Theories

Stanley Hall (1904)- “Adolescence is inherently a time of storm & stress when all young people go through some degree of emotional and behavioural upheaval, before establishing a more stable equilibrium at adulthood.” Hall also argued that:

·      The common mood of teenagers is a state of depression

·      Criminal activity increases between the ages of 12 & 24

·      Young people are extreme and need excitement; “Youth must have excitement and if this is not at hand in the form of moral intellectual enthusiasm it is more prone to be sought in; sex, drink or drugs.”

Osgerby (1998)- “We do not have to search too hard to find negative representations of youth in post war Britain. Crime, violence and sexual license have been recurring themes in the media’s treatment of youth culture, the degeneracy of the youth depiction as indicative of a steady disintegration of the UK’s social fabric.”

Dick Hebdige (1988)- “Youth as fun” and “Youth as troublemakers”

Cohen (1972)- “The media creates an idea of youth as a folk devil which fuels the negative representation of youth but also creates an attractive tribe for disaffected youths to join.”

Medhurst (1998)-

·      “Magnification theory” (SELECTION, MAGNIFICATION, REDUCTION)

·      “Awful because they are not like us.”

Gauntlett (2002)- “Due to advances in technology, the boundaries between the producers and consumers has changed as now anyone can be the producer of a media text.”