Adolescent Perception Because adolescence is a ti

Mass culture is full of negative stereotypes of adolescence. It seems as though the media has painted an overwhelming picture of adolescent youth as unruly and rebellious; it paints a picture for the general public of a culture full of youths that smoke, use drugs, and have promiscuous sex. In some cases, statistics support these opinions; in others, it seems that the media has painted a much more grim picture than the one that exists in reality. Nevertheless, there have been a few theories proposed in order to begin an understanding of these negative views that society holds towards the adolescent stage in human development.

According to G Stanley Hall, negative stereotypes of adolescents are brought about by a combination of ôStorm and Stressö (1904) This theory attempts to explain that young people have these problems due mainly to their developmental sta

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s helps us to understand the influence of peer groups upon the perception of the adolescent. For instance, Blackburn argues that one of the best ways to predict delinquency is by looking closely at the behavior of close friends, because ôdelinquent acts are typically committed in groupsö (1993:177). However, there is much uncertainty about how delinquent groups are formed as well as how much the group members have the power to drive others to delinquent behavior. Some theories propose that peer groups are formed on the basis of performance at school- those who do not perform well have an æanti-schoolÆ attitude and use this as the focus of their peer group (Hargreaves 1980). Thus, rejection at school and lowered self-esteem may have something to do with the behavior of the individual. Patterson (1986) says that adolescents who are short of social skills are likely to be friends, while Parker and Asher (1987) suggest that those who have been rejected by their peers at school are more aggressive and may have criminal involvement in their later lives. But these matters need to be researched more comprehensively because rejection of non-aggressive children compared to those who are aggressive in their behavior is different. Those who
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Approximate Word count = 1657
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)