Teenage stereotypes

Adolescents are faced with many stereotypes that are unfair due to a minority
of teenage individuals living up to these stereotypes. For example, I believe the
most common stereotype of a teenager is them being rude. I believe this
stereotype to be unfair due to the fact that not all teenagers are rude to
people. Furthermore, it depends on the individual if they are rude frequently,
no matter which stage of their life they are at, for example adults can be rude
at times, just like teenagers, and some are not. This stereotype is also unfair
because adults and the elderly automatically believe that a teenager is rude,
despite personally knowing them, resulting in negative impressions due to the
stereotype. Another stereotype of teenagers is that they do negative and
illegal things, for example underage sex, drinking alcoholic beverages and
taking drugs. I believe this to be an interesting stereotype that has risen over
the past few years. This is because I do think that a portion of teenagers do
partake in some of these elements, however a portion do not. Due to this, I do
think that it is unfair to those who do not do these things due to the fact that it
does lead to unpleasant and false impressions.
The main stereotype I want to discuss is the whole idea of laziness. I fully
believe that teenagers can be lazy; however I disagree with this whole aspect
of it being a negative thing. Adults do not understand how much energy
consuming school can be, especially in times of important examinations
because of the fact that it has changed since they attended school.
Furthermore, as well as in school, work and revision is completed at home. The
waking up early and stress of falling out with friends and drama also adds to
this tiredness, which results in laziness. These all show that the whole lazy
stereotype being portrayed negatively is unfair for teenagers because majority
do work hard and stress occurs, resulting in teens to want to just stay in bed or
have lazy days.
From research, I have found out that it is difficult to find positive imagery of
teenagers. I think that this is because of all of the negative stereotypes that I
have discussed and many more. These negative stereotypes are mainly
released throughout media, for example newspapers and magazines. The fact
that adults are in charge of social media emphasises the impact that they have

on teenage stereotypes and how they are the ones who mainly create these
stereotypes.

On the other hand, this article does highlight a teenager in a positive

perspective. This does occur, however majority of the time, teenagers are
portrayed by the media in a negative aspect. This article presents the teenager
as caring. This goes against the stereotype of teenagers being selfish and not
caring about anything due to the impact that the teenage boy had on the man.
It shows that teenagers do care about some things; therefore this is an antistereotype due to the fact that it goes against the stereotype of a teenager.
To sum up, negative stereotypes belong to teenagers and this is represented
throughout the media, despite the fact that there are some positive stories.
However, it is a majority of negative unfair stereotypes that teenagers have to
cope with.