Music, Popular
Public outcries about possible negative effects of popular music on youths are not new. They accompanied, for example, the emergence of jazz in the 1920s, the shaking of Elvis Presley's hips in the 1950s, and much of the politically influenced rock-and-roll of the 1960s. With few exceptions, however, social scientists began to pay systematic attention to the role of popular music in the socialization of youths only in the 1980s. Increased research on popular music resulted from the extreme, "edgy" nature of the messages that began to appear in songs and music videos near the end of that decade. Popular music regularly draws fire from parents, teachers, and mainstream cultural authorities for reputed sexual explicitness, demeaning of women, violence, racism, and glorification of drugs and alcohol and because the hard-edged music of performers such as Marilyn Manson has been charged with influencing the people who have been responsible for several school shootings. Oversimplified and alarmist as such charges tend to be, they bespeak a growing awareness of the role of popular music in the process of growing up. As Europeanresearcher Keith Roe (1987, pp. 215-216) writes, "in terms of both the sheer amount of time devoted to it and the meanings it assumes, it is music, not television, that is the most important medium for adolescents."
Uses and Gratifications
Although many studies report that adolescents spend more time with television than with music, surveys often underestimate young people's total exposure to popular music.
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