Issue of
November 12, 1997
 
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Rock & Roll: Does
it influence teens’ behavior?
BY KATHLEEN O'TOOLE
Parents of adolescents who
can't tell heavy metal from pop rock may have a tough
time discussing the meaning of life with their children,
say two professors of communication in a new book on
youth and music. That's because music is central to youth
culture. At an adolescent party, the key question is not
what you do but what music you listen to.
It's Not Only Rock
& Roll is scheduled to be published in early
December by Hampton Press of Cresskill, N.J. The authors,
Professor Donald Roberts of Stanford and Professor Peter
Christenson of Lewis and Clark College, a former graduate
student of Roberts', spent three years organizing the
available research into a coherent overview for those
concerned about the influences of pop music and about
efforts to censor it. Roberts also summarized the
research before a Senate subcommittee on Nov. 6. The book
offers some comfort to parents and others who are worried
about graphic sex, morbid violence, overt racism and
challenges to authority in popular music lyrics and
videos. Music doesn't appear to have massive negative
effects, the authors say. But it does seem to be
dangerous for some youth, and to ignore its effects on a
subset of young people "makes no more sense that to
ignore the causes of homicide because only a tiny
minority ever commits murder."
Related
Information
Entertainment executives
and teenagers who argue that pop music is "just
music" do not take into account that "most
human learning is incidental in nature and takes place
outside of designated educational settings," the
authors write. Poetry is "equipment for
living," the late philosopher Kenneth Burke once
wrote. Christenson and Roberts emphasize that in the
adolescent years, pop music is the "heavy
equipment" more influential than television,
movies and computers.
How youth use
music
On average, American youth
listen 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 authors say.
"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,
Christenson said, 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," he said. 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,"
the authors report. "Another 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, Christenson
said, 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.
Warning labels,
MTV
Some conventional wisdom
takes a whipping in this book, but studies, which have
been conducted mostly since the 1980s, also confirm many
commonsense notions or casual observations about music
and youth. The surprises to most people perhaps are
these:
- Labels warning of
explicit lyrics on recordings prompt adolescents
in general to like the music less. They see it as
"tainted fruit," rather than as
"forbidden fruit" they must try,
Christenson found in the only study done of music
labeling. Not everyone in the study reacted
negatively to the labeled music, however.
"An advisory sticker might well be a come-on
for some kids who are alienated from their
parents, their school or the mainstream peer
culture," he said.
- Music videos are a
"powerful new force" in adolescent
culture but they don't seem to hold adolescents'
interest nearly as long as the music itself. It
is the youngest adolescents who watch MTV and
other music videos the most, but older
adolescents devote more total time to music.
- When kids tell their
parents that the "sound" of music
matters more to them than the lyrics, there is
considerable evidence to support them. Averages,
however, conceal ranges, and the more involved
adolescents are with music, the more they listen
to the lyrics. For many youth, however,
"music is often a secondary, background
activity rather than a primary, foreground one.
It serves as a backdrop to other activities
reading, studying, talking, housework,
driving," they wrote.
10-year-olds with
music passions
Understanding pop music's
role in adolescent culture also requires understanding
adolescence better than many people do, the authors say.
We tend to think of adolescence as the teenage years, but
child development experts mark the beginning, on average,
at about age 10, at least two years earlier than half a
century ago, Roberts said. Because children's biological
and social development rates are so variable, the authors
suggest that perhaps the easiest way to tell if a
particular child has reached adolescence is to notice
whether he or she has developed a passion for popular
music.
Parenting books,
psychoanalysts and mass media all portray the adolescent
stage of life as full of crisis, rebellion against adult
authority and conflict, the authors say, but research
doesn't support that stereotype. "For most kids,
adolescence is a period of normal, gradual development in
considerable harmony with parental values and cultural
expectations." For about 10 percent of families,
serious generational conflicts dominate and another 25
percent find the period less happy for their families
than earlier years.
The meaning adolescents
take away from music videos or lyrics is partly
determined by their stage in life. People in general do
not discover the meanings of lyrics so much as they
construct them, drawing on knowledge they already have,
the authors point out. This leads, of course, to
hilarious "mondegreens," such as the one coined
by a 5-year-old who loved Sunday school because he got to
sing about "Gladly, the cross-eyed bear."
Adolescents, who typically focus on one new adult issue
at a time, are quite likely to take away varied messages
from lyrics. Researchers have found, for example, that
girls who view Madonna's video of "Papa Don't
Preach" give vastly different interpretations of it.
For one girl it is a song about true love; to another, it
is about parent-child authority conflicts, and to third,
it is about assuming adult roles.
In another study,
adolescents interpreted both regular heavy metal and
Christian heavy metal music as about sex and violence. It
appears that the sound of heavy metal has a general
reputation for sex and violence, Roberts said, and the
youth listening to Christian rock didn't really hear the
different message of the lyrics.
Violence a
turn-off?
Pop music has been very
controversial at least since the 1950s, but even Plato
complained about the influence of music on youth. Today,
the controversy is greater, with statements about it even
taking on prominence in the last presidential campaign.
"When it comes to popular music, rabid conviction
and lack of consensus go together like Siamese
twins," Christenson and Roberts wrote.
The messages of music are
not synonymous with its effects, they say, and they
remind adults that most of them were served "at
least a modicum of media violence and sex" in their
youth. They also caution adults not to "lose sight
of the sad reality that many kids may be monsters already
and simply seek out musical fare that resonates with
their monstrous inclinations."
They remind music industry
apologists that it is disingenuous to argue that music
can have no serious effects simply because it's
"only entertainment," or to argue that art can
be uplifting but not the reverse.
In several studies,
researchers have found that music videos laced with
violent images made youthful male viewers more
antagonistic in their orientation toward women and more
likely to condone violence in themselves and others. In
another study of college students shown a set of videos
with varying levels of sex and violence, the researchers
found that "as violence went up, students said they
felt less happy, more fearful and more anxious and
aggressive." Yet another study of violence and sex
in combination found no significant effect. More research
is necessary, the authors say, to clarify the impact with
any precision. "No doubt it depends on the type of
sex or violence," they wrote.
Article
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