From London riots: Theresa May to meet police chiefs:
So, for those from England, if you read that line in a news story from the BBC, what age range would you expect from the looters?
I’m asking because if I read that here in the US, I’d expect sub-20, and mostly 18 and under, and a group of 200 looting and pillaging would surprise me. This isn’t the first time I’ve seen the BBC use the term “youths”
when it seems to refer to a slightly older crowded than I would use it for.
I think you are right that the term is used differently in the US than elsewhere. The AP stylebook says: “Applicable to boys and girls from age 13 until 18th birthday. Use man or woman for individuals 18 and older”
Wikipedia says: “definitions of the specific age range that constitutes youth vary.” They cite several examples, but both the UN and the World Bank defining it as people age 15 to 24. The same definition appears to be used by the International Youth Foundation.
I was in London when some people were trashing the area around parliament during a Mayday protest in 2000. They basically broke much of the windows and trashed a few businesses from parliament to Trafalgar Square. We were on the subway (tube) when a bunch were switching clothes (to confuse the surveillance video) and discussing what they’d done. If I had to guess, “youth” as in “it’s a crowd, let’s have fun doing damage” looked about 18 to 25. Recall one of the guys caught doing damage in a recent incident was the college-age son of a senior government official.
It’s entirely possible the Beeb is simply wrong, or, to put a happier face on it, chose to run slanted coverage.
I’ve encountered people who honestly believe anyone under the age of 25 is a “child.”
unbelievable.
There was a comedian on TV several years ago who mentioned that the news has a new code-word for black people - “youth”; his examples were “28-year old youth arrested for selling drugs”, or “A 25-year-old youth was arrested yesterday, for assaulting an 18-year-old man…”
I don’t think “youth”, used as a count noun is particularly slanted to mean “black” in Britain, but it does have a strong negative connotation. If people are described as youths, there is a strong implication that they are potential or actual troublemakers or even criminals. Of course, this coincides closely with the racist stereotype of young urban black males, but the word youths certainly gets applied to whites too.
I think anson2995 has it pretty much right about age. A British youth is someone in roughly the 18-25 age range, almost always male, and with a tendency (not necessarily actualized) toward violent troublemaking.