It’s hard to assert the case that music is detrimental to youth anymore. From Elvis to gangsta rap and beyond, parents have sought to pin a litany of problems on our favorite pop stars (drug use, Satanism, and wanton violence, to name a few) even though no reputable scientific research has shown these fears to be merited.
1. Sad Music Can Increase Anxiety And Neuroses
A 2015 study wanted to better understand if listening to music on your own can be a form of “self-regulation,” and in a complete bummer of a finding, it concluded that listening to sad music all the time can indeed have a negative effect on mental health.
A different study by many of the same researchers focused specifically on lyrics, comparing the reactions of subjects to happy vs. sad music, with and without lyrics. Their finding, put simply: Happy music makes you happy, and sad music makes you sad, but happy music with happy lyrics makes you even happier, and sad music with sad lyrics makes you even sadder, perhaps even contributing to emotional problems.
2.Listening While Driving Is Dangerous
While anecdotal evidence to support this conclusion can be readily provided by anyone who has ever narrowly avoided a collision while air-drumming to a certain Phil Collins song, there is some pretty convincing science to back it up. In 2004, a Canadian team looked at reaction time in test subjects while in noisy environments, slowly increasing the level of the noise. They found that at 95 decibels—well below the 110 decibel average maximum of a car stereo—reaction time decreased by 20 percent, an incredibly significant percentage when operating a 2-ton vehicle at high speeds.
3.Modern Pop Is Engineered To Hook You
Repetition breeds familiarity, and according to a 2011 Portuguese study involving music exposure while undergoing MRI, taking advantage of this recognition is a kind of cheat to reaching the pleasure centers of the brain. (As are recreational drugs, but we digress.)
4.Music Can Negatively Affect Your Relationships
Sexual imagery in popular music and videos has long been ubiquitous, but the fact that teenagers like to listen to music and also like to have sex certainly doesn’t suggest anything Earth-shaking. A 2006 study of almost 1,500 teens found, however, that teens who heavily listen to music featuring such subject matter are more likely to start having sex earlier than those who do not, by a margin of almost two to one. The study’s authors found that the pervasive message in such music—that of studly, carefree men and subservient, sex object women—is reinforced even if it isn’t closely paid attention to, opining, “We think that [it] really lowers kids’ inhibitions and makes them less thoughtful,” in terms of their decisions.
5.Songs About Growing Old Might Make You Die Sooner
In what must have been the single most depressing study of its kind to conduct, researchers from the Anglia Rustin University in Cambridge, England, analyzed 76 songs that invoke the topic of aging. It was found, of course, that the average sentiments expressed toward the subject are overwhelmingly negative, generally associating growing old with such heartwarming concepts as frailty, dependence, loneliness, and death. This prompted lead study author Jacinta Kelly to observe, “What we’re trying to get across is that this kind of bitterness or hostility is promoted or conveyed and it’s not a trivial thing to explore. You can absorb negativity and it can have consequences for your health.”
This observation has been confirmed by similar studies showing that stereotypes about aging in culture can have the effect of fostering a negative attitude toward the process in the elderly, which can cause illness to be prolonged and overall health to be worse—even contributing toward a decline in social activity and reluctance to seek medical assistance.
In other words, no matter where your specific tastes lie, modern music is a terrible, brain-numbing waste of time that is literally trying to kill you, and you should stop listening to it immediately. Now if you’ll excuse us, we’re going to go lock ourselves in our room, where we will absolutely not be blasting Taylor Swift at top volume in our headphones while preparing our next list.
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