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Music in adolescents' daily lives September 12, 2002 at 15:00 Dr Adrian North, Senior Lecturer in Psychology, University of Leicester School of Psychology, University of Leicester, University Road Leicester  LE1 7RH  United Kingdom  telephone: +44 (0)116 252 2175 fax: +44 (0)116 252 2067 email: acn5@le.ac.uk Session organiser: BA Psychology Section with Dept of Psychology, University of Leicester Key finding of the work Censorship of pop music could *increase* rather than decrease youth suicide rates. What is new and interesting about this research This is the first evidence that questions the often stated link between pop music and youth suicide. It is also the first evidence that questions whether pro-censorship groups are having the impact they desire. Perhaps instead we should encourage young people to listen to rap and heavy metal. How it is important to a general audience There is considerable public interest in the impact of music on young people. Artists such as Eminem and Marilyn Mansun are frequently criticised in the press for encouraging suicide, violence, or a disrespect for authority figures. The research described here questions whether this is really the case. The next step in this research The next step involves greater dissemination of the findings since there are few voices arguing against censorship. Others working in this specific area Professor David Hargreaves, University of Surrey at Roehampton, UK Professor Christine Hansen, Oakland University, USA Details of the presentation Music in adolescents' daily lives  This talk describes two recent studies (carried out in conjunction with David Hargreaves) that look at the role of music in adolescents' everyday life. The first study provides some background and represents a large survey of adolescents: How do they listen to music on a day-to-day level? The second study looked in detail at one particular issue that has attracted considerable media attention over recent years in relation to how adolescents use music: Put simply, does pop music promote youth suicide? Study 1. Adolescent music listening: Who, what, when, where, and why? We still know very little about how adolescents actually listen to music in everyday life. Most of the research that has been carried out has been limited in that it is conducted in the laboratory, asking adolescents to think back to the last time they heard music and then describe why they were listening or who they were listening with. Such an approach, although of some use, is limited by participants' memory capabilities. We cannot be sure that they correctly remembered why they listened to music at a particular point in time. Indeed, this might explain why research to date has provided a very confusing picture concerning adolescents' motivations for music listening. For example, three different studies found that 'mood enhancement' was a reason for music listening to a considerable, intermediate, or negligible extent respectively. To overcome these problems research has to tap into music listening experiences as and when they actually occur. This 'on-line' sampling of music listening experiences removes any distortions in the data attributable to the participant's memory.  To achieve this, 142 teenage volunteers were sent a text message to their mobile phone every day for 14 days. Messages were sent at random times between 08.00 and 22.00. The text message asked the teenager to complete a questionnaire that concerned any music they could hear at that moment. The questionnaire included questions concerning who was with the teenager when they heard music, what were they listening to, when did they listen, where did they listen, and why did they listen. Some of the results are shown below. Background information. Participants could hear music on 42.9% of those occasions when they were sent a text message. This shows that listening to music is extremely common among young people. Furthermore, 60.2% of these music listening episodes involved the participant doing something that was part of their everyday routine: Music listening is very much part of everyday life. However, only 30.9% of music listening episodes involved listening to music as the primary activity. In other words, most of the time that adolescents listen to music it is in the course of some other activity (e.g. doing homework).  Who were you with? The teenagers listened to music on their own for 37.1% of the time, and listened with friends for 37.8% of the time. Only 11.1% of listening episodes were with other members of the family. In short, listening to music is something from which adolescents really do exclude their parents. What could you hear? 38.9% of listening episodes involved chart pop music, and a further 15.2% involved soul/R&B. Only 8.2% of episodes involved rock music and only 4.4% involved rap. This is despite the fact that these are the two musical styles that pro-censorship campaigners usually cite as a cause of adolescent delinquency: How can this be the case if they are actually listened to so infrequently? Furthermore, only 2.0% of listening episodes involved classical music and 0.5% involved jazz: In practical terms, these musical styles do not exist for young people.  When did you listen to music? The peak listening time for adolescents was between 5pm and 6pm (12.4% of all music listening episodes). This was closely followed by the period between 1pm and 2pm (11.3%), as the participants presumably used portable music devices to listen to music during their school lunch break. Where were you? The most popular single location for music listening was at home while doing homework (which accounted for 13.2% of all listening episodes). Music was rarely experienced in commercial public spaces such as shops (which accounted for 5.8% of all music listening episodes). Why? When adolescents had chosen to be able to hear music (rather than having it imposed upon them), the most popular reasons for listening were to help pass the time (37.5% of episodes), create the right atmosphere (36.0% of episodes), habit (32.1% of episodes). However the single most frequently stated reason for listening to music was simply because "I just enjoy listening to it" (58.0% of all episodes). In other words, although adolescents seem to listen to music a lot, they do so in a very disengaged, unsophisticated way.  This study tells us something about how adolescents actually use music in everyday life. However it also provides us with some indications about another more specific issue, namely the relationship between music and suicide. This first study tells us that adolescents' approach to music is rather disengaged and unsophisticated and also that they rarely listen to so-called 'problem' musical styles such as heavy metal and rap. Given this, it is difficult to see how these styles of music could be the cause of youth suicide, despite the claims of protestors. This was addressed more in a second study. Study 2. Does pop music make adolescents kill themselves? Pop musicians have had a reputation for licentious behaviour since the 1950s, but what perhaps distinguishes this in the present day is the extremity of the behaviours involved. Whereas Elvis had his 1956 concerts filmed by police looking for evidence of sexually-provocative movements below the waist, one very well-known present day performer has for example been subject to widespread censure following allegations of provoking a massacre at a school, recreating elements of a fascist rally at concerts, and having oral sex on stage. 2000 Democratic American Vice-Presidential candidate, Joe Lieberman, was moved to describe the performer as "perhaps the sickest act ever promoted by a mainstream record company", and the performer's Florida concerts were subject to pickets by Christian groups who distributed a protest prayer against those "foul and evil spirits who have brought / The music group XXXX into Orlando", calling on Jesus to help "So that they cannot sow lies / And spread discontent among our youth". The instigation of a well-organised censorship campaign dates back to 1985 when Tipper Gore, wife of the future American Vice-President, founded the Parents' Music Resource Center (PMRC). The PMRC appeared before the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation on 19 September 1985 and succeeded in instigating the 'parental advisory' sticker that is currently attached to any CD of questionable lyrical content. As Nuzum (2001) describes, this has since become highly contentious, since numerous American states have passed or are currently considering legislation that would outlaw the sale of stickered albums to minors, and restrict or eliminate young people's access to certain live concerts. The threat of legal action following accidental sales of stickered material to minors means that many retailers have already introduced a voluntary ban of their own. For example, in the 1990s arguably America's largest music retailer, Wal-Mart, refused to stock music with lyrics and artwork it deemed objectionable. Neither did interest in the issue at federal level end with the 1985 Senate hearing: In his 2000 State of the Union address President Clinton called for a voluntary ratings system for the entire entertainment industry, and the Federal Trade Commission has recently investigated whether formal regulation might be preferable. It is also worth noting that in June 1997 the then Governor of Texas (and later President) George W. Bush signed into law a measure that effectively required all state pension funds to get rid of investments in companies producing questionable albums. In short, the censorship of pop music is becoming more widespread (see Nuzum (2001) for other examples).  These sanctions would of course be highly desirable if pop music does have a deleterious effect on young listeners. Several studies have provided evidence that this may indeed be the case. For example, Stack, Gundlach, and Reeves (1994) found a correlation between the extent of subscription to heavy metal magazines and youth suicide rates. Similarly, the same team found that suicide rates were correlated with the frequency with which country music is played on the radio – they argue that since the music deals with suicide-inducing themes such as loneliness, poverty, and relationship problems, it can be enough to push someone over the edge. Pro-censorship campaigners understandably seize on results such as these to argue that 'problem' music should be censored.  However, there is a 'chicken and egg' issue here. Specifically, although 'problem' musical styles are associated with delinquency and suicide, how can we be sure that they cause delinquency and suicide? Is it not possible that people who are considering suicide would want to listen to music that addressed these issues, as a means of working through their own problems. People who have marital difficulties may go to see a marriage guidance counsellor and subsequently divorce, but this does not mean that marriage guidance counsellors cause divorce: Rather, as with visits to a marriage guidance counsellor, listening to 'problem' music may just be an attempt to deal with emotional turmoil. There is a second, more powerful, argument against the idea that music can cause suicide. This comes from a common finding within music psychology concerning 'prestige effects'. Put simply, if I play you a piece of music and tell you something about it then this affects your judgement of that music. For example, if I played you a piece of piano music and told you that it was performed by a world-famous concert pianist, you tend to think that it has more artistic merit than if I told you that the music was played by a school pupil. Perhaps the same thing works with music and suicide. If I tell you that a piece of pop music can cause suicide then perhaps listening to it will make you feel more suicidal than if I told you that the same music can help you to overcome your personal problems. This is essentially what we did in the second experiment.  80 undergraduates were played one of four songs, namely 'Lucky' by Radiohead, 'My friends' by Red Hot Chilli Peppers, 'My sundown' by Jimmy Eat World, and 'Pleasure and pain' by Ben Harper. The lyrics of each of these songs are quite ambiguous in terms of being suicide-inducing or life-affirming. Half of the people were told that the song they heard had been criticised by various protest groups after its implication in the suicide of young listeners. The other 40 people though were told that the song they heard had been praised by protest groups because it had helped many young people to overcome serious emotional problems. Participants were then asked to write a short paragraph saying what they thought the song was about. These paragraphs were then coded as 'suicide-inducing descriptions' or 'life-affirming descriptions'. When they were told that the song had been criticised as suicide-inducing then 24 participants produced suicide-inducing descriptions of the song and only 9 participants produced life-affirming descriptions. However, when the participants were told that the song had helped young people then only 4 participants produced suicide-inducing descriptions of the song as compared to 35 undergraduates who produced life-affirming descriptions. In short, if you tell people that a piece of music will push them towards suicide then that is exactly how they perceive that music: If you tell people that a piece of music will push them away from suicide then that is exactly how they perceive that music. This does not prove that some pieces of pop music are entirely without malevolence. However, very few pieces of pop music contain unambiguous incitements towards violence and suicide. In most cases, the songs themselves are ambiguous. In such cases it is the labelling of those songs by campaigners as suicide-inducing that creates them as such. By saying that a song might make you kill yourself you guide a young listener to think of it in such a way and create the song as a force for self-harm. If instead campaigners drew listeners' attention to how the song might help them work through their problems then they can create the song as a force for good. In short, the best way of eradicating 'problem' music is not to censor musicians but instead to stop protest groups from labelling songs as suicide-inducing. Indeed, if 'problem' music really can help young people to work through their emotional difficulties and be a force for good then we should actively promote it. We should censor the censors! Back to News Back to index

Last updated: 12 September 2002 17:00
Created by: Rachel Tunstall
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