
How Does Tunes Relate to Teen Sexting?
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This put up was created with help by Christine Lee and Jane Shawcroft, Ph.D. students at UC Davis.
Tunes is woven into the material of our associations and reminiscences for quite a few people. In my spouse and children (Jane), very little stops an argument in its tracks like someone turning on my siblings’ childhood favorite, the 60s people team The Kingston Trio, and it is not Xmas until we have blasted Alan Jackson’s “Let it be Christmas” and sung along a little off-key.
Music can also be personal. As adolescents, we listened to audio while driving to school, performing on homework, hanging out with buddies, and for the duration of sports. Music is so prevalent we hardly ever seriously quit to assume about what we are listening to. As mothers and fathers, how generally do we quit to think about what our family members and teens are singing alongside to or about and what messages these lyrics ship?
Potentially this is unsurprising, but experimentsi have found that nearly 40 % of best billboard songs contain sexual lyrics, with some genres owning up to 65 p.c of sexually objectifying themes. You may possibly have heard common tunes this sort of as Hozier’s “Choose Me to Church,” with its purity tradition critique, and the recent 2023 Grammy-award winning “Unholy” by Sam Smith and Kim Petras, which describes an unfaithful husband’s affair. Both are examples of mainstream music with sexual lyrics usually recurring on the radio.
Why does this matter? It is popular for dad and mom currently to be concerned about what their young people are viewing on social media platforms or Tv set, and typically a large amount of effort and care goes into hoping to assist teenagers establish a more healthy marriage with media, as perfectly as steering them away from poor influences.
Simply because of the prominent position of songs in our modern society, it is simple to take care of tunes, and hugely sexual and sexually objectifying lyrics in certain, as white noise in the background of extra significant actions, even with research suggesting that tunes consists ofii a lot more messages about intercourse than any other media content except pornography. It is quick to dismiss the lyrics and messages in a three-minute music as inconsequential. Our new analysis,iii released in March in Computer systems in Human Habits, indicates that listening to very sexual music influences teenagers’ sexual possibility-getting, specifically sexting.

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Sexting–sending or getting nude/partly nude photos or sexually express penned messages to other folks through texting, social network web sites, applications, or other sorts of interaction such as email–has been connected to probably intense penalties for young adults, this kind of as bad psychological well being, and the probability of potential exploitation (also known as sextortion).
Our current examine tracked the variety of sexts sent and obtained from teenage members for 3 decades. In the initial and very last calendar year of the analyze, we also requested teens about the audio that they listened to and were being equipped to quantify how sexually explicit or sexually objectifying the lyrics of their favorite artists ended up. For girls, our data did not find a romance concerning listening to sexual tunes and sexting. Having said that, the much more teenage boys listened to sexually specific audio, the far more possible they were being to engage in sexting two several years later.
So, what does this necessarily mean? Research indicates that boys are affectediv by what they see (and, in this scenario, hear) as “normal” sexual habits from media influences and friends. Sexual lyrics may perhaps turn into an agent in normalizing that habits. Women, on the other hand, are usually discouragedv from sexual behaviors, which may possibly be why they are a lot less probable to be affected by tunes.
Whilst women may not be specifically impacted by listening to sexual lyrics, this does not imply they are not impacted at all. Scientific studies have revealed that a widespread drivevi for ladies to sext is coercion, and boys are additional likely to force women into sending sexually specific messages/shots. In this way, sexually specific audio very likely influences how all young adults assume about and participate in risky sexual actions. This implies that despite the fact that our findings clearly show that sexual lyrics are a lot more predictive of boys’ sexting habits, moms and dads of all teens have rationale to think about how the sexual mother nature of audio could be influencing their teens.
Specified these conclusions, what can mothers and fathers do with this details? Importantly, it is tough, if not difficult, to cease teens from at any time listening to tunes with sexual lyrics. The objective for mothers and fathers need to be to pre-arm (believe put together) instead than cocoon (or completely shield) their teenagers. We offer you a few ideas alongside individuals lines:
- Parents need to remember that even with what it may possibly appear, they have a good deal of influence on their teenagers. Having an lively function in shaping how teens think about dangerous sexual behaviors, these as sexting, might be difficult, but it is well worth it.
- Realizing more about music’s part in how teenagers think about sex and sexting ought to be noticed as empowering somewhat than alarming, as it can help manual proactive parenting.
- Understanding that listening to sexual audio lyrics is related to attitudes about and participation in risky sexual behaviors (sexting) indicates that music may perhaps be a practical tool for breaching challenging conversations, producing music a important device for dad and mom.
Source: Yarenci Hdz/Unsplash

Source: Yarenci Hdz/Unsplash
For example, if you are in the car with your teenager, sexually express songs lyrics might generate an prospect to start a conversation about healthier attitudes about sex. Having an open and organic avenue to start out discussions about sexual attitudes with adolescents is a way to comprehend what is heading on in their earth.
Most likely if you listen to lyrics that objectify women of all ages, this is a likelihood to converse to your teen about the value of viewing ladies as men and women and not sexual objects (an essential dialogue for the two boys and women). A music about infidelity or informal intercourse may possibly open up a likelihood to chat about the worth of sex in the context of a wholesome connection, notably marriage. and how intercourse is an significant strengthening part of balanced marriages.
Although music is typically disregarded when mom and dad feel about media parenting, sexual lyrics considerably condition teenagers’ dangerous sexual behaviors, specially for boys. This hidden-in-basic-sight medium has good impact, but that doesn’t have to be negative information. The upcoming time you and your teenager are in the automobile, singing together to your most loved music, maybe observe up by bridging your favourite music to a meaningful conversation about healthy sexual habits.
A version of this submit appears at IFS.
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