Music Videos
Do they corrupt teenagers? Do they corrupt teenagers?

By Emily Gingerich

"On average, youth listen to music and watch music videos four to five hours a day, which is more time than they spend with their friends outside of school or watching T.V.", says Kathleen O’Toole.

Music is something almost everybody can hear and enjoy. It was in the early sixties when the Beatles came out with a "Hard Day’s Night" in a video format. Although music videos didn’t become popular until the eighties, it was in the sixties when they actually kicked off auditory and visual presentation of music.

Today music videos have evolved into more than the Beatles running down the street being chased by a mob of fans. Music and the videos now produced, promote the one thing that sells: sex. For example, one of Britney Spear’s songs: I’m a Slave 4 u. It is bad enough that the song contains lyrics about sex in it, but producers portray it in music videos too, making them unsuitable for young children to view. "For young children, this effect can be extremely damaging. Young children often have trouble distinguishing between reality and fantasy, right and wrong. They do not have enough personal experience to compare what they see on TV with real life", says Elliot Marx.

In the way adolescents tend to dress like their favourite music star, this is why you see so many boys with the overly baggy pants, and the girls flaunting shirts that are far too small for them, teasingly revealing fleshy stomachs.

Sex isn’t the only negative thing that music videos promote. Violence is also seen in many of the videos shown on T.V. This makes the message unclear, to teens as well as children, that the violence on T.V. shouldn’t repeat itself in real life.

A 1998-1999 study revealed that music videos actually showed more violence than feature films and television. A 1997 study reported that 22.4% of MTV videos contained overt examples of violence and 25% depicted weapon carrying. (http://www.mediascope.org/pubs/ibriefs/yvm.htm).

Music videos are certainly easy to blame, but it’s the music itself that promotes the problem. Everything an adolescent sees and hears is influenced by music. Music has become a powerful tool to send messages out to the ‘mindless’ teens of our generation. "Music alters and intensifies their moods, furnishes much of their slang, dominates their conversations and provides the ambiance at their social gatherings. Music styles define the crowds and cliques they run in. Music personalities provide models for how they act and dress," says Kathleen O’Toole.

In the end, and as society continues to let the moral line in the sand slide back, music videos will just keep pushing the extremes. Children will be exposed to whatever is on T.V. And teenagers will always be influenced, if not from music, then from music videos, magazines and even each other.