Teenagers: malicious or misunderstood?

Teenagers are seen in the public eye, by some, as hooded louts who terrorise their local neighbourhood.

In essence, this stereotypical image formed through the media is solely wrong.

Then again, why print a story about a young person saving a dog from a burning building when you could write about the national rise in petty thefts.

I am not saying all media outlets have this mind set, far from it and that all teenagers are innocent, hardworking do-gooders by any stretch of the imagination.

I think we just need to put it in proportion, if a negative article reaches the front pages then it is not only to sell papers but thankfully rare – otherwise it would not be there.

Part of the problem I think is that, with all these negative stories in the news, other teenagers think it is the norm and believe they should follow the trend.

In fact, the majority of them I encounter are well behaved (to an extent), friendly and helpful.

There's always going to be exceptions to this rule, just like there is in any other age group but I think the public opinion of us needs to be put into perspective and re-written.

In the news recently there has been outrage after a woman announced on a popular breakfast show that she only lets her children play with other kids that have higher class names. Before she has even met them, she forbids her children to mix with the Tyler's and Sky's just because of their name that they did not even choose. Her explanation for this unjust attack on youngsters she does not even know, "Stanley? No, sorry. I can't help but think of knife crime".