Rough draft

Music with violent lyrics can increase aggression-related thoughts and emotions which can lead directly to violence. According to Craig A. Anderson, PH.D at Iowa State University, “Aggressive thoughts can influence perceptions of ongoing social interactions, coloring them with an aggressive tint.” Violent music negatively affects children by exposing them to things like Satanism, drugs, suicide, and sexual violence. Music depicting any type of violence to others causes and sustains the cycle of violence in youth.

The youth of today would benefit greatly from less violent music blasting in their ears. This has been proven by researchers at Iowa and the Texas Department of Human Services in Austin. They held a series of five experiments, involving over 500 college students that examined the effects of different music. They took seven violent songs by seven artists and eight nonviolent songs by seven artists. All of the students received the same songs to listen to. As they were listening they were asked to do some psychological tests. This helped researchers be able to measure any aggressive thoughts or feelings the participants had during the experiment. Some of the tests included classifying words that can hold both an aggressive and non-aggressive meaning, such as rock and stick. The results of the experiment were amazing. It showed that the violent songs led the participants to more violent words. It also increased one of two things. The first being the relative speed with how people read aggressive and non-aggressive words and the second being the proportion of word fragments. For example, the fragment h_t, was filled with an aggressive word such as hit.

The violent songs also increased the feelings of hostility without provo...

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...oday can teach the youth that murder, suicide and other acts of violence are okay. It can teach them to look down upon others and only believe in success, fame and money. As children grow older they will keep with them this knowledge that they’ve learned. They will carry it throughout their daily lives and it could cause them to make dangerous and violent acts towards themselves or each other. If they continue to listen to this type of music their future could be a scary one. Dr. Anderson states, “One major conclusion from this and other research on violent entertainment media is that content matters. The message is important for all consumers, but especially for parents of children and adolescents.” The Canadian rock band, Triumph said it best, “Music holds the secret, to know it can make you whole. It’s not just a game of notes; it’s the sound inside your soul.”