(no subject)

[cis.livejournal.com]

Article from The Age about the link between what music teens listen to and what behaviour they display:

A study, published in today's Australasian Psychiatry journal, found that teens who listened to pop music were more likely to be struggling with their sexuality, those tuning in to rap or heavy metal could be having unprotected sex and drink-driving, and those who favoured jazz were usually misfits and loners. There seems to be some distinction between 'rap' and 'hip-hop' at work here, though, since "teens who listened to hip-hop were usually less troublesome."

The study's author seems very keen to emphasise that the music isn't causing anything, that it's as it were just another symptom of the teenager's emotional situation. It's odd there's no mention of accepted-peer-group behaviour, which I would think of as fundamentally important (kids who like raving take drugs, you say?). But there's still something I don't like about it. I suspect my reaction's not entirely rational: even though I do believe there's a link, my gorge still rises at the idea of adults (adults! as if they could ever understand) trying to read teenagers' emotions and likely behaviour from their musical tastes. It's not, thank tegoshi, on a 'blaming nu-metal for school shootings' level, but it feels like it's - inadvertently - encouraging the school of of 'aha you like emo you are depressed you are part of my chemical romance's sinister cult and likely to commit suicide any moment.'

ANYWAY. Poptimists: any links made by this study which surprise you? Any links between genre-of-pop-listened-to and general-behaviour that they've missed? Is someone going to pull out that hoary old Hornby quote about the relationship between being sad and listening to pop music? Burning questions, I'm sure you'll agree.

Comments

[cis.livejournal.com]

On a purely anecdotal note, my teenage social group listened primarily to metal, and "higher levels of suicidal ideation, depression, drug use, self-harm, shoplifting, vandalism, unprotected sex" fits pretty well. It misses out all the positive characteristics, behaviours, etc., but then it wasn't looking for those in the first place.

But wow even reading this gives me the jitters: as a teenager, one of the worst things was being faced with understanding adults who were just-trying-to-help at times when there was nothing to help, trying to diagnose you every bleeding second, and this just feels like more ammunition for them.

p.s. tyler cowen, linking this from marginal revolution, suggests you're better off with yr kid listening to indie rock: tragically i can reveal that at my most teenagely miz i was listening to a heady blend of RADIOHEAD and SONIC YOUTH.

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

When I was an angsty seventeen-year-old (ie: five years ago or so) I was once having one of those traditional teenage 'hack yrself to ribbons with a razor' sessions whilst listening to Zane Lowe (I know, I'm sorry) when a song by Bullet For My Valentine came on and I promptly felt so embarassed I had to go and find some tissues and clean myself up.

Some of my friends had a discussion about this article on Facebook a few days ago which I keep meaning to read through but haven't had time yet. I would link to it but that would seem a bit rude somehow.

There is some truth, most likely, to the idea that if a psychiatrist knows a lot about music, they can probably tell stuff about kids' mental state by what they're listening to but this is also true of adults and in any case presupposes that all of these genres are available within a child's social sphere as options, which they're usually not tbh. Asking patients to name a few songs (if any) that they find helpful to them when they feel their mental health issues are becoming problematic for them might well by psychiatrically interesting, if the songs were then taken away and examined or asking them to talk about lyrics they really relate to or why they enjoy the music they like would also be valid, to me but making base assumptions on a patients' mental state based on music they like (unless they've said "'4st7lbs' by the Manics, 'Ana's Song' by Silverchair and 'Fattest Thin' by Humanwine" or something obvious like that) is absolute crap. Particularly since I note there is no genre-section in their study for Stars, which, as any fule kno is the band everyone listens to when most likely to off themselves.

Any genre of music has all kinds of dark under/overtones and no particular scene has more killin' yrself or DRUGZ than any other, as far as I can tell. The indie kids at my uni were the most likely ones to be tripping their faces off, anyway.

[cis.livejournal.com]

hahaha oh seventeen-year-old Moggy, well done. I once had an in-retrospect-excruciatingly-embarrassing conversation with a friend where I couldn't really get how she could be cutting herself and yet not like the Manics (she liked Tori Amos instead, which is the source of my theory that some bands are like cowpox and if you've got one you're inoculated against the rest).

Your thing of 'if a psychiatrist knows a lot about music' reminded me of something I'd thought about linking, which is a j0hn d4rn13ll3 article off lastplanetojakarta, here (http://www.lastplanetojakarta.com/articles/stripes.html): "In the field I work in – care of adolescents and pre-adolescents with behavioral difficulties — there are several positive answers to this question [ “Hey, man, who’s the best rock band in the world?”], but those several are set in stone. They are: “I like rap”; “Creed” or “Nirvana”; and “Linkin Park.” The young women with whom I do most of my work tend to prefer the radio to focusing on individual acts or groups, but most young men I meet do the same thing my own peers and I did in the sixth grade: they invest some part of their identity, small or large, in the bands they like, and are eager to share their opinions with adults, whom they anticipate will announce distaste for their music, thereby solidifying their affection for same."

Which is, I suppose, exactly it. And here the question is a way of getting to know a teenager, of starting up a conversation -- it's not just a straight-up 'your answer will give me some clue about your psyche ok'. I really like your idea of 'songs which are helpful to them', too: knowing what it is people are getting from the music they're into is more important than just knowing what kind of music it is.

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

If there's no mention of a process of having the kids articulate their taste -- give reasons for why they like or dislike something and how it makes them feel -- I can't imagine the value in making such generalizations. But that process is basically a one-on-one therapy process anyway, at which point musical taste is just one part of process, and one that shouldn't be taken in isolation. (This relates to my issues with finding "group taste" in the first place, since what you're describing isn't the group's tastes, but common alignments among many individuals' tastes.)

[koganbot]

My guess, never tested, is that teens who cut themselves are more likely to be friends with other teens who cut themselves, and they're likely to have other cultural things in common, too. (So I'm assuming that "cutting" is itself something of a cultural phenomenon, that a distressed kid who listens to MCR is more likely to be friends with kids who cut themselves and therefore is more likely to cut herself than a distressed kid who listens to the Jonas Brothers.)(Also, cutting seems to work two ways, as something that brings relief or release in itself and as something that declares one's distress to others. And in a few cases it could be rehearsel for an actual suicide attempt or at least testing one's affinity with the act of suicide. But I won't pretend to know what I'm talking about here.)

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

My guess would be that teenagers who cut themselves aren't friends with many other teenagers at all! Or at least, they don't think they are.

[cis.livejournal.com]

But you do also get social groups which are more open to the idea of cutting yourself. There was a little fashion, in my school, of using the richey-james-4-real image on mixtape covers, or as decoration on your file, as a shock tactic and as a badge of identity.

[koganbot]

more likely to cut herself than a distressed kid who listens to the Jonas Brothers

...than would a distressed kid who listens to the Jonas Brothers, that is (not to say that kids who listen to MCR never take a knife to kids who listen to the Jonas Brothers)

In tomorrow's issue: people who eat food found to suffer from mental illness

[koganbot]

Well, this is a newspaper article about another article in a psychiatry journal, and it excerpts from an interview with the author of that other article; we can't say if the newspaper article represents the latter article well or not, or its author. And the list at the end is prefaced by "What studies" - note the plural - "say about your sounds." The woman who is interviewed talks about more than one study, so it's not remotely clear whether her article in the psychiatric journal reports a particular study itself or is an overview or synthesis of a bunch of different studies. But the psychiatry/health focus is tremendously distorting anyway, since as reported in the newspaper article, it seems to do nothing but link music with problems. Pop fans are conformists, overly responsible, role-conscious, struggling with sexuality or peer acceptance (as opposed to, say, being people who hold mainstream values and get along well with others), whereas metal kids have higher levels of suicidal ideation, depression, drug use, self-harm, shoplifting, vandalism, unprotected sex (as opposed to, say, being people with a sense of curiosity and a thirst for excitement).

Clearly, though, among teens, listening to music at all, any music, is a sign of being fucked up.

Re: In tomorrow's issue: people who eat food found to suffer from mental illness

[cis.livejournal.com]

I will be able to say if the newspaper article well represents the paper very soon as I am reading it right now! I just wanted to note something quickly, which is that I don't think the article makes it plain enough that these studies must be of teenagers who are presenting with psychiatric problems. The authors of these studies aren't interviewing entire classes of year ten pupils, asking their music tastes and psychoanalysing them: they're dealing with kids who are being sent to their doctors due to emotional or behavioural problems, acting out, &cetera. So the study is about kids who display certain forms of anti-social/self-destructive behaviour, and the correlation of what form of behaviour with what genres of music they favour.

The pop kids who hold mainstream values and get along well with others and aren't thought to have emotional problems grave enough that they have to see a doctor about them just aren't going to turn up in this study. The pop kids who go to a counsellor because of conflicts between what they think is their expected role and what they suspect is their "true self", however, are going to turn up. The calm, easygoing, generally cheerful metal kid (of which there are loads, in my experience) isn't under question here because no-one will ever feel the need to refer him to a doctor for mental health problems.

Re: In tomorrow's issue: people who eat food found to suffer from mental illness

[koganbot]

Where did you find the article? Doesn't seem to be easily available online (is it subscriber only through some service?).

My real gripe is with journalism, since the article was fundamentally incompetent and venal (let's scare up readers by scaring parents).

Re: In tomorrow's issue: people who eat food found to suffer from mental illness

[cis.livejournal.com]

I have university access to academic journals, which comes in useful from time to time.

'Ripped off from a single source' here, means of course 'all using the same press release', I'd guess. The publisher trying to drum up a little outside interest in their publication (google trail suggests that australiasian psychiatry has switched publishers recently).

Re: In tomorrow's issue: people who eat food found to suffer from mental illness

[koganbot]

the article was fundamentally incompetent"

the newspaper article, that is (should say articles, as I found several of them online, all variations on this one, all seemingly ripped off from a single source).

[koganbot]

But the most interesting result is this:

JAZZ/RHYTHM & BLUES: Introverted misfits, loners.

I wonder whether Jazz and Rhythm & Blues constitute a single category or two separate categories that each happens to attract misfits and loners. And what is considered "rhythm & blues" in Australia and Southeast Asia? Rihanna? Alan Thicke? Hank Ballard and the Midnighters?

[cis.livejournal.com]

I'm guessing they mean Rhythm&Blues and not R&B - music that most teens aren't into, that does appeal to teenagers who feel quite apart from the general herd and express this in their cultural tastes.