Over to you

Transition Year students can win a week's work placement in The Irish Times. Send us your thoughts (200 words maximum) on a media-related topic - if your submission is published, the placement is yours.

Julie Deering, The King's Hospital School, Palmerstown, Dublin.

What do most teenagers do with the two-thirds of their lives they don't spend in school? Some wither our youthful developing brains in front of mind-numbing television screens, while others are frowned upon for hanging around on street corners.

But what else can we do as we watch helplessly the development of another mass housing complex, in whose planning the inevitable leisure time of future teenagers was not given any thought? Where in such suburban centres are, for example, public basketball courts or sports pitches to be found? Should developers not be forced to design compulsory recreation schemes?

We are in a real dilemma about where to socialise. Shunned from pubs by patronising bouncers, our only other option, it seems, is to pay ridiculous large entrance fees to over-filled, fire-hazardous discos. An idea would be to establish a chain of local youth cafes, run by our contemporaries, initially subsidised by the State.

Imogen Doel, St Andrew's College, Booterstown, Co Dublin

Today's soaps convey bad messages to the younger generation, with teenagers smoking, using drugs and drinking alcohol.

The writers could argue that when producing soaps they have to stick to real-life issues. However this means that teenagers, even children, are watching people their own age using illegal substances and getting away with it. Generally, in these soaps, by the time a parent or friend has found out about this person or people breaking the law, the idea of smoking, drinking or using drugs has already been put into the viewer's head.

Soaps don't just touch on these topics once in a while. They continuously bring up these situations. Most soaps are broadcast between 6 and 9 p.m., before the watershed. If soap scriptwriters are going to write about these issues, they should either air these programmes after 9 p.m. or tone down the detail in these topics.

Write to media scope by posting your comments to Newspaper in the Classroom, The Irish Times, 11-16 D'Olier Street, Dublin 2, or faxing them to (01) 679 2789. Be sure to include your name, address and school, plus phone numbers for home and school.

Or you can use the Internet and email us at mediapage@irish-times.ie.

media scope is a weekly media studies page for use in schools. Group rates and a special worksheet service are available: freephone 1-800-798884 (8 a.m. to 5 p.m.).

media scope is edited by Harry Browne.