How do the dominant representation of teenagers reflect their collective identity

What is identity? to me it is the set of behavioral or personal characteristics by which an individual is recognizable as a member of a group, to others it may be different.there are many different types of social groups out there for teenagers. in which i presume that People tend to make a pre-judgement of teenagers because of what they hear in the day to day news, or any other media conventions. Throughout this essay i will elaborate on the dominant representation of teenagers; and how this effects their identity. 


The representations of teenagers are  different when it comes down to TV show and the news. British TV shows which the target audience is for teenagers for example the popular TV shows like Skins and Misfits, have an obscene amount of drugs, sex and smoking in them. These TV shows show what the average day to day things teenagers do on their spare time, this then generalizes the stereotypical things that teenagers do.

Whereas, in the news teenagers are scene quite in a negative perception due to the fact that that mostly are on the news
 for negative reasons. For example on BBC news 'Mark Easton' wrote an article on teenage 'Rebels'  and he stated 'Adolescents are increasingly turning their noses up at drugs, booze and fags, with consumption by young people the lowest at almost any time since we started measuring these things.'http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-19786264. this is the one of many article that one of the most popular news agencies shown about teenagers in a negative manner.

However, in the brighter note teenagers are not always represented as 'rebels' or in a negative manner, the few TV shows which do show a more representable side to teenagers such as 'Glee' which is a very popular TV show in 'America'. this TV show shows a group of diverse teenagers sticking up for each other in the daily battles on being in secondary school. This TV show firstly shows them attending school compared to the British TV Show 'Misfits' which are a group of kids which are a group of teenagers in community service.

This comes to my other argument, that sometimes it feels that all the TV show that the British culture is showing look as if they are condoning teenagers to rebel. i know that it is for entertainment but i believe this is what creates stereotypes in our society. To conclude i believe that the representation towards teenagers on their collective identity can be questioned, due to the fact that all teenagers do have their own identity; and that is it OK for people to stereotype teenagers just because on what they see in the TV.