Heavy Metal Bad For The Teenage Mind

Essay, Research Paper

Evil and Satanic, is what you would probably call heavy metal music today. Marilyn

Manson, Anthrax, Metallica and Cannibal Corpse are a few of the many heavy metal groups of

todays music world. Heavy metal contains music that should be more carefully analyzed by

parents.It also affects the way teens think. Also this music can imply outward violence

toward others. Heavy metal is a partial cause for teen violence and suicide.

Numbing and influencial, teen violence and suicide can start with heavy metal music,” I

failed to recognize my son was holding a hand grenade and it was live and it was going off in his

mind.”, is what Raymond Kuntz said after his 15-year-old son Richard had shown him a CD by

Marilyn Manson and later killed himself after listening to his music. Dr. Frank Palumbo from the

American Academy of Pediatrics said:

Make no mistake about it, music can summon a range

of emotions, most of which are wonderful. Yet there is

some music that communicates potentially harmful health

messages, especially when it reaches a vulnerable audience.(Palumbo)

The AAP (American Academy of Pediatrics) believes parents should better research the

music their teens listen to more carefully and that the music industries should make more

positive video themes. The more the parents research and monitor their teens music, the less they

have to worry about fatal reactions toward it and other violence that would come from the music

of their teens. “Almost every parent in America would do what you did. It didn’t look like a hand

grenade. It looked like a CD.” said Joseph Liberman who was trying to comfort Mr. Kuntz

(Kenen). If we research what teens listen to we could prevent violence and suicide from

happening.

Thus, from a testimony from the American Academy of Pediatrics there are many

statements that imply that heavy metal music is partially to blame for suicide and violence by

teens because of it’s dangerous lyrics. One part of this testimony states:

To date , no studies have documented a cause-and-effect relationship

between sexually explicitor violent lyrics and adverse behavioral effects,

i.e., I’ll listen to a song about killing someone and therefore I go out and

kill. But we can all acknowledge the overall effect music has on people,

including adolescents and children. Otherwise , we wouldn’t listen to it…

and teenagers become absorbed in songs they believe help better define

them during this rocky transition into adulthood.(Palumbo)

If teens are exposed to music daily the more they accept the devastating implications in the

music as if it was their lunch or daily schooling. The only way to stop teens from listening would

be to totally get rid of the heavy metal genre itself or stop the use of the violent and suicide

implicating lyrics in the music. Teens are vulnerable to many things especially music. According

to the American Academy of Pediatrics, they conducted a study which found that teens on

average listen to 40 hours of music per week(Palumbo). That is 7 and one half hours more

than an average school week. It sounds like teens are getting more from music than they are from

their teachers they see 5 out of 7 days per week. This music can affect their school life and affect

the way they think and act while in and around school.

Heavy metal can lead to violence and suicide in teens from listening to the music they do.

One study done by David Merrell from Suffolk,Virginia, somewhat proves heavy metal is bad

for teens. However, his study was done on 72 male laboratory mice. He used 3 groups of 24

mice, a control group with no music, a heavy metal group that listened to Anthrax, and a

classical group that listened to Mozart. Each group had 12 hours of light each day while they

were running the maze with no music and each group had an average time of 10

minutes(Eaton). But after listening to their group’s music for 10 hours each day and running

the maze 3 times per week, each group came up with a different average after one month of the

maze. The control group ran the maze in 5 minutes.The Mozart group ran the maze in 1 minute

and 30 seconds and the Anthrax group ran the maze at an average of 30 minutes(Eaton). Then, at

the end of David’s experiment, the Anthrax group all killed each other. If heavy metal can have

this effect on mice just think of what this music might do to a teenager in todays world with all

the violence in the school and “normal” community that they see every day. One thing that might

point out the effects of this type of music may be the teen’s grades dropping and the teen not

caring at all about it, or maybe they”go” to school and all they do is skip class. The violence they

may take forth could be very dangerous and harmful not toward others but also toward

themselves. Not only something like physical damage toward them but also mental damage that

may never heal. This damage is

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