first paragraph

First paragraph

In the 1940’s we saw the world famous ‘Elvis Presley’ shaking his pelvis at the audience, in 1955 we saw James Dean as a rebellious teenager in ‘Rebel without a cause’ and in 2006, we see ‘Kidulthood’ with its underage drinking, drug taking, sexually active, violent British youths. Over the many years, the ways in which youths have been represented in the media have developed and changed greatly, all innocence has been taken away and the ‘teenager’ is left with nothing but a delinquent label, statistics showing a drastic rise in teenage pregnancy, underage binge drinking and drug taking may be the cause of this. Today, Britain has been brought to a society where teenagers are seen as a threat through their excessive consumption of drugs, alcohol and underage sex. Or, is this all simply just the case of the repeated use of stereotypes and the inflation of the group through sensational reporting, leading to moral panic as Jock Young and Stan Cohen would suggest.