Jordan Futrell

Ms. Huizar

UWRT 1102

27 March 2017

Dont Censor the Kids

Shout-out to all of this ganja, blowin down trees like a new forest fire! I thought a

quote from my favorite hip hop group the Underachievers, would be an appropriate way to start

this off. When you were younger did, your parents keep you from listening to certain types of

music because of the content within the songs? Mine did, constantly If I might add and I would

get in trouble if they caught me in the attempt of listening to, in their words dangerous music. I

would always ask myself what made it so dangerous, what could my parents possibly be so

afraid of me hearing, that they were willing to punish me for listening to it? That goes into the

question of, are people today a product of their own environment? Do the things that surround

humans in media and entertainment today, influence what we do in our own personal lives? In

some instances, the answer could be yes, like how we are influenced by the way our favorite

entertainers dress or how we perceive the correct way to eat and stay healthy is portrayed in

media today. But it can be argued there are some influences from societys favorite entertainers,

could impact our own personal lives for the worst. Organizations like the AAP (American

Academy of Pediatrics) or Parents Music Resource Center, believe it is in childrens best interest

to listen to lyrics that are not violent, sexist, drug-oriented, or antisocial because they need

positive influences in their life at an early age. Even though they have no knowledge of any
study or any link ever to the correlation of music lyrics influencing and impacting the behavior

of adolescents and pre-adolescents. When children grow up, they are not going to have their

parents there to hold their hands and keep them away from all the harmful things, that can reach

them and influence them in this world. They are going to have even less of a chance to stay away

from the bad influences and habits in life, if they are not educated about influences such as

substance abuse at an early age and taught about the effects and consequences of what they are

hearing and seeing in their favorite music and media. Adolescent teens and pre-adolescents

should not be monitored and kept away from songs speaking about drugs and other bad habits

because drug use in the United States has remained steady without spiking for years now with

minor exceptions. That is even with drug references in music having risen over the decades.

There has also never been one study ever that has correlated music lyrics and media content, to

actual personal behavior.

Over the years there have been certain spikes in drugs around the United States. The only

real recent spike has been with heroin increasing 145% in use since the last statistics taken in

2007 (Suctti, 2016). And heroin is not a drug that rarely ever referenced in todays music,

especially in hit, popular songs. The most popular drug of choice is marijuana and the percent of

adolescents using the substance peaked around 1997-1999. It saw a steady decrease until 2007,

and ever since it has been on a slow but steady rise (National Drug Institute, 2016). The most

popular drug of the 80s which was cocaine has seen a steady decrease, since its peaking of

popularity in the decade of the 80s. The rate of use has fallen to just above 2% in all United

States teens (National Drug Institute, 2013).

Other drugs have come into the public spotlight over the years like Molly/MDMA, which

saw an increase in use in the early 2010s, but has been declining in use ever since. In 2014 a
study was done by the National Survey on Drug Use and Health concluded that just 0.7% of

adolescents between the ages on 12-17 used molly in the past year (Maldonado, 2016). So,

except for marijuana, which has remained the consistent most popular drug among not just

adolescents, but by the majority of people in the world, most of drugs in todays society seem to

be a running fad for a while and their popularity and usage rate eventually falls, in a varied

amount of time. The same things can be said about hallucinogens, which peaked in the hippy age

and have been in steady decline ever since except for one small rise in the late 1990s (National

Drug Institute, 2016). Or methamphetamines/pain killers which have also been in a steady

decline since its peak in the late 1990s (National Drug Institute, 2016). As a matter of fact, in

the statistics taken by the National Drug Institute shows that besides marijuana, there is no other

illicit drug that is trending upwards currently towards adolescents (National Drug Institute,

2016).

Over the years music has increasingly become more and more graphic and personal as

time goes by. The world has come a long way since what was thought to be the new edgy music

of the day that parents would keep adolescents away from. Artists like Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan,

and the Beatles topped the Charts back in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. One big difference is the

most popular genre of music in todays day and age. In 2015 per Spotify, hip hop is now the

most listened to and popular genre in the entire world (Diaz, 2015). Naturally this is going to

lead to the culture of hip hop, being integrated into todays society among the youth, and the

influences from the genre to be prevalent in society today. But do the overwhelming references

to substances use hinder the adolescents of today, and does it influence their lives in a negative

way? In a study done by Denise Herd in 2008 illustrating the amount of drug references and uses

in hip hop between 1979-1997, the statistics in the rise of references having to do with drug use
in hip hop have been quite staggering. Between the years of 1979-1984 Herd recorded 11% of all

hit record songs in hip hop contained references to some type of substance (Herd, 2008). In

1985-1989, that number rose steadily up to 19% of hit record hip hop songs, contained some

reference in a way or another to an illegal substance (Herd, 2008). By 1990-1993 that 19% had

jumped to a substantial 45% of hit record songs that had contained a reference to substance abuse

(Herd, 2008). Between the years of 1993-1997 that number jumped to 69% of all hit record hip

hop songs contained at least one type of reference to substance abuse (Herd, 2008). So, that 18-

year span that Herd focused her study on, saw a 68% rise in some type of drug reference in hip

hop music.

Not only has hip hop been on the rise when it comes to drug references in its lyrics, it is

also by far the genre in music that talks about and references it the most. In a study done by the

Office of National Drug Control Policy in 1999, it displayed that hip hop talked about drug use,

more than any other genre by a wide margin. In the study sample that they took, 63% of all the

hip-hop songs that they listened to contained a drug reference somewhere in the song (Roberts,

Henriksen, Christenson 1999). The top three genres after that were the Top 100 which contained

11% of drug references, Alternative which contained 11%, and Heavy Metal which contained

9% of drug references in its song (Roberts, Henriksen, Christenson 1999). Now a regular person

would think since the most popular music genre in the world has such a heavy undertone of drug

references in its music, then it would be an easy and heavy influence in the adolescents of today.

Well as already stated, that is incorrect and the usage rate of drug use among adolescents has

remained steady and not spiked, even with the spike in drug references in their most popular

music genre.
 With organizations like the AAP so worried about the potential effects of what todays

adolescents are listening to, one would assume there has been a study done, that shows a possible

correlation between music/media and adolescent behavior. Well I will save the time for you to go

and try to find one because there is not a single study out there that proves there is any

correlation whatsoever between what adolescents are watching and listening to and how they

behave in their own personal lives. The AAP specifically states themselves that there has ever

done a study done, that has proven there is any relationship between the two things, but they feel

that more research needs to be done to make sure (American Academy of Pediatrics, 1996). In a

study done by the Office of National Drug Control policy in 1999, there was not enough

evidence shown in the study that was done to prove that anything in song lyrics had any certain

influences on the adolescences in the study(Roberts, Henriksen, Christenson 1999). They did

conclude the certain things in music videos or in TV might potentially have in influence but there

was still not enough evidence to make a conclusive answer (Roberts, Henriksen, Christenson

1999).

Mark D. Reed and Pamela Wilcox Rountree, conducted a study in 1997 that did not show

any correlation between music or media with substance abuse, but it talked about Peer Pressure

on substance abuse (Reed, Rountree, 1997). It illustrated that there is a strong possibility that

adolescent drug use, is connected to fitting in with the permissive group norms within the group

that adolescents spend time with (Reed, Rountree, 1997). In other words, kids just want to fit in.

Just think back to when you were younger, most people always said as kids they will never be

the one to drink, smoke, or do drugs. But as the children go from the pre-adolescent years and

enter the adolescent years of high school, things start to change. You start seeing the same kids

from back in elementary school and middle school who said they would never drink or do drugs,
doing the exact opposite thing they said they would do. As more and more people start to dabble

in drinking and illicit drug activities, it easy for raging hormone teenagers to succumb to the

pressure of wanting to fit in with their peers, and not be outsiders to the social norms. That is

something that my parents, did not put a big emphasis on when I was growing up. They didnt

focus on telling me to just be myself more and to not worry about what all my friends were

doing; it truly did not affect me in the first place anyway. I wish they would have focused a little

bit more on teaching me on how not to succumb to the peer pressure that you can go through

mentally, because it got me in a good amount of trouble when I was younger and it is not

something that I can take back now. I have seen multiple friends go to rehab, just for wanting to

fit in with the group and it is something that is not worth it.

Adolescents do not need to be censored from explicit types of music from their parents or

organizations like the American Academy of Pediatrics and Parents Music Resource Center, just

because the subject matter of the music is perceived to have a negative undertone or message.

There has been a drastic rise in drug references over the past few decades, in the most popular

genre of music in the world; hip hop. Yet with the rise of drug references in the most popular

genre in the world, there is no drastic spike in drug use among adolescents, during that time.

There is also no study that proves the correlation of music and media with adolescent behavior

(American Academy of Pediatrics, 1996). Mark D. Reed and Pamela Wilcox Rountree,

underwent a study in 1997 that showed evidence of drug use among adolescents having to do

with fitting in with permissive group norms among their peers (Reed, Rountree, 1997). That is

personally what I have experienced in my own life, growing up as an adolescent, I just wanted to

fit in with my friends and that lead to some bad decisions. Conforming to group norms got me

into trouble that could have affected my college career and entire future. That is what parents of
preadolescents and adolescents should be focusing on and teaching their kids about, when it

substance abuse. Teach them that there is nothing wrong with just saying no and being the one in

the amongst their friends who does and goes about things a little differently compared to the

others. Dont focus on censoring music and other media content from adolescents because that is

not what is influencing them in the first place.

 Work Cited

American Academy of Pediatrics, Impact of Music Lyrics and Music Videos on Children and

Youth, Australian Federation for the Family, Pediatrics, Vol. 98, Issue 6, Pg. 1219-

1221, December 1996. http://www.ausfamily.org/resources/media-influence/l. Accessed

24 March 2017.

Angel Diaz. Hip-Hop Is the Most Listened To Genre in the World and There's a Study To Prove

It, Complex Music, 14 July 2015. http://www.complex.com/music. Accessed March 19

2017.

Ben Carter. "Drugs in Hip Hop: A 30 year Analysis", Genius, 2015. https://genius.com/a/drugs-

in-hip-hop-a-30-year-analysis. Accessed 19 March 2017.

Christopher M. Redker, Bryan Gibson. Music as an Unconditioned Stimulus: Positive and

Negative Effects of Country Music on Implicit Attitudes, Explicit Attitudes, and Brand

Choice., Journal of Applied Social Psychology, Vol. 39, Issue 11, Pages 2689-2705,

November 2009. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com.librarylink.uncc.edu/doi/. Accessed 17

February 2017.

Denise Herd. "Changes in drug use prevalence in rap music songs, 19791997", Addiction

Research and Theory, Vol. 16, Issue 2, Pg. 167-180, April 2008.

http://web.b.ebscohost.com.librarylink.uncc.edu/ 3. Accessed March 19 2017.

Donald F. Roberts, Lisa Henriksen, and Peter G. Christenson. "Substance Use in Popular Movies

and Music", Office of National Drug Control Policy, Washington, D.C. : The Office
 1999. http://uncc.worldcat.org/title/substance-use-in-popular-movies-and-musics.

Accessed March 20 2017.

John Market. Sing a Song of Drug Use-Abuse: Four Decades of Drug Lyrics in Popular Music-

From the Sixties through the Nineties, Sociological Inquiry, Vol. 72, Issue 2, Pg. 194-

220, April 2001. http://uncc.worldcat.org/title/sing-a-song-of-drug-use-abuse. Accessed

March 23 2017.

Lizmarie Maldonado. Ecstasy Statistics, Rehabs.com, 2016. http://luxury.rehabs.com/ecstasy-

abuse/statistics. Accessed April 3 2017.

Mark D. Reed, Pamela Wilcox Rountree. Peer pressure and adolescent substance use, Journal

of Quantitative Criminology, Vol, 13, Issue 2, Pg. 143-180, 1997. https://link-springer-

com.librarylink.uncc.edu/article. Accessed April 3 2017.

National Institute on Drug Abuse. Monitoring the Future Survey: High School and Youth

Trends, Drug Facts, December 2016.

https://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/drugfacts/. Accessed March 20.

Sarah Yang. "New study finds glamorization of drugs in rap music jumped dramatically over two

decades", UC Berkley News, April 1st, 2008.

http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/l. Accessed March 19 2017.

Stewart Pearl. Whos Playin Whom?, Black Issues in High Education, Vol. 21, Issue 5, Pg.

26-29, April 22, 2004. http://web.b.ebscohost.com.librarylink.uncc.edu8. Accessed

March 20 2017.
Susan Scutti CNN. Worldwide drug use steady, but heroin on rise in U.S., DoThanFirst, 2016.

http://www.dothanfirst.com/life-health. Accessed March 19 2017.