Youth Participation and Mass Media (Part I)

What’s wrong with the Media?

Nowadays, many young people have access to the radio, but they listen only to music programs. There aren’t actually any programs to inform us about how youth could get involved in social activities, about how they could take action in order to determine a change.

For this reason, we affirm that young people aren’t given the opportunity to participate in interactive radio programs. Of course, there are indeed some radio programs created by youth. Nevertheless, these are only entertaining programs about minor issues. Youth are not interested only in knowing which the latest entry in the music hit’s top is. They also want to learn about relevant things and how young people can get involved in solving different social problems.

There should be radio programs for teens that do care about the world! Neither TV Channels have programs about social issues or dedicated to young people eager to fight to make their countries a better place. Although the impact of images is a very, very big one, there are no reports focused on youth volunteering or presenting NGO’s activity in a specific field. How young people could get involved if they never find out about what’s happening around them?

Newspapers and magazines are still the most popular media. They reach people who could never watch a TV program or never had access to the Internet. Yet, youth can’t even participate to these important publications, their opinions, ideas and attitudes find no place in the pages of the big journals. Although social, economical, political and cultural changes directly affect young people, we can’t express our views, we don’t have the right to participate at taking decisions and we are not allowed to propose solutions, not even for our problems! !!!!School magazines opened to any student desirous to write are usually covering only education-related themes and their addressability is restrained to those working in this field. !!!Teen magazines are really interesting and exciting, but because of their “cool-attitude”, they are actually never read by serious adults. !!!Teenagers who win writing contests are allowed to collaborate with literary magazines, yet they can’t use their imagination for improving our real world, too.

The difference between what we are shown on Medias and what we want to see:
Society’s belief is that adolescents don’t care about anything, only enjoying themselves and thinking of petty things like clothes, parties, dating, etc. As a consequence, the Mass Media shows only what the shallow young persons want to see, such as soap operas, violent TV shows, small-minded programs, advertisements of fashion clothes, etc; which make us all look like complete trivial and cold people. Despite the fact that few adolescents are indeed indifferent and insensitive, there are a lot who do care. We are not all selfish teens who don’t have a single clue of what is happening in the world and don’t care about it. The Mass-Media has put on all of us a fake label, about what we like and how we act. But our concern goes beyond the trivial stuffs which are shown in the Medias. We want to be informed about what’s going on; we want to know where to go, what to do, and how we can determine a change. If teenagers were given the opportunity to participate in the Medias, everybody would see what we really are: youth wanting to make a change.

Ailen Laura Rey, 18, Argentina.
Grosu Luciana, 17, Romania