Overview
Our project Teens Be Heard is a response to the role of teen stories and voices in media, and how they effect the goals and culture of real teens. The role of teen voices in modern media is a powerful and dangerous one. In television and movies, teens are shown with sex and drug filled lives, normalizing an unhealthy appetite for excitement that could warp young viewers and their perceptions of reality. We see this through instagram, tiktok, etc, as teens and younger kids are learning from television that they should be perceived as adults, and thus they start to act this way. Engaging with their lives in this way makes teens more likely to engage with drugs, self harm, and dangerous situations involving their assumed identity of someone who should be sexualized.
Goals
Our event, Teens Be Heard is an event meant to reach out to both teenagers who are concerned/unaware of this trend, and industry entertainment writers who write for teen voices. The goal of bringing these groups together, by a teen curated set of events and presentations, is to offer up alternatives to writing these characters other than writing them and portraying them as adults. By offering up their own written prose about their lives and ideas, and explaining how harmful current writing trends can be, hopefully there will be an impact on how these characters can be written in the future to protect the young people they are targeted to identify with.
Our event also allows teens to have a foray into the writing industry, and offers opportunities for interested participants (both organizers and attendees) to speak with professionals in the industry.
Visual Campaign
Our artifacts consist of a brochure listed for the event and a poster, both containing details about what the event will entail as well as some of the events that will take place there.
