Teen’s Music May Be the Secret to Better Self-Esteem

It wasn’t all that long ago when your teen liked your music. Sing-alongs to your college-era playlist on car rides entertained her. These days, she prefers staring out the passenger window, the buzzing monotony of an unfamiliar bass line seeping out from her earbuds. You may miss your tuneful connection of yore, but she isn’t tuning you out. She’s actively contemplating her identity.

Teens are constantly in emotional flux. Governed by hormones that affect their moods, emotions and impulses as well as their bodies and driven by a prefrontal cortex that demands instant gratification, many young people seek direction from peer-approved influences instead of their parents. Your teen isn’t doing this to make you mad; she’s searching for self-understanding by leveraging one of the most influential gifts you gave her: comforting lullabies.

Millennials listen to music almost 40 hours during a typical week, using an average of 3.8 devices. This may seem excessive, but perhaps not when you consider that the National Institute of Mental Health reports that an estimated 3.2 million adolescents age 12 to 17 in the United States have had at least one major depressive episode, and research shows that loud music offers one of the quickest, most effective and pleasurable treatments for regulating chaotic emotions.

Music as a source of well-being

Your teen is trying to make sense of a world that often doesn’t make sense. “Music works well to help teens identify and express feelings such as anger, whether through singing, dancing or playing along with songs,” says clinical social worker Kathryn Rudlin. “Teens tend to gravitate to music [that describes] what they are feeling and what is important to them.”

And music can affect teens at a deeper emotional level than is possible with words alone. A study in the Journal of Child and Adolescent Behavior reports, “Through music, teens are able to calm down their anxiety, sadness, stress, loneliness, anger and boredom; by escaping, albeit temporarily, from the suffering due to certain emotional states. With its extraordinary capacity to raise powerful emotions, music becomes an instrument for the desire to ‘feel good.’”

Reference:

https://www.parentmap.com/article/teen-music-better-self-esteem