The media influences people in so many ways, but it also influences our teenagers. The media has created a stereotype of todays teenagers. The media only describes one group of people in most shows for teenagers that aims more to teenagers that are upper middle-class, but what about our lower-class. I haven’t seen a show that they can identified with maybe only the movie “Bring It” which is not even close to a lower-class teenager. The news can cover stories about students and there college problems or students in high schools who are making a science project. The media covers what sometimes isn’t important, but that they think people will be more interested in reading or viewing. We see all this shows for example Hannah Montana, Degrassi, and shows of upper-middle-class teengars who are pregnant, but we don’t see a show of a lower class teenager who is hispanic. I mean most of those shows are for teenagers whose parents make more than 80,000 a year or more in order to identify with those shows. But what about a lower-class teenager who can they identify with in the media. Why is it that no one in the news covers any of there stories.
I am tutoring 4 teenagers who live in my neighborhood which are lower-class in the ages of 13-14. They are in there last year of Junior High and have really bad grades, but they will still be able to graduate and go to high school without good grades. They are very smart, but there dreams have being taken away. One of them told me something that made me realize that I am more than just someone who helps them with there math homework or teaches them there multiplication I am there friend. I remember the first day we started about a month ago the answer they gave me when I asked them, ” Why don’t you like school?” they said, ” I don’t know, I guess because no one in my family cares and no one in school cares so why should I care.” They are not just teenagers they have problems yes a teenager can have problems. They are either growing up with no father or no mother or neither. One them lives with her grandmother and her aunt, but its sad to know that her parents don’t care about her I will never understand why because I myself have a baby girl and she means the world to me. I can write a book of each one about there lifes and all the things that they have being through at such an early age. There families and parents are making them live there lives so fast and giving them so little options.
I don’t understand if the media is there to let the world know of the problems that are affecting the community and try to open our eyes why do we have so many lower-class teenagers dropping out of school. The media only shows percentages of how many lower-class teens go to college or how many get pregnant at an early age or how many gangs we have. They only show numbers and there statistics and there so call research but they never show a story about a lower-class teenager and all there challenges. They never go beyond of why they are doing so poor in class maybe because they don’t have the right nutrition or private tutors to help them. I know within some years I will see this teenagers that are now part of my life with careers. Hopefully someday the media will cover a good story of teenagers in the lower-in-come families.
