Frontier Youth Trust (FYT) has recently launched a post card campaign to challenge the plethora of negative images about young people in UK society. A survey by the magazine Young People Now (13-19 October 2004) found that 71% of press articles concerning young people had a negative tone, only 14% were positive. This impression that every young person in the country is out to attack, mug or vandalise property is far from the truth. Most young people grow up without committing crime or engaging in anti-social behaviour.
One of the cards depicts a young man wearing an ASBO (Anti Social Behaviour Order) ‘uniform’ which has the words Alright, Sensational, Beautiful and Original beside it and the other shows a group of young people beside some graffiti which states that ‘THE WRITING IS NOT ON THE WALL’. These powerful images are intended to be a small contribution to staying the tide of what Dave Wiles (FYT’s CEO) calls, ‘populist anti-youth dogma that stirs up intergenerational and society wide misunderstanding, tension and fear.’
Wiles goes on to say, ‘Of course some young people cause problems – so do some adults! However, when did you last see articles with titles like “adult yobs” or “grown up louts”, the kind of generalisations and anecdotes that the popular media so often propagate often group young people into an unhelpful stereotype that fuels the problem rather than doing anything constructive towards positive change and understanding.’
