The Media Is the Main Influence Behind Young People Being Involved in Delinquent Behaviour Today

The media is the main influence behind young people being involved in delinquent behaviour today” Introduction In my investigation I am trying to find out what the main influence of delinquent behaviour in young people today. My aims of this investigation are to find out: * What aspects of the media influence young people? * What acts are classed as delinquent and what are the most common delinquent acts Delinquent behaviour is behaviour that is anti-social and is against the norms in society today. The media is the main means of mass communication regarded collectively such as newspapers, magazines, TV etc.

I think the aims will be easy to achieve as using my questionnaires and articles on the internet it will be easy to find information from a wide range of sources. I think that this information will show that what societies views on young peple and anti social behaviour and personally I believe the reason commit delinquent behaviour is due to peer pressure and inadequate primary socialisation. Statistics state that 29% of young people say they have committed a crime in the past year. The home office states that the average number of 10-17 year olds committing crime is 1. 2 and for over 18’s 1. 05. Research over recent years has found some factors that are likely to increase the chance of youths becoming involved in offending. There are some risk factors that increase the chances of younger people committing crimes. These are things such as peer pressure, being unsupervised, parental criminality, depression. Anders Breivik, the Norwegian who killed 77 people, claimed earlier this year that he had played video game Call of Duty to train himself, this suggesting that playing violent video games influenced him into commit delinquent behaviour.

Methodology For my primary data I gave out questionnaires to 25 people, I wrote the questionnaire out myself so i could get information valuable to my research, also I gave them to people I know such as homeoffice. gov. uk and dailymail. co. uk. ) This is good useful information directly and gave some for people to give people so I have a wide range of information. I used this method because it directly answered the question I was asking and it wasn’t too vague. I find it easy to collect information because the questionnaires ecause they were easy to hand out and I got them back in a short amount of time so I could then get into the investigation and analysis. For my secondary data, I used the internet (websites as it has been gathered together by professionals and by the government. However, it is hard to find useful information on the internet considering the UK and not the USA. Primary research is research that does not already exist and research that I’ve conducted myself. Secondary research is research is data that already exists.

When designing the questionnaire I had to consider ethnic issues as I didn’t want to offend anyone. Also, I didn’t address religion as this could also be seen as disrespectful in some way. I made sure my questionnaire didn’t go into too much detail about issues such as drugs, alcohol abuse or violence as this could also antagonize some people. I stated at the top of my questionnaire in bold writing that it was strictly confidential so people could fully express their opinion without worrying about whether someone would judge them or whether someone would pass on the information to any other parties.

The limitations of doing a questionnaire were that some people would rush the questionnaires as they wanted them to be completed in as little time as possible. There were limitations in this area as people didn’t read the questions properly, as they were in a rush, then didn’t complete the question/questionnaires to their full ability. Also, I found it difficult to ask all the questions I wanted answers in just 10-15 questions (including those about age, ethnicity etc).

In addition, I also found some people missed out questions, I found this difficult as I couldn’t analyse the data to its full extent. The benefits of conducting my own questionnaire were that I could ask questions to my specific need and would answers my questions directly. Furthermore, conducting my own survey enables me to have full control over what is being asked/how it’s being asked/how I wan’t it to come across. Also, if the person filling in the questionnaire is stuck in anyway it enables me to to answer their questions on what they’re stuck on.

If this was my questionnaire I wouldn’t be able to do this. This is a graph to show what aspects of the media people believed influenced delinquent behaviour. This was a closed question and there were 4 options to chose from (explicit music, violent video games, violent films and portrayal by journalism) I believe that these 4 options cover every/most aspects of the media. From this graph I saw that people believed that violent films were the main influence and not many people saw the media as influential.

This graph answers my second aim “what aspects of the media influence young people to commit delinquent behaviour? ” To support this graph whilst surfing the web I found an article about violent films and video games causing violent behaviour. Also, when trying to find out information I found out that Anders Breivik, the Norwegian who killed 77 people, claimed earlier this year that he had played video game Call of Duty to train himself, this suggesting that playing violent video games influenced him into commit delinquent behaviour.

This is my secondary data; this graph shows what crime and delinquency young people commit. This graph shows that the crime most committed by young people today is robbery and all together there are 49% proven offences. This does not surprise me as young people would commit robbery because they what immediate gratification and because they’re young and sometimes not able to get jobs, they would steal. However, I thought that percentage of drug of offences would be higher has many youths today get pressured by their peers into taking drugs on more occasions than robbery.

This secondary data is from www. homeoffice. gov. uk. This graph shows the number of 10-17 year olds committing crime compared to 18+ year olds. This graph suggests that 10-17 year olds commit more of crime than 18+ year olds especially in areas such as burglary and criminal damage. This didn’t come as a surprise to me as young people are always negatively portrayed in the media and when I asked this question in my questionnaire only a minority said that young people were portrayed well.

This pe chart (primary research) shows that people class the illegal acts as delinquency, stealing a mobile phone, underage drinking outside and stealing sweet, this proves that people thought that the acts of delinquency were crime related. When asking this question, I thought more people in the 71-100 category would think that wearing a hooded jacket would be classed as delinquency because the media gives older people a stereotype that they’re scared of people in hooded jackets but as the pie chart and my questionnaire shows that that is not the case as no one in the 71-100 category ticked “being in large groups” as an act of delinquency.

This was a closed question although there was an option to state other however, nobody ticked that box. This piece of primary data supports my secondary data as on my primary data the majority of people saw robbery as delinquency and on the secondary data, stealing is the most committed crime by under 18’s. Conclusion My first aim was to find out what aspects of the media influence young people into delinquency. From my primary research I found out that people thought violent films was the biggest influence on young people today.

This was no surprise to me as a lot of people I gave questionnaires to were in the 31-50 and 51-70 categories, therefore these people would either have children of their own who watch films or know of children that watch films. I believe this would’ve lead them to ticking that answer as they would not want their children to be effected by violent films. My second aim was to find out what acts are classed as delinquent and what the most common delinquent acts are. From my research from questionnaires and a report made by www. homeoffice. ov. uk I found out that the majority of people saw stealing and the crimes as delinquency and that robbery has the most committed offences. Firstly, in this process, I had to create my questionnaire I did not find this difficult as I knew what my aims were and I knew what I needed to ask people. Secondly, I distributed my questionnaires, I tried to distribute them to a wide variation of people however, I couldn’t as we didn’t have a very long period to hand them out and collect them in, so I just ended up giving them to people I know.

I then tallied my information into tally charts so I could then go on to make graphs and pie charts. Next, I gathered together my secondary information; I found this extremely difficult as I found it hard to find an article or piece of data that directly linked to my investigation. I then wrote out my investigation. I believed my questionnaire worked well as all the questions I asked were fully answered. However, if I were to go back and re-do it I would hand them out to a wider variation of people.

I would do this because if I did this then I could’ve analysed the data based on a wide mix of people’s opinions. I do not believe I have answered to their full extent but I do believe I answered them in some way, especially the first. There is a strong connection between my first aim and what I found out. On the other hand, the connection between my second aim and what I found out is weaker; I believe this is because I found it hard to find an article directly answering my aim.