Apparently they are fed up with being dissed in and by the media, and distrusted by society at large.
As the BBC launches its Talking Teenagers campaign, a brave and shiny teenager has taken up the challenge down in Bexleyheath, claiming that the press are too keen to focus on under-performing, dysfunctional adolescents and all too ready to ignore happy teenage stories (such as her own – she is a champion St. John’s Ambulancer).
Londonist suspects that they have some grounds for grievance. Every decade has its demons – the sixties had its hippies, the seventies perhaps the unions, the eighties a mixture of Tories and yuppies, hmm-not-sure-about-the-nineties, and the noughties have definitely got it in for teenies.
‘Exactly 50% of London's teenagers (compared to over 54% nationally) are in agreement that they get a bad press and only 13% agree that society values them.’
And it seems that 40% reckon that their parents are moody through overwork.
The fact that teens keep stabbing and shooting each other is certainly not helping, of course, and they are rather scary when they all hang-around-together, not-doing-anything, just-hanging. But the fact is that the very violent are in the minority, and if us non-teenagers find them intimidating, it is perhaps more a reflection on us than it is on them.
So let’s spend the week being nice to them. Smile at them when they scowl. Stand aside and let them push ahead on the bus. Best not actually hug them ‘tho – they probably know their rights and they’ll sue.
Photo courtesy of kamshot’s flickr stream.
