Kids are listening to more music than ever, an average of 2.5 hours a day, and researchers at Brigham Young University think it’s corrupting their young impressionable minds with sexually explicit lyrics.
BYU published the study in the journal Sexuality & Culture, which looked at Billboard Hot 100 year-end songs from 1959, 1969, 1979, 1989, 1999, & 2009. It found that lyrics have become significantly more likely to contain sexualization, particularly among male and non-white artists.
“We’re concerned that we are creating a cultural norm and that norm is really leading young men to view women and their bodies as objects, almost in a dehumanizing fashion,” said Cougar Hall, a school health educator at the university, which is owned and operated by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS). “We’re teaching young girls that their value to the world is not between their ears but in their breasts and butts.”
Since we’re probably not about to see an influx of hip hop artists rapping about respecting women anytime soon, the study suggests sexuality educators should be cognizant of the trend and its impact on adolescent sexual behavior and attitudes. Teens exposed to high levels of sexual media were twice as like to be sexual activity, according to another study at University of North Carolina.
