The Effects Of Violent Music Content On Teens

Throughout history the human populous has been attracted to music. Whether it be part of a ritual, an emotional release, religious reasons, or just for listening pleasure music has been at the center of our society. We have used music to express ourselves, tell stories, and let others into our thoughts. However, we often wonder whether what we are saying has an effect on the listening audience. Recently, in the 1990's references have often been made to link violent and deviant behavior to music and certain music genres. Some such genres include but are not limited to; heavy metal, rock, death metal, rap, gansta rap, industrial, hardcore, and alternative music. During the last decade we have seen music lyrics become more and more violent and sexually explicit. Experts argue that this can cause problems in children and adolescents. Studies show that the average teenager listens to approximately 40 hours of music in a given week. One is to assume that somewhere in the mix a child is going to hear something derogatory or objectionable, as it has become the norm in todays society. In most music today especially rap and heavy metal most of the lyrics contain references to violence, sex, and/or drugs. While many argue that this is dangerous for children to hear we know that a modern day teenager often faces violence, drugs, suicide, pregnancy, and other aspects of this music. While we find that lyrics may be dangerous to a child we must ask ourselves whether the child fully understands and comprehends what the artist is saying. Teenagers often do not understand what is being said, in fact in one study only 30 percent of those questioned knew the lyrics to their favorite songs and they all had varied comprehension as to what the message was. It could be argued that if the lyrics were not included in the artists booklet then the audience would never know what was being said. Some lyrics are indeed harsh such as this Nine Inch Nails lyric: I am a big man yes I