Mythes en Morele Paniek

This chapter of the edited book "Leefwerelden van Jongeren", edited by Joke Hermes, Pauline Naber and Arjan Dieleman (Bussum, the Netherlands: Couthinho, 2012) deals with the myths in the media regarding young people: how youngsters are represented in the media, most often these depictions are a form of 'moral panic', stories involve problematic groups of teenagers (drug abuse, sexual promiscuity, etc), but at times also overly optimistic stories make it into the news (high IQ, information age, digital natives, etc.). In this chapter we try to unravel these media myths and media hypes and in doing so debunk the moral panic surrounding these myths as most young people are ordinary and relatively problem free.