Teen representation in Media

Representation in media has seen a large turn for the greater good, for many large corporations trying to incorporate more general racial integration into films. This includes hiring more women, Asian, African, and Latino cast members. Some films are even changing directly by having a full minority cast, such as a full black cast in the Black Panther film, a full Asian cast in the Crazy Rich Asians, or even a full female remake of the original Ghost busters movie. However there is a completely other group of people being completely misunderstood, misrepresented, and maltreated in media. This representation would be Teens. This goes far beyond race and gender, but century long misrepresentation of such a large group of people.

One of the first Examples anyone would look at to see a "true" representation of teens would be the peoples choice award for best drama nomination, 13 Reasons Why. This film is one of many danger as it sought many people across the country to mirror what the characters on the Show had done. The film follows Hannah and the reasons for her suicide. However, some of the actions and representation of characters on the screen were quite extreme. For one the film was largely criticized for glorifying and promoting many attempted suicides. However that isn't what we are looking at. The representation in the film was completely off. For example, the character's in the film ranged from ages 21-28. The average age of any high schooler goes up to 17/18. Why would there be such a large gap of age for a film about teens. Secondly, the group heavily places the suicide of Hannah on the bullying of cliques which form around the school. In many schools around America, students have integrated more towards not having cliques and having a large relationship with their classmates in general. The second media example which sets to represent teens is the British Netflix series, The end of the F***ing World. This show truly finds a way to be rather extreme in some cases. For example the main two cast members are seen as rebellious teens as they like rock, and choose to run away from their parents "for no apparent reason", even though their is clear mistreatment and lack of care from both families. However this plays a ploy to misrepresent how all teens are seen as over obvious due to hormones. Not every teen is like that, some of us are extremely hard workers seeking more than four hours of sleep. Also the theme of running away is a large misrepresentation, most teens do not want to run away as the world is just largely too dangerous without a home. 

To my understanding and my experience in my surrounding with my friends, I do not believe most of these representations to be fair or true. By presenting teens in such ways, parents or other adults can get false consensus on the teens average behavior. Many teens are not rebellious, or hard partiers but just average human beings simply trying to get a education. Especially the age gap representation is out of control. However some representations are correct. A lot of teens are put under a heaping load of stress by studies, friends, or teachers and this could cause a plentiful amount of sadness and depression. This is largely represented in these teen films, however it isn't fine for these films to just make every depressed teen suicidal as sometimes a correlation just isn't in play. Another large misrepresentation in media is how sexual teens are, not every boy on the face of a high school is trying to sleep with a girl. However this is how many males are presented in teen flicks.

I do believe keeping in the depression portions and ups and down a teen goes through can be very beneficial in representing teens, as this is a common occurrence, and shows to the media how life is a large struggle in High School. I do also believe that keeping cliques into these representations would also be beneficial. Although previously said that cliques are dying out in mainstream high school, the fact of the matter is that cliques aren't dead everywhere and by completely removing them you remove lessons of bullying and isolation of others that one would always seek to avoid, and by removing them from films, you only help there root cause. However the worse of the representation has to be the age gap provided in films. For many teen films, the "teens" being hired are usually in there late twenties or early thirties. This for one gives terrible beauty standards for young girls looking for someone to look up to and the people being hired have absolutely no relationship from the characters as they are a couple of years removed from being actual teens. They have no idea the current status or system of high school life. This was seen of the film Eight Grade. The second representation that needs to be removed is the over suicidal thoughts. Every movie you see this day pertaining to teens always has a main character who is overly depressed and pretentious amounts of suicidal thoughts. This is a terrible representation of teens as this can cause a large outbreak of mirroring and worry from parents. Although many teens have been overly emotional this coming century, I do not believe it is right for media to push this agenda of lies.