On average, a youth listens to music and watch music videos four to five hours a day, which is more time than they spend with their friends outside of school or watching television. "Music matters to adolescents, and they cannot be understood without a serious consideration of how it fits into their lives," the study says.
Music alters and intensifies their moods, furnishes much of their slang, dominates their conversations and provides the ambiance at their social gatherings. Music styles define the crowds and cliques they run in. Music personalities provide models for how they act and dress.
Music also appears to alter study habits and damage eardrums.
Such consequences may not spring as quickly to mind as sex and violence, but they may ultimately play just as crucial a role in adolescent development.
Many scholars have viewed television as the central media influence on adolescents, but adolescents devote more time and intensity to music.
They use music most to control mood and enhance emotional states. Music can make a good mood better and allow us to escape or 'work through' a bad one.. But it can also be used to enhance bad moods, which has led some to believe music lyrics about suicide and violence against women have occasionally led troubled youth to commit suicide or violent crimes.
In one study, a heavy metal devotee reported that he loved the music because it put him in a 'good mood,' by which he meant a mood conducive to smashing mailboxes with bricks while another was quoted to have said hardcore metal put him in the mood to 'go beat the crap out of someone.'
Movies and news reports tend to over-emphasize such extreme examples, but the evidence suggests that music is more likely to energize listeners than to de-energize or mellow them out.
Adolescents also use music to gain information about the adult world, to withdraw from social contact (such as using a Walkman as a barrier, not unlike an adult hiding behind a newspaper at the breakfast table), to facilitate friendships and social settings, or to help them create a personal identity.
youth who really are addiccted to music....their are quite few out there....thy do lack social life and their behaviour against others is not good...
ReplyDeleteits a slow poisoning effect..the sooner realized and cured the better..=)
ReplyDeleteWith the gradual disintegration of our family system the society is evolving into a structure that lacks compassion. As a consequence society is unable to cater for the emotional needs of the youth. Teens are afraid to speak up because social norms prohibit them to do so. As they are unable to seek good advice from anyone, they resort to music.
ReplyDeleteHowever, the only input they receive is purely western and as a consequence there is a cultural clash.
I think if society as a whole became more conversant about certain issues less people would seek guidance from music.
I disagree that people resort to music in order to find solutions. People listen to music in order to run away from problems. People turn to music when they feel that they dont have the emotinal capacity to think any more and they need something to momentarily detach them from their surroundings.
ReplyDeleteMusic doesnt allow the human mind to think. It is more of an intoxicant than a solution to anyones problems.