Jim Liebelt's Youth Culture Watch

A Reminder of the Obvious

I would be surprised if anyone is actually surprised by this:

Study finds U.S. music awash in booze and drugs
U.S. popular music is awash with lyrics about drugs, alcohol and tobacco. Medical researchers have reviewed the words of the 279 top songs of 2005 to estimate just how common they are.

Their report on Monday showed a third of the songs had explicit references to substance abuse. And two-thirds of these references placed drugs, alcohol and tobacco in a positive light by associating them with sex, partying and humor, according to the team led by Dr. Brian Primack of the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.

They calculated that with Americans aged 15 to 18 listening to 2.4 hours of music daily, they hear 84 musical references to substance use a day and more than 30,000 a year.
Source: Reuters
http://www.reuters.com/article/entertainmentNews/idUSN0144737220080204?feedType=RSS&feedName=entertainmentNews

The article noted that 15-to-18-year-olds hear 30,000 references to substance abuse per year. If two-thirds of the references are from a pro-substance use perspective, then kids hear 20,000 such messages per year. Can it actually be that these references have no impact on kids? I'm not sure it's possible to completely prevent these messages from having any influence. To be sure, this is a good reminder to parents that they need to engage their kids in discussions about media influence and to be proactive in laying a solid foundation of morals and values.

To learn more about media influence and building healthy morals and values, click on the following article titles:

Keeping Your Kids Safe by Being Media-Wise
Building Healthy Morals and Values

Bombs Away! “Shoes” Wins People’s Choice Award for Best Viral Video

Viral hit video "Shoes," which stars a dead-pan, foul-mouthed Valley girl with a penchant for shopping, won the People's Choice Award on Monday for favorite user-generated video.

"Shoes" star Kelly (pictured), an oddball cross between a Kids in the Hall character and an electroclash rocker, is the alter ego of sketch comedy artist Liam Sullivan.

Source: Wired
http://blog.wired.com/underwire/2008/01/shoes-video-win.html

"Shoes" is a four-minute video that appears on YouTube. In the video, comedian Liam Sullivan is “Kelly” who is in hot pursuit of shoes. Okay, am I getting old or what? Honestly, I don’t get the popularity of this video, nor its selection to receive a People’s Choice Award, and maybe that’s a good thing. I don’t think it was a bad piece of work stylistically, but I don’t see the attraction of why it’s pulled over 11 Million (yes, MILLION!) views on YouTube. As the Wired article referenced above notes, Kelly is indeed foul-mouthed. F-bombs away! Perhaps the language, in and of itself, is an attraction to people?

Here’s one thing that’s almost certain: Your kids have seen this video! I did some looking on the ‘Net and it seems that Kelly is particularly popular with teen girls. When one reads that kids in school can be heard repeating lines from the video, you know that it has made its way into mainstream youth culture. Great. If you’ve ever harbored any illusions that your teens aren’t exposed to foul language, this video is one good reason to give them up.