Are Music Changes In The 21st Century Impacting Children in a Negative Way?
Since the 1900s, music trends and styles have changed drastically, and since musical social media platforms have existed, children have become used to more violet or mature music.
TikTok, for example, is extremely popular within the age categories of 11-18. This is because of its simplicity and use of artificial intelligence. However, the majority of the most used TikTok songs include bad language, racism, aggression, or inappropriate content.
In the early 1900s, music was mostly cheerful and innocent, appropriate for all ages as well as entertaining to listen to, and up to around the 1970s, this style mostly continued.
Then music became more *mature* and as more instruments were invented or added to the American and British cultures, music has become more complex and layered. Many people even believe that as time goes on, music has gotten worse as less and less people have recognized the beauty in simplicity.
By creating and sharing a survey with the students of our school, we found out that children from ages 11-14 listen to mature music more than children who are older. This is because social media can be a means of self-expression, and a space where you can do what you like. The majority of the year 7s listen to Niki Minaj, who uses some adult content and bad language, more than Justin Bieber. This may give them the habit of swearing, and knowledge they might be too young to understand.
A recent BBC report proves that people can be offended easily by the language used in music. Lizzo, a modern music writer, used a highly offensive word in her lyrics for ‘Grrls,’ shocking her listeners and fans. She has been asked to delete and re-record her new single, so it is appropriate for fans to listen to.
We think that the cost of publishing music should depend on the content that is in it. The higher the maturity in the music, the higher the price. This will lower the amount of unnecessarily mature music that is online and possible to access.
Specifically, through social media sites such as TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat and many more, children from the early age of even 7 are listening to multiple inappropriate songs/audios which can influence their language and actions in which some cases it can be good but, in many cases, unfortunately, it is bad.