Media's misrepresentation of the Young

[Kaylara]

The Numbers Reflect a REALITY About Today's Youth Often DISTORTED by Politicians, Corporations and the Media:
As young people, we live with a barrage of influence from the adult world. We are governed by political policies, targeted by corporate advertising, and tantalized by heavily marketed trends, yet we are rarely invited to participate in shaping that world. Politicians and the media frequently scapegoat and criminalize us, and we struggle to make our own voices heard and valued. The media may label us as apathetic, but the current drive in youth activism surrounding juvenile justice legislation, censorship, commercialism, globalization and the drug war is evidence that thousands of young people are aware of the problems in today's society, and that we are actively addressing them.

The reality of youth today:


Percentage of the public who believe a shooting could occur at their local school: 71%

True odds, based on 1997-99: 0.0001

Number of kids murdered in or around school in the last three years: 57

Number of kids murdered at home: 3,000

Number of teenaged boys who played violent interactive video games in 1990: 0

In 1998: 5 million


Number of rap music (including "gangsta") albums sold in 1990: 74 million

Number of albums sold in 1999: 120 million

Percentage change in arrests for murders by teenage boys between 1990 and 1999: DOWN 26%


Number of hours per week 12-17 year-olds watched TV in 1980: 22.8 hours
Number of hours in 1999: 12.3

Number of emergency hospital treatments linked to the drug Ecstasy in the last three years, as reported by CNN (4/19/00): 1,100
Number of emergency treatments linked to abuse of Tylenol, a major sponsor of CNN's report, during the same time: 45,000

Total drug abuse deaths, including overdoses, suicides, and accidents, among 12-19 year-olds in 1998: 275
Number among adults, ages 35-54: 6,129

Change in total birth rate among teens (15-19) from 1975 to 1998: DOWN 11%

Found at: http://www.alternet.org/wiretapmag/Rights/index.html

Kaylara

[gunner]

you've got a piece of the truth there kaylara, while the media has been trumpeting fear and crime ranpant there has actually been a downturn of some years duration. as for "the kids" i suspect they are a lot smarter than many of their teachers these days and the fashions, "goth" dress, "unusual" hair coloring and so on are no big deal, i remember quite a few fads that were predicted to be "the ruin of civilization" but we're still mostly here.

(except for almost all of the people born in 1890 and known to have eaten tomatoes, those tomatoes will get you if you eat them long enough)

[idusty88]

Great site and good info. Thanks Kaylara!
It's my opinion that crime is hyped as much worse than it really is, in order to justify eroding our civil liberties.
This seems to be especially true in regards to youth.

[Earth Walker]

FTAA; WTO; NAFTA, etc., are using governments
and the medias to ridicule and criminalize both
youth and older people who protest their heavy-
handed, destructive and oppressive policies.:mad:

The battle has just begun, and we will prevail
against the destroyers! :sunny:


Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.:crazy:
---Isaac Asimov - Foundation

[gunner]

Originally posted by idusty88
Great site and good info. Thanks Kaylara!
It's my opinion that crime is hyped as much worse than it really is, in order to justify eroding our civil liberties.
This seems to be especially true in regards to youth.

you've seen that too? funny how every time some politicians find a "problem" the "solution" seems to be another assault on our civil rights. "campaign reform" that muzzles everybody but the media, a "war on drugs" that gives police ever broader powers to search and seize money and property, a campaign against drunken driving that justifies random road stops to "check i.d.", a "gun control" campaign that sanctions the slaughter of women and children. and it's not all one party or group, the "conservatives" and the "liberals" each have their own little agenda and they can and do find common ground to come together and steal another piece of our rights. and i really love the line they use to silence complaints against public t.v. surveillance cameras, "if you're not doing anything why should you mind being watched"? reply, "if i'm not doing anything why do you need to watch me"? i've been worrying a long time what kind of world you young folks will inherit from us and from what i see at present it doesn't look good.

[Xois]

a "gun control" campaign that sanctions the slaughter of women and children

Which legistation are you refereing to...Do you have a HS number? I would like to check this out..

[Kaylara]

Well, all I can say is that until people stop being complaceant about the government, and starts questioning it, this country will continue to go downhill. People are too worried about their own lives to worry about what those idiots are doing, and too busy to fight when they see something wrong. People need to stand up for what they believe in. Especially the young. The young are told that they have no rights and they act accordingly. I wonder what it's going to take to get them to take a stand against those powers that are demonizing them???

Kaylara
(the big mouth)

[Earth Walker]

People, particularly young people need to get
fully involved in alternative medias, to get the
REAL TRUTH to people.
The mainstream medias are, to be blunt, are
feeding the public BULLSHIT every day.
Do we look like mushrooms?

Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.:crazy:
---Isaac Asimov - Foundation

[gunner]

the reference was to the massacre at waco back at the start of the "clinton era" and the shooting of a mother with a child in her arms at ruby ridge. no matter what the foolishness of the waco group or the alleged crimes of their leaders no one, government included, has the right to burn over 80 people to death and while i completely disagree with randy weaver's "white seperatist" ideas he had the right to "separate" himself from our society if he chose (but not the right to separate blacks and other minorities as others advocate, however they got here they are now an integral part of our community not to be "sent to the back of the bus" anymore) but the "gun control" thing is dangerous on several levels, some of its advocates have been heard calling for house to house searches for firearms, and this was proposed in the housing projects of chicago but a court struck it down. the authors of that bright idea seemed to think that because most of the residents of "the projects" were black and/or hispanic they were automatically suspect. this is not though a "liberal" or "conservative" thing, two of the chief offenders currently are one from each party, mccain and lieberman, both are working together on several bills that want watching. but "gun control" is only part of the issue, it's basically people control we're seeing and i'm beginning to think it's time to sing "mcdonough's song" again.

and mystique and kaylara, whether you agree with me or not do NOT "shut up", keep raising hell, bitch and scream loud and clear, maybe we can get somebody to finally listen one day.

[cydira]

I, for one, refuse to belive that we (the younger generations of the united states) can't make a difference. I am in college with a large number of girls that seem to think that's the case and they stand amazed when I don't kowtow (did I spell that right???) to the administration and faculty. They think that political activism and all of it's associated behavior is something that divides people.

Maeby I've got too much patriot blood in me. My ancestors fought and died for this nation, to be told that because I'm a young adult I dont have the *right* to participate in the government is complete bullsh*t. As a citizen of the country I have the right and responciblity to do so.

I'll do like my family has taught me. I'll try to change the country by being an active member of it. After all, *we* sign the paychecks of all of those big politician fat cats (no offense towards cats, blue :D ) we should beable to have a say in what goes on. It really burns me up when I get told that I shouldn't be active in my community because I'm a 22 year old woman and I don't have enough "life experience" to do any good.

As a citizen, I reserve the right to institute changes in the government that will protect my rights. I'll vote with the ballot and if it does not work, then I'll use a bullet as a last resort. All people are equal in this country, no matter their age.

<sighs> This is another issue that just makes me a little firecracker, in case you can't tell.

[Kaylara]

Only the gods will ever be able to silence me.

Kaylara

[gunner]

as i said to mystique and kaylara, "do NOT shut up!", just because you are young does not make you stupid, i've seen far too many of my own generation that have learned nothing for all their years. "left" or "right", "liberal" or "conservative" the goal is the same, hanging on to our freedom against the would be "lords and masters" who think they know ever so much better than we possibly can how to run our lives, and this thing we share here, being pagan, is part of freedom. i would not look forward to having to resort to the bullet, if it were to come to that we would already have lost so much there might be nothing left to salvage, while i last i'll keep scrapping and when i pass the torch is yours, hold it high, and if you cannot then use it to light the bastards up.

[bluecat]

Originally posted by cydira
I, for one, refuse to belive that we (the younger generations of the united states) can't make a difference. I am in college with a large number of girls that seem to think that's the case and they stand amazed when I don't kowtow (did I spell that right???) to the administration and faculty. They think that political activism and all of it's associated behavior is something that divides people.

Maeby I've got too much patriot blood in me. My ancestors fought and died for this nation, to be told that because I'm a young adult I dont have the *right* to participate in the government is complete bullsh*t. As a citizen of the country I have the right and responciblity to do so.

I'll do like my family has taught me. I'll try to change the country by being an active member of it. After all, *we* sign the paychecks of all of those big politician fat cats (no offense towards cats, blue :D ) we should beable to have a say in what goes on. It really burns me up when I get told that I shouldn't be active in my community because I'm a 22 year old woman and I don't have enough "life experience" to do any good.

As a citizen, I reserve the right to institute changes in the government that will protect my rights. I'll vote with the ballot and if it does not work, then I'll use a bullet as a last resort. All people are equal in this country, no matter their age.

<sighs> This is another issue that just makes me a little firecracker, in case you can't tell.

No offense taken, cydira :cool: .

There are many things that bother me about how certain groups are represented by the media, but for the purpose of this discussion I will try and keep the focus narrow. We all know I would be "preaching to the choir" if I pointed out how the media portrayed us, enough said on that.

Now, on to young people. During the Viet-Nam era the media was showing the news at dinner time with alternating scenes of the military action in SE Asia and various student demonstrations. This was not like the newsreels people were shown from WWII and Korea, this was fresh, in-your-face carnage and mayhem meant to bring as many viewers as possible to the news and of course the commercial advertising of the time. People had never before been subjected to this daily onslaught of horrific scenes, in living color.

Something very strange happened as a result of this. There were people thinking very poorly of "young people" because of the demonstrations. A great many of the Vets who returned were subjected to scorn and unfair criticism because people associated them with what they had seen of the war on their "One-Eyed-God." Both of these groups were somehow lumped together and there was no equity in the treatment.

Some of these "young people" either volunteered or were drafted and left home as young men of 18 and came home as broken old men before there 21st birthday. And when they could not adjust they were cast aside. Some of these folks even came back and joined the anti-war movement, for various reasons that would require a BOOK, a LARGE BOOK to sort out.

On to other matters, that one could drag on forever.

Young people today are really no different than anyone else, for the most part. They just want to be loved and have someone know who they are for themselves. Tempest Smith just wanted to be loved for what she was and finally gave in to pressure of being harrassed and now she is no longer with us on this plane of existance. She is just one example, there are many, many others for more reasons than I care to relate.

"Doing it for the Children," is a mantra that we hear over and over in religion and politics. While some of these folks are genuinely honest in their desire a GREAT many of them are just USING children as a means to an end and that end usually involves power, money or both.

The thngs I have said here are simply brush strokes that hopefully plant seeds for positive change, nothing more, nothing less. I am not perfect and have no desire to be perfect. I am not always right nor will I always agree with everyone, but I will fight for their right to express their opinion.

I have rambled enough.

Blue

[MammaStar]

Don't give up the fight, is all that I have to say. Especially when you are young. I've spoken out from Al Gore's PMRC to repealing the Rockerfeller Drug laws in NY. I started when I was young (8). You touched a nerve, Blue, when you mentioned the Vietnam Vets, my Dad is one and among other problems, has the "highest level of Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome" in our county. Great thing to be noted by, dontcha think? He's also a Disabled vet, Agent Orange did numbers on him. But I digress. I started as a kid with him fighting for Vet's rights, and that just took over. Anytime I see or hear something I don't like, I open my big mouth. In high school, Al Gore was Tenn. senator and he and Tipper wanted the labels on records and such. Well, that just annoyed me and I wrote letters. Got a bunch of kids at school to do a demostration outside, and had class discussions nearly all year in my Social Studies class. (my school was real small, so this was a major deal back then). I've walked the lines with my Mom (an RN) to protect a women's right to choose what to do with her own body. Held hands at Hands Across America (can anybody say "cheese" :D ), and got my school to donate funds for the "live aid" concert. That was all in my teens. So, don't worry if your young and you think no one listens. Keep talking and they will. In the words of David Bowie: "And these children that you spit on as they try to change their world, are immune to your consultations, they're quite aware what they're going through".

I'm sorry if i bored you, or sounded like i was preaching, but i see so many kids in my neighborhood these days, just giving up and taking all the crap they're handed. It's good to stand up for what you believe in and not become another faceless drone. It's what makes us a semi-decent place to live (ever since this past November that is)

Hope I didn't sound too silly. :p

[Dria El]

All are great points. Don't ever stop fighting. This land wasn't built on quitters. Reminds me of something I used to say alot when I was younger...

Death before dishonor!

Dria El

[Xois]

the reference was to the massacre at waco back at the start of the "clinton era" and the shooting of a mother with a child in her arms at ruby ridge

ok, I thought you meant "legislation" not circumstance...thanks for clearning that up

[idusty88]

Originally posted by cydira
I, for one, refuse to belive that we (the younger generations of the united states) can't make a difference. I am in college with a large number of girls that seem to think that's the case and they stand amazed when I don't kowtow to the administration and faculty. They think that political activism and all of it's associated behavior is something that divides people.
As a citizen of the country I have the right and responsibility to do so.
I'll do like my family has taught me. I'll try to change the country by being an active member of it. It really burns me up when I get told that I shouldn't be active in my community because I'm a 22 year old woman and I don't have enough "life experience" to do any good.
YOU GO GIRL!!!
Those other 'girls' have placed themselves in a corral with the rest of the mindless sheep.
I say HOORAY for you for standing up for your convictions.
It seems amazing to me that they consider political activism as dividing the people. I suppose that if someone is hitting them over the head with a stick there is no conflict so long as they don't make a sound or put up a fight. Yeah, makes sense to me, NOT!

Originally posted by LdyStarlite
In the words of David Bowie: "And these children that you spit on as they try to change their world, are immune to your consultations, they're quite aware what they're going through".
Spot on, LdyStarlite.

[Kaylara]

Why Can't I Vote?: An Youth Editorial
Andy Austin, WireTap
September 19, 2000

Because you're not 18 yet. I get the same answer everywhere I go. The truth is I know more about the upcoming elections than probably 90% of the adults that I know who are voting. And it's not just me.


Students all over my high school are talking about the elections. There are students who know who George W. Bush's running mate is. There are students who know what Al Gore's plan for health care is. Students who know who Ralph Nader and Pat Buchanan are and what they stand for. All will go unheard this November.


Now I have taken my SAT's, gotten a drivers license and applied to colleges, but three daunting months separate my 18th birthday and this election. The next president will take office after I am 18 and the first four years of my adulthood will take place under a President that I did not help choose.


Many adults would admit that youth have as much time and energy to participate in electing government officials as they do. My mother even straight up said, "Look through this voters pamphlet and circle the one's who you think I should vote for because I don't have the time." Last election my friend's dad voted for his twelve year old son as a write in. When I asked adults what influenced their vote some said they vote for "the one who looks smarter." Looks smarter!?


Anyone should be able to vote for president if it affects their life after they turn 18. But, instead now I must watch many clueless adults walk up to the polls to cast their votes and all I can do is just sit and wait, four more years.


Andrew Austin is a 17-year-old from Mill Creek, Washington.


Found at:
http://www.alternet.org/wiretapmag/story.html?StoryID=9820
Kaylara

[Kaylara]

Up Against Ageism
Bill Bystricky, WireTap
May 1, 2000

Modern day America is a bad place to be young. We have an increasing multitude of insulting age-laws confining youth to second-class citizenship: curfew laws, graduated driver's licenses, age-limits on buying nicotine gum?! We also have courts enforcing a double-standard of justice. In the Summer of 1998, for example, the Supreme Court ruled that if an employee is sexually harassed by a co-worker or manager, the employer is legally responsible even if the employer didn't know about it -- that same week, the Supreme Court ruled that if a student is sexually harassed by a teacher, the school is not responsible unless the victim can prove school authorities knew about it and took no action.


But more than that, ageism is ingrained in our culture, influencing the minds of nearly everyone, and causing youth to face hostility and unfairness at every turn. This was something my public defender did not understand, at least not at the beginning of our trial. But the prosecutor sure got it, and she used it to full advantage.


At the age of 21, I was on trial for "obstruction of justice" after I interfered with police trying to club a defenseless (and as it turned out, innocent) man.


The jury was not a jury of my peers. Most of the jurors were well over 40. Those younger than 18, of course, were prohibited from even being considered to sit on the jury, tilting the age-balance.


During jury selection, some potential jurors admitted that, because of my youth, they could not presume me innocent. "I'm a high school principal," one man announced, "so I know what kids that age are like. If police say he did something wrong, he probably did." (At 21, I was older than high-school-age, but not enough older.) Those who admitted this prejudice were politely excused from the jury. Those who kept quiet about their prejudices were allowed to stay.


In this trial, the prosecutor did not have the facts on her side, nor did she have the law. But she had ageism, and she played it like a pro. For her closing remarks to the jury, she pointed at me and started with the words "This young man..." -- emphasizing my age, reminding the jury I was not one of them, I was not entitled to the same consideration and fairness they would demand for themselves. Later she told the jurors, "What we have here is a young man who has just been watching too much TV." My TV-viewing habits had never come up in the trial, they had nothing to do with the facts. She threw this in because it's an ageist stereotype, another reminder to the middle-aged jurors that I wasn't one of them. Were she trying someone black before a jury of twelve whites, she might have said, "What we have here is a black man who has just been eating too many watermelons." Ironically, the prosecutor was counting on the jury's TV-viewing to deliver the verdict that would help her conviction-rating.


The jurors had heard two stories in this trial and had to choose one to believe. From the prosecutor, the story was of police engaged in a routine arrest when they found a youth standing too close for safety. They politely asked him to move back a few steps, and -- for no reason -- the kid stubbornly refused to get out of their way, leaving the officers no choice but to arrest him.


This story would make little sense in real life. But on TV, and in movies and in novels, this scenario is acted out all the time: evil, unreasonable kids refuse to cooperate, just to make life difficult for blameless adults. From the defense, jurors heard another story. White cops were threatening to club a defenseless black man. When they saw a bystander several feet away, they ordered him to move several feet further (to the other side of a view-obstructing bus shelter) so they wouldn't have to worry about heroes or even good witnesses. The conscientious youth swallowed his fear and politely said no, hence his arrest.


The jurors never saw anything like that on TV. Pop-culture portrays youths as predators, not good Samaritans.


I should point out the key element of this story was never contradicted by evidence or testimony. The police who testified never denied that they had brandished a weapon and threatened a defenseless man. They simply glossed over it. My public defender didn't ask them about it because he assumed they would lie, and he didn't want their denial on record. The prosecutor, also, chose not to ask them about it.


While my story was not contradicted by evidence, it was contradicted by popular stereotypes. On sit-coms and dramas, young people are base and self-centered. In movies and in mystery novels, we routinely see young people raping women, beating the elderly, and terrorizing innocent adults everywhere.


The news media bolster that stereotype. They give wider coverage to crimes committed by youth, and they emphasize the ages of young criminals while they bury the ages of older criminals. The effect of this has been documented. A 1994 Gallup Poll asked respondents to estimate the percentage of violent crime that is committed by teenagers. The real number was 13%. Yet two-thirds of respondents mistakenly guessed the number would be more than twice that. And one-fourth of respondents believed teenagers alone commit more than half of all violent crimes! As Gallup Poll Monthly concluded, "because of recent news coverage of violent crimes committed by juveniles, the public has a greatly inflated view of the amount of violent crime committed by persons under the age of 18."


Politicians pander to the misguided and reinforce their stereotypes. President Clinton has been known to rant about "13-year-olds with automatic weapons" without ever mentioning that the average American is twice as likely to be murdered by someone born the same year as Bill Clinton as to be killed by a 13-year-old.2 Clinton has never said a word about 20-year-olds conscientiously defying punk-cops.


So the jurors took all they had heard from the media, from our political leaders, and from the entertainment industry, and weighed that against what little they had heard in court. They returned a verdict of "guilty". Afterward, the prosecutor asked for off-the-record feedback from jurors. One juror complained that the prosecutor hadn't made her case clear enough and had left the jury unsure of how I'd broken the law. I didn't sense this woman was complaining because she worried she had just convicted an innocent person; she was simply upset the prosecutor had not given her enough ammunition to use in the jury room against that one pesky black juror who spent several hours arguing for "not guilty" before caving in.


This experience wounded whatever faith I had left in "the system". Frankly, I was surprised I had any faith left. Events like this are all too common. That high school principal who assumed I was guilty before the trial even started was typical of every principal I ever faced at every school I ever attended, and of principals and other adults throughout our nation. In her book Schoolgirls, Peggy Orinstien got one high school principal to admit on the record that, in dealing with a dispute between a student and a teacher, he would never take the student's side no matter what the situation.


Our whole society seethes with hatred for the young. I can count a hundred movies I've seen where an adult hits a child or teenager and the youth simply accepts it rather than hitting back or pressing charges. I haven't seen one movie showing the reverse. Rapists who prey on children are cheered-on by porno mags (Barely Legal), rock stars (Queen, George Michael, Sonic Youth, The Cherry-Popping Daddies), and novelists (Joseph Hanson, Vladimir Nabokov). In supposedly Christian churches, preachers impress upon their followers that children are to be viewed as property of their parents who deserve physical punishment if they disobey. (Ironically, the Bible quotes Jesus many times suggesting it is a sin to subjugate yourself to your parents, so clergymen are putting bigotry above their own Bible.)


My public defender juggled a few other cases at the same time as mine. One was a child-abuse case. They had caught the man when his daughter wound up in a hospital after being thrown down a flight of stairs. The same District Attorney's Office that prosecuted me dropped the charges against this man. They claimed the stitches in the little girl's face didn't constitute enough evidence for a trial.

http://www.alternet.org/wiretapmag/story.html?StoryID=9083

Kaylara

[Kaylara]

These last two articles I have posted were written by young people to show how the young view things. I have to agree, the young are given no rights and no respect in society. I am often told by my customers how surprised they are that I have a professional job, and that I do good work for them. The funny thing is that people who are the same age as my fiance (23) get a lot more respect.
I am at this time in that strange time in ones' life between the age of 18 and 21. Not quite a kid, not quite an adult. Old enough to die for my country, not old enough to have a drink.
Do the adults actually think that we are all mindless blithering idiots who only care about whats on Dawson's Creek, and what they are going to wear tomorrow? And how many young people are really that shallow?

Kaylara

[Dria El]

Originally posted by Kaylara
These last two articles I have posted were written by young people to show how the young view things. I have to agree, the young are given no rights and no respect in society. I am often told by my customers how surprised they are that I have a professional job, and that I do good work for them. The funny thing is that people who are the same age as my fiance (23) get a lot more respect.
I am at this time in that strange time in ones' life between the age of 18 and 21. Not quite a kid, not quite an adult. Old enough to die for my country, not old enough to have a drink.
Do the adults actually think that we are all mindless blithering idiots who only care about whats on Dawson's Creek, and what they are going to wear tomorrow? And how many young people are really that shallow?
Kaylara

I don't. And I know alot of other adults that don't think this way either. There are alot of kids that are that way but definitely not all of them. I also think that if you got past some of that superficialness, we'd see that a good portion of them think they are expected to act that way. It's sad really.

I've always talked to my kids like I do anyone else. I don't use small words and don't believe in 'baby talk'. I don't hide things from them. One of the things I've always said is that kids are ALOT smarter than people give them credit for (which is why I treat them the way I do).

Dria El

[idusty88]

Amen. Age is not a barrier to personhood.
Like you Dria El, from the cradle I spoke to my children as if they were the full fledged persons they are. I sometimes simplified concepts, but I never dumbed down the words. As a result both of them were considered verbally precocious when starting school. More importantly, I listened to what they had to say (and still do) and gave explanations for the rules and restrictions I enforced as a parent. Compromise was always an option. They were aware that if I used a certain tone of voice when issuing a directive that meant "do it now, debate it later".
Back to the topic before I wander too long...the current trend of holding young adults 'irresponsible' (i.e. prosecuting them as adults, blaming them for violence) and not holding them 'responsible' (i.e. when they do volunteer work, work hard at jobs and educating themselves) is more a function of perceptions than fact as was already pointed out.
The real question is 'Why has the media promoted this perception'? I think it has to do with acclimating young adults to a police state so when they grow up and live in one it seems like business as usual. Also, keeping different elements of the populous in an adversarial stance towards one another prevents people from unifying against the real problem (corporate oligarchy).

[Kaylara]

Bump

[Dria El]

Originally posted by Kaylara
Bump

And a mighty good bump it was! :D

hehe sorry, it IS late! :p

Dria El

[Mariposa De La Luna]

Originally posted by idusty88
Amen. Age is not a barrier to personhood.
Like you Dria El, from the cradle I spoke to my children as if they were the full fledged persons they are. I sometimes simplified concepts, but I never dumbed down the words. As a result both of them were considered verbally precocious when starting school. More importantly, I listened to what they had to say (and still do) and gave explanations for the rules and restrictions I enforced as a parent. Compromise was always an option. They were aware that if I used a certain tone of voice when issuing a directive that meant "do it now, debate it later".
Back to the topic before I wander too long...the current trend of holding young adults 'irresponsible' (i.e. prosecuting them as adults, blaming them for violence) and not holding them 'responsible' (i.e. when they do volunteer work, work hard at jobs and educating themselves) is more a function of perceptions than fact as was already pointed out.
The real question is 'Why has the media promoted this perception'? I think it has to do with acclimating young adults to a police state so when they grow up and live in one it seems like business as usual. Also, keeping different elements of the populous in an adversarial stance towards one another prevents people from unifying against the real problem (corporate oligarchy).

People were amazed at how well my daughter spoke too and how my sister's children understand so well and listen. If you take the time to talk to them, they talk back.

:cool: Good point! Divide and conquer and get them used to things/ideas young. You know there is this school somewhere where the children use a finger scan to pay for lunches. To say the least the ACLU has a big problem with this, having children getting used to giving away personal info so easily. I'm glad they are around.

I have to disgree about the media, I've seen lots of stories about kids helping others, they are very touching and make me feel guilty for not volunteering more when I was in high school. And alot of local stations, in Texas at least, give awards and scholarships to outstanding students who do more than have good grades.