After reading an article from fellow teenager Jack Parker in the Times Guardian last month about unfair stereotypes, I wanted to add my voice to the debate.

Jack seems to be a young man frustrated by the tarnished image of Britain’s youth.

It got me thinking about a few incidents that have happened to me over the past year which have left me frustrated.

A few weeks ago, I was walking down Sheerness High Street, it was quiet and almost empty, apart from me and this elderly couple strolling towards me.

They must have been retired and in their 70s, but they felt the need to cross to the other side of the road when they saw me.

I had looked ahead and seen them, and I guess they must have thought I was eying them up, looking to see if the opportunity was there for an assault or a mugging.

This did not even enter my mind, as I am sure it wouldn’t most youths, I most certainly would never mug or assault anyone, especially not an elderly person.

This is not the first time this has happened, in fact, it happens all the time.

It is weird to think that due to what they see in the media about all the knife crime and violence that takes place between these so called “gangs”, this couple felt the need to make an effort to actually avoid me.

This left me feeling rather annoyed and agitated about things.

I didn’t understand why I was being tarred with the same brush as these other people.

This made me very frustrated and let down in a way. It made me wonder what I was doing wrong, when in fact my only crime was looking young.

I took a minute to think about what youths could do to change this portrayal of us in the media, and it appears to me that us as young adults, need some way of presenting ourselves as the good, well-mannered, promising group of individuals that we are.

After all, we are supposed to be the future of our nation.

How we should go about doing this, I am not yet sure. I am not trying to argue that there is not a small minority out there that do use knives, and are involved in gangs, but that is what they are, a minority.

In reality, is crime such a real problem in the UK? According to a British crime survey, “overall violent crime has decreased by 41 per cent since a peak in 1995”.

Furthermore, there are around eight per cent of crimes where a knife is used, which is a figure that is constant over the past decade.

So, this raises the question, why is it now that the media have decided to pack our papers with news of the current crop of youths being some sort of gang-orientated thugs?

I feel, as I am sure do many youths in Britain, that this is completely unjust and unfounded.

This makes me wonder where this all came from, if figures show that there is actually a decrease in crime, why is there a sudden national fear surrounding us?

My theory is that due to such an influx of constant news on our television, the media feel the need to blow up every story to more than what it really is.

I am becoming increasingly frustrated by the prejudice against young people.

It is considered so very vindictive to be racist or sexist, yet it seems to becoming socially acceptable to believe that all youths are violent thugs.

Finally, it would be great to live in a society where people do not have to be worried about youths, and equally, youths do not need to worry about how older people are going to view them.