Misrepresentations Of American Youth Images

Ordinary American people hold a long prevailing view of American youth as being disordered, self-absorbed, irresponsible, violent and even lethal. The public tends to believe that the adolescents are not only another"lost generation", but also the root cause for most of the social problems, like drug abuse, premarital sexuality and parenthood, violent crimes, and so on.In an age when people form their impressions about the world largely according to the information from mass media, it is not surprising to find reasons of the demonization of youth in media operations. In the first chapter of the thesis, the author tries to find out how the images of American youth are misrepresented in American mass media, namely movies, TV and newspaper, advertisements and music. Through the analyses of the images in the media, the thesis reveals what are the misrepresented youth images in the U.S.The myth about young Americans makes possible the introduction of severe punishment-oriented public policies against them. In the second chapter, the thesis discusses the impact of the negative youth images on the making of public policy. Instead of being given patient education, American youth has to face"zero tolerance"attitudes of school, and severe sentences in court. All these policies send a clear message to the young that they are no longer trusted by the mainstream society.In the last chapter, the author tries to demystify the misrepresented youth images by revealing the truth. With the support of facts and statistics, the author will let the truth speak for itself.Finally, the author points out that when bombarded with information by mass media, people should be more critical, never indiscrimatively believing all the information piped out through TV tube. As for the youth themselves, in order to present an objective image to the society, they can express themselves through self-created media and the Internet. Also, the self-discipline of media is called for in the thesis.