In the R-rated romantic comedy High Fidelity, record store owner Rob Gordon (played by John Cusack) ponders this chicken-and-egg conundrum:
What came first, the music or the misery? People worry about kids playing with guns, or watching violent videos, that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands, literally thousands of songs about heartbreak, rejection, pain, misery and loss. Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to pop music?
It’s an astute, paradoxical pair of questions Rob asks. And while I’m not going to offer a definitive answer, I will say that I can relate to the phenomenon he identifies.
I was a perfectly miserable, often lovesick and frequently rejected teen. (We don’t have enough space for the entirety of my misadventures with unrequited adolescent “love”). And pop music, just as Rob talks about, was my outlet.
Curiously, I’d say that my experience with music during those years, accomplished two opposite results: It made me feel worse (like Rob said). And it made me feel better, too.
It makes sense, when you think about it: I think the music we love provides cathartic release for lots of pent-up negative stuff. That’s the positive part. At the same time, I also think music can amplify negative emotions by inviting us to fixate on them over and over again.
Turns out, scientists behind two separate studies reached the same conclusion I did. Or, more fairly, the same conclusions.
In February, neuroscientists from the Montreal Neurological Institute and George Washington University published the results of a study in which they examined college students’ brains as they listened to music. Scientists used brain scans to see what was happening in their gray matter when they listened to any ol’ random music, then compared those results to how the students’ brains responded to when they listened to music that they liked. When their favorite tunes were played, their brains released larger amounts of the “feel good” chemical dopamine.
“The study provides some explanation for why people find listening to their favorite music a relaxing and enjoyable experience, and why we keep doing it, even though it’s not critical to one’s life functions,” associate professor Ted Rothstein of George Washington University’s medical school told the Bangor Daily News.
Case closed, right? Not so fast.
Another new study of American children has suggested a correlation between listening to pop music and depression. The study’s author, Dr. Brian A. Primack, interviewed 106 children ages 7 to 17 repeatedly over a two month period, asking them to chronicle their exposure to five different kinds of media: TV, video games, the Internet, printed media and music. Primack and his team found that the more these children listened to music, the more likely they were to suffer from a major depressive disorder. Interestingly, TV, video games and the Internet did not have similar correlations, and kids who consumed the most printed media actually had a lower incidence of depression.
Primack was careful to avoid saying that music causes depression. What scientists can’t know—just as Rob Gordon wondered about—is whether already depressed kids are more likely to listen to pop music or whether pop music somehow precipitates depression. All they know for sure is that there is a correlation between the two. Said Primack in the Bangor Daily News:
This is a preliminary finding, and there's nothing about this that says that music is bad. In fact, it may even be therapeutic, in that teens who are already depressed might be seeking a kind of solace or meaning in the kind of music that they listen to. Or it could be the other possibility, that there are certain messages in music that can unmask a predisposition to depression, or even lead teens to become depressed. We just don't know. What is clear is that this seems to be a really strong association. So this could be an interesting marker that can help us recognize depression. And it perhaps has implications for parents and health-care providers, in that it could be that noticing that a teen is listening to music constantly could be a sign of depression.
Maybe certain music makes us happy. And maybe it makes us sad. Maybe it does both, actually. Any way you slice it, however, the music—and the messages contained there—definitely plays an important role in the lives of many young people, shaping their attitudes about how they see the world and what’s most important in life. I know that was certainly the case in my life. And in Rob Gordon’s case, too, it seems.
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