I’ve always been baffled by the splurge in early-teen sex and promiscuity in recent times. Often I felt that availability of too much information, could be the prime reason. While different sections of society would assign different reasons for this, a recent study claims that teen sex is encouraged by raunchy, sexual lyrics in music.
Based on telephone interviews with 1,461 participants aged 12 to 17, the study indicated that: “Teens who said they listened to lots of music with degrading sexual messages were almost twice as likely to start having intercourse or other sexual activities within the following two years as were teens who listened to little or no sexually degrading music” (See the AP article covered by CNN here; Full report appears in August issue of Pediatrics; see the text abstract and pdf here)
The study is indeed interesting. However, as Stephen Dubner rightly questions here, can we safely attribute teen sex to sexual music? I feel we should not! Raised up in a conservative family, I tend to reason out that raunchy music videos (and not raunchy lyrics) could be the real “reason why”!
Let’s take the ideal case of a pubescent teenager, who’s virtually unexposed to the semi nude models, raunchy / erotic dance numbers, and visual gyrations depicted in music videos. Let’s also assume he/she has not seen any suggestive scenes in movies, TVs, books, photos or comics. In this case would he/ she react the same way to raunchy lyrics/ music, compared to the one who has been exposed otherwise? I guess not! So it depends upon the nature of the listener.
Could it be the case that teens, who have early (and frequent) sex, are more likely to listen to music that reffirms their behaviour?. Or perhaps, taken a bit further, reasons for choosing same music by one teenager could be entirely different from that of another – e.g. one could be already engaging in sex while the latter doesn’t, and likes only the music instead?
Nevertheless, the study does attempt to empirically establish what many of us have always known:
1) Lyrics do affect your state of mind – positive or negative; otherwise lyrical poetry in music wouldn’t have existed
2) Music and Lyrics do help to leave a lasting impression; otherwise Vedic chants would’ve been long obsolete, esp. in a modern world
3) You can inspire / impress upon an entire generation to do something thru music; e.g. Beetles’, patriotic songs, etc.
4) For teens, sex is more of a fad, craze, fancy or rage - much like music, romance, fashion and style are
It would be interesting to see more amusing correlations from all you readers.
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