Well... that's what most adults believe it seems! An excellent programme on Channel 4 made by a young journalist called "Teens in Trouble" has been looking at the myth of rising Teen crime etc. All the adults he surveyed believed that between 70 and 90% of crime in the UK was committed by Teenagers.
He argues that the media likes a good story about "feral teens" and out of control teenagers & claims that the press is the problem, creating fear, stereotypes and barriers... In the programme he interviewed Mods from the 60's who where witness to the way the Media made the most of the fighting even then... "journalists" paid teenagers to stage fights for the cameras. And nothing has changed, the media likes easy targets! The programme goes on to try to challenge the stereotypes, even getting a bunch of "hoodies" handing out Tea to passers by.
So what are the real stats not reported by the Press... well firstly you have pretty much the same chance of dying from falling out of Bed than you have of dying from a Knife attack... and you are SIX times MORE likely to die from falling down the stairs! And the actually percentage of the crime committed by teenagers in the UK...
....12%!
Technorati Tags: Culture: Media: Youth Work
Good point, well made, have linked.
Posted by: St | 25/01/2008 at 10:51
Well, that's higher than I expected - I was going to go for about 8%.
Posted by: Martin Eyles | 25/01/2008 at 17:05
The funny thing was that all the teenagers they asked got it right... +/- 5%
Posted by: Mark | 25/01/2008 at 17:11
Good post Mark.
Have you seen this http://fyt.org.uk/showdetails,pdf,64.htm
Posted by: Rob | 26/01/2008 at 21:41
Where would the media be without easy marks. On the upside I read a few weeks ago that some industry pundits are predicting print mass media has less than 20 years to go. Not sure whether to believe that but it gives me a warm fuzzy where trash media is concerned.
Posted by: Matt Stone | 30/01/2008 at 14:40
Teenage crime seems to be everywhere in the media at the moment. I work for a children's publishers, Egmont, and we have to move with the times on subjects censored in the past. We have a new teen novel called Sugarcoated (Cathy Forde) out next month which deals with a teenage girl's reaction to witnessing a violent crime. As a result, I'm looking to find out how teenagers really feel about crime today and I've set up a poll on Sugarcoated's Bebo page www.bebo.co.uk/sugarcoatedthebook
If you know any teens please do direct them to the page as I think it would be really interesting to hear from those at the centre of all this media attention.
Cheers, Vicki G, Egmont Press
Posted by: Vicki G | 25/03/2008 at 10:12
Great post!
I have posted something similar here: http://www.ficklefable.com/?p=29
Although I took a more general look at the level of fear created by the media generally.
Hope you like it.
Jonathan Lewis
Posted by: Best Blog | 09/10/2009 at 14:33