Fifty per cent of youths are troublesome teenagers who will never amount to anything. Do you agree?

This year the number of youths who died from knife crime has come to 10. The number of Asbos issued this year is 68.

There a is a huge amount of youths involved in knife, gang crime. But not every youth is involved in crime. Most youths have been giving back to the community and they have a good future ahead for them.

We are writing this article to say that the way the press portray the youth of today is not how all youths are and because of the way they are stereotyped they are getting a hard time when in public.

The statistics show that half of the public think that every teenager brings around knife and gun crime.

But this isn’t the truth. All the media talk about is the bad things teenagers do but not enough about the good things as well.

Many youths aren’t troublesome, they are making something of their life like the youths in Greenwich have been giving back to the community and have been teamed up with Age Concern to help the elderly a few times a week.

There are youths in Eltham who are part of a youth project called Central Eltham youth project (CEYP). This is there to help youths overcome crisis and come into adulthood with a positive and bright future.

Also they are part of it to help them with their problems.

What we expect to earn from writing this article is for newspapers and all the people who are part of the media business to see how what they write affects people’s lives.

Also that you need to get all the facts you write correct before you print it. If you always write about all the bad things youths are doing how are they going to be able to prove or show all the hard work they do and how they are making something with their lives?

We would like to thank you for taking your time to read this article and I hope what you have realised is that we are all human and we all have feelings.

The way youths are stereotyped is the way we get limited to the things we want to do.

If you show the public more of the good things we do they can see how we want to make something of ourselves. Also see how not all youths want to be caught in the gang and knife scene.

By Lawreeta, Rochelle, Senen, Eltham Hill Technology College GCSE citizenship class