantly if popular labelled teenagers change their appearance or style of doing something, it may become a trend and other teenagers may follow.

When a teenager has a collective identity they feel more confident in what they do because others in their group are doing it to. A collective identity can sometimes be viewed as negative as seen in the London 2011 riots. Thousands of teenagers teamed together in order to loot stores, damage property and ignore police along the way. The media portrayed these teenagers as disrespectful and selfish. Judging by an interview, Sky News talked to some of the teenagers involved in the riots. They explained that they didn’t have a good social background and that they were struggling to earn money. One of them (ages about 16) even said he had to support his son.

Henri Tajfel explained that social identity assumes that individuals strive to improve their self image by trying to enhance their self-esteem, based on their personal identity or various social identities.

Adults are almost the complete opposite to teenagers when it comes to representation. This is because most adults have a very mature view on things and will not give in to pressures so easily.