If you are older now, you may listen to songs you paid attention to as a teenager or a young adult. Those songs spoke to you in ways your parents would not understand. They also brought up memories and emotions of the past, mixed in good and bad memories. You aren’t the only one feeling this way listening to songs that you grew up with. You might have heard your parents and grandparents reminiscing about songs they heard when they were young. Teenagers today are no different from us. There is an influence and effect of music on teenagers.
Music’s effect on emotions
Music helps teenagers explore emotions and ideas in a way they have difficulty expressing themselves. The body is going through major hormonal changes as teens grow up. New experiences and relationships they have with the outside world and their body create deep impressions accentuated by the music they choose to listen to.
Music helps them release frustrations, helps them calm themselves down. It also allows them to listen to others’ struggles through the lyrics. They can also learn values through music. Although it is also dependent on the genre of music they choose. Parents can see how music affects teenagers’ moods.
Rather than being overly concerned, parents can share their teen children’s music choices and discuss these songs and use music as a tool to bond. Using music as a tool for understanding their children, parents can also use the opportunity to guide their kids to better choices in life.
Power of Music
Besides evoking strong emotions, music also creates imagery and ideas in our minds. Music can have a profound effect on the human brain. Research at John Hopkins University has found that music gives the brain a total workout.
Studies have continuously shown that music can reduce anxiety, blood pressure, and pain. It also improves sleep quality, mental alertness, and memory. Music is structural, mathematical, and architectural and the brain has a lot of computing to do to make sense of the relationship between one note and another.
Music and a sense of belonging
The draw of popular songs seems to be the need for our strong need to have a sense of belonging. By appreciating songs together as a group, teens find their social and group identity.
By selecting the types of music and group who share the same interest, they are learning about their own identities and to gain approval and acceptance. This may happen even if they do not personally care for the music itself. This can be both a good and bad thing but really depends on how parents respond to it.
What really helps parents to bond with their teen children might be to explore learning music together. Get in touch with us at Ritmo Music Studio in Singapore to learn more about our free trials.