This month the BBC’s children’s channel CBBC launches the 10-part series Pocket Money Pitch. This Dragons’ Den style show invites young entrepreneurs (aged between 8 and 14) to pitch their plan for the chance to win a year’s worth of ‘pocket money’ investment in their fledgling businesses. BBC business presenter Steph McGovern fronts the show dedicated to finding the ‘business brains of the future’. McGovern declared ‘Hopefully this will kick off the careers of our future business leaders, and we’ll find the next Richard Branson or Martha Lane Fox’. In each episode participants undertake set challenges including fighting a ‘head-to-head pitch battle’ to win a mentor to help them to the next stage. The show’s business ‘gurus’ include fashion designer Myleene Klass, Hussein Lalani (founder of 99p Stores), Rob Law who invented the Trunki suitcase, spicy sauce creator Levi Roots and Sarah Jane Thomson, founder of children’s national newspaper First News.

In this guest blog, Anita Biressi, Professor of Media and Society at the University of Roehampton, looks at what the show and the reading list of one of its mentors reveal about the complexities of growing up today.

The relationship between young people and the media is always a complex one. On the one hand, their experiences as part of the audience are often extremely positive, with their media tastes and pleasures playing a big part in the whole construction of their own identity; on the other hand, they are often quite worried about the ways in which media might have a negative impact upon other young people (especially those younger than themselves). This ambiguity is further complicated by the ways in which they find themselves represented by the media- often demonised (‘hoodies, louts, scum’) or pathologised as victims (young girls and body image, the radicalization agenda).

Celebrities make the headlines with such regularity, you could be forgiven for concluding that as a society, we are completely obsessed by celebrity culture. We consistently volunteer an interest in the things celebrities do or say – particularly when their antics are less than admirable. There tends to be a sense of ambivalence about our attitudes towards celebrities: they are either adored or exalted; defended or attacked; glorified or demonised; derided or revered. In this guest blog post, Gary Walsh from Character Scotland, explores the relationship between young people, celebrity culture and character education.