Music and Teens Today

Today music is a necessity in many people's lives. People listen to music all the time, from students who listen to it while studying, to adults driving to work, and those who listen to music to plainly enjoy life. Personally, I am listening to iTunes on random while writing this. My point is everyday, almost everyone will encounter music weather intentionally or voluntarily it surrounds us.

Music is used in many different ways; one people use it as an outlet of expression, another is a way to let their feelings out, and lastly people use music to identify with who they are. Nowadays, music has a major impact on teen's lives everywhere. Teens begin using music as ways of asserting their individuality and by breaking away from their parents and becoming more independent. Christenson (1994) feels that teen's interest in popular music is showing their departure of their parent's dependence and a new faithfulness in friendships among each other. With teen's new need for music poses the question of how does popular music affect their well-beings. But does music diminish their conscience and cause them to involve themselves on senseless acts of violence and debauchery or is it something for them to relate to.

Looking at children and their development, if pre-teens and children as young as first grade have shown interests in popular music (Christenson et al.). In this research, of first to sixth graders the interest grew as their age did, as they got closer to adolescents their interest grew. Baker (2001) did research on pre-teen girls and their attraction to popular music. She found that even though it seems that young girls are fascinated with the boy bands and normal top 40 songs, some of them are still interested in listening to songs with explicit lyrics. Even in children music poses as a building block in their mental development, as they reach adolescents it begins to form media exposure and identities.

Although most of popular music is considered violent and sexual it is still a major part of teenage development. Demo (1981) connects teenagers expose to popular music as an outlet to the media. While listening to music is also a major part of the way they live. Teens listen to music while, doing homework, cleaning and driving. Teens also use music as therapy, "to relieve my tension or take my mind of things bothering me." (Demo et al.) Although Hansen and Hansen's (1991) research show teens are using music as a television substitute and there is an increase in all forms of popular music this leading to more assumptions for the media to create.

The Press today sees music lyrics as ways of provoking people into doing things that they aren't supposed to. Rien and Springer (1986) agree with the fact that popular music is built upon aggression. Yet, Demo's (et al.) study of high school juniors, the ones who felt their parents did not care about them or their lives were more likely to be depressed, anxious, and disturbed. These teens are the ones school officials say are involved in vandalism and theft. Now, is it music the only factor in teen's misbehavior or is it society's escape from of the truth. Media and society have used music many times to explain why a teen has done something he or she shouldn't have. Considine (1996) believes there is no proof of violent lyrics explaining people actions; the author uses an example of a Nevada lawsuit of two teens shooting themselves because of, "hidden messages" in a Judas Priest album. Yet these suits were proved irrelevant and dismissed. The public does not hear that it is dismissed just that the teens killed themselves because of the lyrics and not that the case was dismissed. Another case where the media coverage failed to mention an essential detail was in Ohio when a boy was playing with fire and burned his families home done and in the process killing his two year old sister. In news reports, they claimed the boy was mocking MTV's "Bevis and Butthead," yet the report did not mention that the family did not have cable. Society receives these negative messages about aggressive music and teen's decisions, and is able to make their assumptions about types of music with correct information.

In a study done by Mitchell, Rubin, and West (2001) they researched the aggression, attitudes towards women and distrust patterns in music. The researchers looked at these negative effects and furthered their research by noting people's music preferences and attitudes. They used a sample pool of 243 people and asked many questions regarding their anger, self-esteem to see how it relates to their music preferences. While the researcher's hypothesis was that there would be higher rates of violence depending on what types of music one listens to, thinking that heavy metal and rap would have the highest numbers.

In summary, the journal of Mitchell, Rubin, and West (pg 26 et al.) is exploring the effects of popular music, mainly heavy metal and rap, and their underlining messages of violence and aggression, distrust, and aggression towards women. Music uses emotion to get responses from its audience whether it is positive or negative. According to the article people are angry listen to more destructive music. Also when one is listening to their music of preference they tend to listen to it with more emotions and read into the lyrics more

Prior to Mitchell, Rubin and West (Pg 27-30 et al.) researched popular music and emotions they explored previous research in the same topics and found lots of promising results. When looking at anger and emotions they found that, "high school students experienced excitement, happiness, confidence, and love when listening to their favorite types of music." (2001, pg27) Yet when they listened to heavy metal and rock students had a tendency to show no emotion and were angry. But the also used this music of a way to create high amounts of energy or to get "pumped up." While seeking insight into self-esteem issues the authors saw that the people who listened to heavy metal had lower self-esteem. Music and attitudes studied how lyrics affected the music and the outcome of their preferences. When students were to describe their favorite songs some key factors came up; such as, "love, friendship, growing up, and life struggles." (2001, pg. 27) When using music as therapy adolescents tend to find their friendship with others more trustworthy; while within that same group finding distrust in authority figures and government. Popular music follows patterns of, "dominant ideologies system, parental controls, and other societal institutions." (2001, pg 27) Researchers also found aggression are theme among some types of popular music. Mitchell, Rubin, and White looked at a study