(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

[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.