She writes about how, as a society, we exclude young people from shaping the cultural and social landscape. We are an ephebiphobic society, she says, and we ought to be ashamed of ourselves. Quite right too.
The reason why the article struck a chord for me was because it captured a growing sense among many that it is time to start to change things. I get a strong feeling that young people, youth organisations and others who work with the young are all beginning to say something needs to change.
It's great to see Children & Young People Now's Positive Images campaign continuing.
We've been working for the past three months in a consortium looking at the options for a National Youth Week. It's an exciting piece of work and in due course we'll be able to say more about it.
One of the big themes that arose in our research is this very story about how, as a society, we think about young people. It doesn't feel as if we are comfortable with the young or happy with adolescence as a time in life. It's just a period to be got through, as fast we can. How often do we talk about the teenage years as a period of time that we celebrate, or do we really consider the value of being young?
Certainly this isn't how the media are perceived to portray youth. Public perceptions too are overwhelmingly regarded as negative. One of the important messages to come out of our research for youth week was that we need to be really clear about which bits of the media and which sections of the public we are talking about when we talk about negative portrayal and perceptions.
Not all the media is negative though of course (there are some fantastic young people-led radio stations for example) and some sections of the public are positive about the young.
We need to get much clearer about who we are talking about if we are to change our ephebiphobic society.
- Jon Boagey is director of communications at The National Youth Agency. He can be contacted at jonb@nya.org.uk.
