Deputy Minister Says Young Iranians Fixated On Foreign Celebrities

None of the top ten characters appreciated by Iran’s young people is Iranian or a Muslim, according to Vahid Yaminpour, the deputy minister of youth and sports.

Without citing any source for his ‘information,’ Yaminpour told Lotfollah Dezhkam, representative of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in Shiraz province Wednesday that many young people were focused on “Hollywood and European” figures. IRNA that reported his remarks did not say who Yaminpour named in the top ten, nor exactly which age range he was referring to.

Expressing concern that “today's youth spend all their time with the media, and the family is their next priority,” Yaminpour claimed that “30 percent of young people believe that marriage is not for everyone” and that “significant part of these young people are girls.”

Yaminpour said that precisely 89.3 percent of Iranian youth used social media, with 70 percent of those on Instagram. He called for more work to provide appropriate content.

Internet penetration in Iran was in January put at 123 percent by the Communications Regulatory Authority, a high level for the region, although thousands of websites and major social media networks have been blocked by the government to control both political and ‘un-Islamic’ content. Almost everyone uses VPN software to get around the censorship.