Jade (By Sonia De Abreu)

Typing in teenager in to the internet these are some of the images that come up:

These images show how a teenager is depicted in the media. In fact in typing teenager in to google only around 1/5 of these images demonstrate teenagers as happy, looking content with their lives. From conductiong this research I decided that we had to create the character of Jade to be a stressed worried anxious character that leads a hard life with a cheerless yet heated personality.

I also conducted a questionnaire to support my research on google images asking 4 people to simply describe teenager.

Questionnaire by Sonia De Abreu :

Name? Anne

Age? 54

Describe teenager ‘Teenagers of nowadays are nothing how they use to be, in fact they’re just getting worse and worse. You see teenagers walking around pregnant, in our day you would get a right beating if that was the case. In fact having a baby out of wed lock was seen as mental and you would have been put in a mental institution because of it. It demonstrates abnormal behaviour and nothing more.’

Name? Maria
Age? 75

Describe teenager ‘To be honest if anything the word teenager is something I fear, they roam the streets at night with no respect vandalising, littering, drinking, smoking. Absolutely no respect.  Back in my day whether you were 70, 60, 50, 30 whatever your age no one was scared of going out and now I am scared of them, they’re up for anything, they have no fear, I see it all the time in the newspapers, stabbings, underage drinking, drug abuse, anything and they’re just getting worse I’m afraid.’

Name? Sophie

Age? 17

Describe teenager? ‘Being a teenager is the best time of my life, and if I had a choice I wouldn’t grow up and would just remain this age. Obviously the media shows us to be absolute nut cases with nothing to do with our lives but get drunk, smoke weed, have sex. The miss out all the bits and pieces on how universities are getting exceedingly difficult to get in to because of how teenagers are actually in fact working harder and harder and harder. Yes I’m not going to lie there are some teenagers that commit crimes, but that’s expected, it’s how life works.’

Name? Amit

Age? 46

                            
This questionnaire in particular was different I was passing by a newsagent when I noticed a sign displayed on the door saying ‘Only 2 school and sixth form children allowed at a time and strictly no hoodies’ This shocked me and therefore I went in to ask why the shop owner had this sign on the door this is what he replied:

‘I don’t do this to be  stereotypical of teenagers because I know you’re not all like this yet there is a minority that come here with some serious attitude and an extremely patronising personality and casually steal what they want, when they want and I’m scared of what I see in the media. Stabbings nowadays are mostly committed by teenagers, you have got to always be aware of your surroundings and I’m just not willing to risk my life in having only 2 students in here I have more control over the shop.’