What’s the real deal?

By Paisley Thompson

King College Prep

Reality TV gives teens and young adults a bad reputation! Recent reality shows like “Teen Mom,” “My Super Sweet Sixteen,” “16 and Pregnant” and “Jersey Shore” all portray young people as lazy, unmotivated, idiotic, arrogant and nonchalant. Despite this, many teens support and watch these shows, believing they are entertaining and cool.

Rev. Darryl Scarbrough, minister of Youth Spiritual Life at New Faith Baptist Church International, says, “The media reinforces the negative behaviors that we see in our teens currently. I do not believe that all teenagers or even the majority are lazy. However teens are one of the most misunderstood groups of people.”

According to the University of Kentucky’s Odyssey research magazine, adults are giving teens less support and overall less respect. Therefore, if the media reinforces the negative behaviors, it is no wonder why adult’s perspective on young people is so negative, but a more important fact still remains—reality TV (as well as most presentations from the media) is not real.

According to MonaLisa Brown, former reality TV star, “It’s really called real-lie-ty. There is nothing ‘real’ about it.”

Brown, a motivational speaker and songwriter, played the role of “Shy” on Season 3 of MTV’s “Flavor of Love” when it was released in 2008. Despite being shown as the loud-mouthed, bad-breathed woman, she has admitted that this was all just an act.

Says Brown: “Basically, I was a hired actress and I took that character in and became Shy.  There were some parts of me in her, but I became that character.” When asked what she thought would be the most important message to young people about reality television, she answers, “Young people really need to know that everything is the opposite of what it seems.”

Are young people really as bad as the reality shows portray, like glorifying name brands, having babies young, fighting, being disrespectful and loud, or is reality television just painting an image that most seem to accept?

An Internet group titled “Are Teenagers Stereotyped by Adults?” on Youth Noise (a division of Link Media that empowers young leaders to act for causes they care about locally, nationally and globally) brings up this issue, but the thought behind the group is obvious – teens feeling angered by the constant stereotyping given mostly by adults and how those stereotypes usually derive from the media. This group believes that most teens are driven, intelligent and leading positive lives – the opposite of those presented on TV.

Scarbrough explains when you consider that most shows are targeting the groups ages 13-19 and 25-30, you can see how media exposure then makes a continuous impression on the younger groups.  When a reality show depicts young people simply partying, drinking and engaging in promiscuous behavior, he says, it suggests to their teen peers that this is the accepted and expected behavior and they mimic it.

Alencia Norris, a student at Chicago High School for the Arts and a fan of reality television, is an example of a teen that does not follow the media’s portrayal, while she enjoys these reality shows, she also knows about the negative effects they have on adults’ perspective and teen behavior.

Although some teens are mimicking this behavior, because it is on TV and deemed accepted by some, teens like Norris say: “I try to be like me; not the people I see.”

According to Scarborough, contrary to what is seen,  teens and young adults have tremendous creativity and flexibility when dealing with life, but it has to be directed and cultivated by adults who see the potential in it and not just the side effects.