Well - Tara Parker-Pope - Health - New York Times Blog
Jump to full article: New York Times Blogs, 2008-02-05
Author: Tara Parker-Pope
Intro: Teenagers listen to an average of nearly 2.5 hours of music per day. Guess what they’re hearing about?
One in three popular songs contains explicit references to drug or alcohol use, according to a new report in The Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine. That means kids are receiving about 35 references to substance abuse for every hour of music they listen to, the authors determined.
While songs about drugs and excess are nothing new, the issue is getting more attention because so many children now have regular access to music out of the earshot of parents. Nearly 9 out of 10 adolescents and teens have an MP3 player or a compact disc player in their bedrooms.
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Researchers from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine studied the 279 most popular songs from 2005 . . .
Whether any of this matters remains an open question. While the impact of exposure to images of smoking and alcohol in film has been well documented, less is known about the effect of music on childhood risk behaviors.
Although music lacks the visual element of film, adolescent exposure to music is much more frequent, accounting for an average of 16 hours each week for music compared with about 6 hours each week for movie images, according to the study authors. But frequency of exposure is not the only factor. Unlike visual media, music is a powerful social force that also taps into an individual's personal identity, memories and mood.
"Music is well-known to connect deeply with adolescents and to influence identity development, perhaps more than any other entertainment medium,'' said the study authors.
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