EDM causes delinquency

[ghelded_kultz]

Sorry for the baiting headline.

Anyway, what are my littler remixers' opinions on this: New Scientific Study Proves Rock, Hip-Hop And EDM Responsible For Youth Delinquency

I think it's interesting but 1) Correlation does not imply causation (I haven't read the actualy study yet but I assume that unlike the linked article, it does not make that assumption) and 2) Clearly it means that delinquents listen to better music than non-delinquents.

Personally I agree with Jezebel's take on the study:

Pop music is made by people with no problems for people with no problems. Teenagers who listen ONLY to pop music are invested in conformity (also, are there really teens who like pop but don't listen to ANY "African American music"? What strange Dutchman drew these lines?). Teenagers who listen only to jazz and classical are band nerds. Everyone else is just everyone else. Rates of delinquency are higher among people who aren't either camped outside the Tacoma Dome to see Justin Bieber or praying their clarinet choir makes it to regionals? You don't say. Maybe that's because that group encompasses pretty much all people. And guess what—I just did a study in my head and found that 100% of juvenile delinquents are, in fact, people.

So anyway, thought?

[Mr. Bigglesworth]

I'll just say that music doesn't make a person dumb enough to act on delinquent desires. A person being a complete idiot does though. Sure, music has a profound effect on people's emotions, but how they handle that is really up to them individually.

[Raddons]

It also says metal does too.

[ghelded_kultz]

@ Cloud: I know. The title was, as mentioned in the first line, to draw in readers with a technically accurate (according to the article following the headline), a pretty common tactic within journalism. Unethical maybe, but it usually works. Sort of like putting Skrillex on your list of top 100 guitarists while admitting you aren't sure he can play the guitar (Spin teaches me all sorts of things about bad journalism). It's all about generating controversy.

I chose EDM over Metal, Punk, Hip Hop, or any other genre mentioned because I figured that would rile up the most people. Maybe I underestimated MLR.

@ Bigglesworth: I agree.

[XXDarkShadow79XX]

It's like the whole violent video games thing. People are just pointing fingers. I'd ignore it.

[Icky]

Well you also have to realize this study was done on a test group of 149 boys and 160 girls. Why would anyone think this is an even remotely accurate study? Honestly anyone can "proof" things like this. They claim EDM is the cause of delinquency, the only proof they have is the fact that among 300 dutch kids, the ones that didn't listen to pop or jazz caused more problems on a later age.

SCIENCE? Nope. there is no reason to assume causation, or even correlation because the test groups were so small and only from one country. We don't know if this is a cultural thing, I am not sure but there's actually a chance they counted drugs use as delinquency because it's an American study, yet it's completely legal in The Netherlands. And there's still the chance of this just being random chance, aka, they accidentally picked some bad apples making the entire chart inaccurate.

You see these kind of "studies with new amazing proof" a lot, and magazines are all too eager to claim it's "new revealing information" "hide your kids from EDM it makes them evil!" because that shit sells. There's a reason you won't see this kind of crap on BBC News or other renowned news websites.

[ghelded_kultz]

So basically the Dutch need some excuse to justify their racism, but Jazz is now white people music. I see. I noticed that they didn't mention Industrial, that's probably because all the kids who listen to Industrial were already in prison by age 12 for shooting up a school so they couldn't be followed.

Also, the phrase "Scientific Study Proves" makes my eyes bleed. Studies don't prove anything. That entire article seems to be plain bad journalism, at least from an objective standpoint.

-Soft D. String DeHooves

[Icky]

Although I agree with you ghelded, what makes you say "the Dutch need some excuse to justify their racism"?

[itroitnyah]

I'll pull a guess out of the air, and say that the people who made this "test" was people who hate EDM, and they're saying these things to villainize EDM.

[ghelded_kultz]

@Icky- Not the same person, but presumably a mix good ol' American racism plus the fact that the speaker's experience with dutch people is limited pretty much to a really perverted, decently racist teenager.

@Itroitnyah- I wouldn't be surprised, though they hate rock and hip hop too. But not jazz because there was never anything subversive about jazz. Or classical for that manner. Nothing bad for kids in classical...

[ghelded_kultz]

Although I agree with you ghelded, what makes you say "the Dutch need some excuse to justify their racism"?

I was just making an absurd remark mocking the way the people making the study decided to group the music genres. As far as I know discrimination towards people of African descent isn't a major problem in the Netherlands, I really don't know, but I do know the Netherlands has major problems with racism towards people of Arab descent and Muslims.

-Soft D. String DeHooves

[Mundius]

Denmark has no definition of offensive material, they're not being racist. It's like South Park.

[Stu Beef]

It's pretty cut and dry bullshit; correlation does not equal causation as someone said. I would, however, readily believe there is a connection between types of people and the cultures they engage in. Jazz used to be pretty rebellious, but now it's sort of been syndicated. Generally you'll see trends where there are counter-cultures associated with musical styles; if these things develop organically you generally get a package deal (kinda like bronies? but on a different level). But obviously there's nothing stopping little Jimmy from suburbia bumping Pac while watering mom's flower garden.


As for why people are looking for these associations; it makes it easier to control a population when you marginalize it. GOOD FOR BUSINESS!

[topitmunkeydog]

There is always going to be someone who says the new generation of music is the devil's work. It happened with rock & roll, it happened with jazz, it happened with gosh darn Romantic-age classical music!! (the classicists didn't like it or something)

It's just the social stigmas associated with being a musical rebel I guess. There was this great article that illustrated my point very well but I can't find it lol.

Something I can agree with though is that most teens do not listen to good music anymore. For some reason any band with an ounce of creativity doesn't have a chance going mainstream so the charts are dominated by gosh darn sellouts and corporate creations.

[Genkar]

I find the 'study' most absurd because it tries to blame the actions of people on the music they listen to.

Music doesn't make decisions, people do. If someone does something immoral, it's not because they listen to metal/EDM/rap, it's probably because they have serious mental issues.

[XXDarkShadow79XX]

"Hardhouse"



I kinda wanna rob a bank right now.

[Captain Ironhelm]

I've been listening to trance, time to rob a jewelry shop and graffiti everything.

[Fimbulin]

For sake of argument, I'd have to say that the study is accurate, although the title is not. I don't think that delinquency is caused by music, but can help develop it. Kids either have things their own way, or they listen to music sympathetic to their situations. When the music isn't enough, they become hostile. Kids that don't listen to those genres are forced to face their fates by themselves. They can't hide behind whatever medium they choose to listen to, thus delaying and building up their emotions to dangerous levels.

Also, wut wut taylor swift is good preferable music for 12 year olds huh

Minimalistic atonal music is where it's at. It is so confusing that it starts to make sense sometimes. That is the story of life.

[CommandSpry]

Icky please admit that your youth is the devil thanks

[Omnomnomnom]

I personally don't even appreciate EDM, and personally do observe a correlation between delinquents and EDM, but even so, I must say:
GOOD GOD, THIS IS NOT EVEN SCIENCE.

Believe me, this barely even follows scientific method. It seems apparent that all they did was analyze samples: no controls, no isolation of independent/dependent variables, and ludicrous data analyzing. I, personally, lend this study very little credibility, in my opinion. Where in the damned world did these men get their educations?

Just so you know, I'm also supposed to be "that band nerd": I am disgusted by EDM and many people who listen to it (no offense), and stick within the realm of jazz, romantic, classical, baroque, renaissance, yada yada yada...
And, as much as I would like to believe it , EDM doesn't actually cause delinquency of any kind.

When was the last time that a single isolated study ever "proved" anything... this is scientifically incorrect on so many levels. Do they even science?

[K3WRO]

They call this hit science? pfft

This article reminds me of one of those "VIDEOGAMES CAUSE CRIMES" bullshiz

[ghelded_kultz]

After actually reading the study some other things popped up.
1) (Dutch) Kids like trance less as they age.
2) Listening to Jazz when one is 12= negative correlation with delinquency, but there is no correlation between the two at 16.
3) Delinquency is self-reported (Maybe people who have a strong preference for these genres are more willing to admit their socially unacceptable activities).
4) Boys like louder music and are more delinquent than girls.
5) It's liking loud, non-mainstream music early (age 12) that indicates the possibility for later delinquency, not an increased liking of these genres as one ages.
6) Metal has the largest amount of delinquency at age 12 (at the intercept point, so I don't know if I am interpreting this table right) but by 16 it's Gothic.
7) "In the seminal work of Keith Roe26 and Jeffrey Arnett,25 media delinquency reflects actual alienation from social institutions, such as family and school, and heavy reliance on deviant peers as company"- If I am understanding this correctly, that means that one was already on a path towards delinquency at age 12, you are more likely to listen to music reflective of that and hang out with people like you.
8) While the study doesn't seem to imply that correlation=causation, they do spend sometime talking about how adolescents often define peer groups by music and mention the ideas of peer pressure (I think).
9) I am listening to Wugazi right now. If I were a dutch 12 year old then this would probably be representative of quite a bit delinquency in later adolescence, but not the cause of said delinquency.

Overall, the study is interesting and it does show a correlation between these styles of music and adolescent delinquency. It also seems pretty well carried out and admits some of it's short comings.

Overall, I think its like what Kyoga said, "People listening to rock, edm and metal because they want to feel rebellious, not being rebellious because of the music," and the study implies this when it discusses possible future research, mentioning that "First, research should consider those who express their liking of deviant media as part of a longer chain of problem behaviors that persist throughout individuals’ lifetimes."

Other notes. This is science (sociology is a science despite what "hard scientists" says) and a seemingly well controlled, well thought out and analyzed experiment. Don't try to discredit something just because it isn't hard science. Also where 1=no delinquency (on a scale of 1-4), the averages at 12 was 1.14 and 16-1.12, so the vast majority of respondents were not being delinquent, not matter what music they listened to/were listening to earlier in their life.

And one final thing
CAUSATION =/= CORRELATION!!!!!!!!!

[the4thImpulse]

Without reading everyone elses comments here, here's my take.

Music does not directly influence people to behave 'well' or behave 'poorly', what does influence people is friend groups and acquaintances. These groups are by far the most influential on a persons behavior, and these groups also create those music 'stereotypes' that people who each other accountable too.

If a group of rebellious kids like classical music, and as time goes by more and more kids become rebellious and listen to classical music then the stereotype that classic music makes you rebellious is created by those people to stubborn to analyze things on a deeper level than the surface.

Today we associate delinquent kids with metal/EDM/Hip hop music because most of the delinquent kids listen to that music, this does not mean that the music made them delinquents but rather the kids listening to the music in the first place.

Classical music has always been the sort of thing 'fancy/upper-class' people listen too, because of that the delinquent kids want to associate themselves with the exact opposite thing so they picked up EDM, no the other way around (EDM picking up kids and turning them into delinquents).