Pop culture expert Michael Paretti once said that "people are influenced by the media in the way they dress, talk, relate, spend their money, define social problems, identify with prominent but insignificant personalities and in the kinds of ideological images they embrace." But the term "media" is broad, is he talking about television, radio or movies. Media includes all these sections but music is its largest player. According to Kathleen O'Toole adolescents actively or inactively listen to music three to five hours a day. That is mare than any statistic for television, video game, computer use or Internet. What does this mean? It means that music potentially has the biggest effect on adolescents out of the sections of the media. Peter Christenson and Donald Roberts, authors of the book "It's not only Rock and Roll" say that "Music matters to adolescents, and they cannot be understood without a serious consideration of how it fits into their lives," meaning no adolescent can be properly interpreted or counseled without knowing how the music the adolescent listens to effects their life. Music affects every angle of teen development from the personalit

Music has a direct effect on the social life of an adolescent. Fist off, music often determines when an adolescent will go through adolescents. Christenson and Roberts say that "Because children's biological and social development rates are so variable, the authors suggest that perhaps the easiest way to tell if a particular child has reached adolescence is to notice whether he or she has developed a passion for popular music." Music then categorizes adolescents into groups and cliques. In any given group most of the members will share the same music preference. This is because they spend a lot of time with each other, riding in cars, hanging out at home, danceing and socializing together and if they all had different music taste there would be much to argue about. Music will also influence the way adolescents speak and dress. The majority of slang comes directly from song lyrics. A recent one is the term "holla" from a popular rap artist. "Holla" is used as a flirtatious greeting to an attractive person of the opposite sex. Adolescent fashion is often modeled after the artist and personalities that perform the music. LL Cool J started the rolling up of the left pant leg trend among the rap crowd. Music even has an effect on discriminations of teens and feelings of aggression towards other teens. Most of the population seems to discriminate the goths or gothic crowd. Goth is a music genre and the crowd is named directly after the music the listen to. Goth is discriminated against because it typically downs Christianity and aspects of democracy and capitalism. There is also racial tension prevalent in music. "The hard rocking black dude" and "gangsta rapping white boy" are rarities in urban societies, though the barrier is slowly starting to erode.

No one can doubt that the lives of everyone unbiased of race, religion, creed or color has been influenced by music, but at no time in life has the influence been greater than at he time of adolescence. Music has everything and anything to do with the development of the modern teen. After three years of research the pop culture professors Peter Christenson and Donald Roberts say, "

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Approximate Word count = 1457
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)