Young Edinburgh Awards

I was invited to present an award at the annual Young Edinburgh Awards on Monday. This is our celebration of the outstanding achievements of young people engaged in the ordinary things of life. They allow us to say positive things about young people in a media that is often so anti our teenage generations.There were 1600 nominations for about a dozen awards and all those shortlisted were an inspiration. Yet still we allow our media to portray young people as hoodie hooligans because of the actions of a stupid or damaged minority. Why we accept this abuse of our younger generation is a question I have yet to answer.I think our media (and I don’t just mean newspapers, TV in particular shows negative images in an uncritical fashion) need to take a long hard look at themselves. They are perpetuating a mythology about young people that they are apathetic, aggressive, abusing and anti-authoritarian which is simply not the case in the vast majority of cases. It would be a bit like me saying all newspapers have a reading age of 8 years old because I had picked up one tabloid.But we too are culpable because we buy, watch, listen and repeat the myths. And our young people suffer as a consequence.