by Bruna Araujo
Music is always with us. It comes in all varieties and forms, influencing people of all ages and cultures. Teenagers, specifically, listen to an average of 2.5 hours of music a day, and it impacts our lives in many different ways, whether we realize it or not.
Music impacts our emotions, our perspective of the world, and us. It helps us control and also release our emotions, and to deal with difficult situations that we, as teenagers and young adults, go through daily. Like high school and everyday stress, to name a few Music, also helps us form new friendships by sharing musical experiences and tastes.
“Music is important because you are able to express yourself in many ways.” said Ashley Albanes, a freshman enrolled in guitar classes here at Freedom High School. “It helps when I’m trying to focus in a lot of things and it helps calm me down,”added Ashley.
Ashley told us that her favourite style of music is alternative, along with rock, rap and 70’s music: “Most of them calm me down […], it all depends on my mood.” Later on, she mentioned that music definitely helped change her perspective on things, “In rap, a bunch of artists talk about different things they go through and they all have different perspectives on them.” Lastly, Ashley said that music definitely helped her form new friendships, “I became friends with my friend Julia because we both liked the rapper Logic.”
“Throughout history and its different societies, music gives the human being and the human existence a chance to express itself. Also, not only through expression, but music is actually a very good time capsule of the evolution of things that have been happening in our world.” said Mr. Perez, one of the music teachers in our school, about the importance of music. “And for a long time this can now be used and has been used as the highest art form possible,”he added.
According to the National Association for Music Education, schools that include music programs have an average of 90.2% graduation rate and 93.9% attendance rate compared to schools without music education, which have an average of 72.9% graduation rate and 84.9% attendance rate. Thus proving that music can improve school performance. Playing music improves music literacy, listening skills, motor ability, eye-hand coordination, and intellectual capabilities.
“Music is an interdisciplinary subject.” explained Mr Perez. “It teaches science, it teaches math, it teaches history, it teaches language, foreign language. And when taught properly through good struction the students gain the chance to express themselves through creativity and expression. All these things combined together actually will allow students to perform better in school because they are getting all of these different subjects.”
Although music has many benefits, like everything else, it can have a bad side. “Teenagers are not mature people yet. They are not emotionally mature and there are somethings that are out there musically that can influence teenagers to do certain things that they shouldn’t do, or encourage them to do things that they shouldn’t do,” said Mr. Perez. According to a report in The Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, one in three popular songs contains explicit references to substance abuse, that means kids and teenagers are being exposed to about 35 references to substance abuse for every hour of music they listen to. “I like to think that, on the better side, music can be a really positive thing for teenagers, helping in making decisions and helping them, for me as a person, music helps me think clearly, it’s hard for me actually to work unless that there is music that I’m able to listen to.” he concluded.
Clearly, music’s good influence outweighs the bad, but it all depends on what kind of music you choose to listen too.
Sources:
https://www.nammfoundation.org/articles/2014-06-09/positive-influence-playing- music-youth
https://examinedexistence.com/how-music-changes-your-mood/
http://www.livestrong.com/article/1000832-can-music-bad-influence-kids-teens/
https://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/02/05/under-the-influence-ofmusic/
https://app.discoveryeducation.com/player/view/assetGuid/fec23030-1b55-4c4a-81e1-73f9e09fbaef