There are many experiences that affect the different variables that develop during the stage of adolescence. On the one hand, there are experiences that are congruent with the identity that they want to consolidate as social agents, and on the other hand, the experiences that they socially feel are expected of them. Particularly from 13 to 17 years old, a stage of life is experienced that sets the adolescent with high fluctuations of emotions, thoughts and moods that are reluctant, challenging, sometimes disoriented and in rebellious cases.
Music influences adolescents so much because it is one of their favorite activities to listen to it and for this reason they use it to set the scene for their spaces and activities. This is used for identity consolidation, changing your mood and strengthening your ability to relate to others. Contemporary urban music at all times is accepted by youth when the message is linked to sociocultural problems. The positions in the messages affirm or break stereotypes and these influence the opinion and attitude of adolescents.
Listening and practicing music, spending time with friends, and using a mobile device rank in the top three among teens' favorite activities. This is consistent with the effects of music, since it produces tranquility, relaxation, stimulation, joy, among other emotions that contribute to improving mood and personal well-being. Music provides pleasure, for this reason it is not uncommon for adolescents to listen to music to relieve tension and stress in times of evaluations or to avoid daily worries, as well as to avoid boredom.
Technology is the indispensable factor for the bond generated between the adolescent and music. Before recorded music existed, which came along with radio broadcasting around the turn of the 20th century, you could only listen to live music. Music did not enjoy any influence on young people, a situation that has been reversed and has been placed at the opposite extreme. Today they can listen to all the music and have access to new discoveries just by having a device with internet. This has been an accelerated process that has intertwined music with this stage of life due to its immediate and unlimited access.
Adolescence is defined and described in many ways by various psychologists, sociologists, educators, among others. The truth is that the convergence of this stage is that it contains polarities, constant contractions, melancholy, euphoria, dysphoria, selfishness, altruism, loneliness, desire for approval and group life. Jean-Jacques Rousseau shows that this critical stage full of polarized emotions is due to puberty and since this is a common factor, an advantage is sought in his natural approach to music that does not exist in a context of everyday conversation.
In the curricular mesh of colleges and schools, music is not the priority subject, which is why the extracurricular spaces where the teaching of musical instruments is taught to adolescents are so important.
The music that is heard in school subjects is different from the music that teenagers listen to at home. Music is listened to by teenagers for an average of 10,500 hours a year, which means that there is not a day that they are not connected to music for at least one hour. The detail is that the music subject at school exists only to learn it, but absolutely detached from the importance it has in life, the identity and real needs that they go through.
Most of the time teenagers listen to music in private, either physically isolated or isolated by their headphones, and this is a source of strength for them because no one can criticize them, as long as they don't know what they are listening to. To this we must add that music is not just melody and rhythm, it has a load of messages in its lyrics and part of the complacency is found in them. Music contains cultural values, social symbols, codes of behavior, sources of knowledge, interests, attitudes and identification and that is why young people cling to and are so influenced by music.
Another role that music plays in the life of adolescents is that of being a bridge for interpersonal relationships. The songs or singers address issues that connect young people and thus create universal meeting points for interaction between them. This is a competition that social media portals have highlighted since their inception. Facebook, for example, asks users to write their favorite music when creating profiles and highlights them for viewing by people who visit said profile. The taste for a song speaks more about who listens to it than who sings it and for this reason music generates social identification. Having the same musical tastes means much more than any coincidence, as far as an aesthetic assessment is concerned. This equivalent is synonymous with social attraction since points of view, values, beliefs, ways of dressing, etc. are shared.
In adolescence, concepts are accepted without questioning them, they accept concepts depending on who says them. If we take into account that there are an average of 9 sexual references per song according to Billboard magazine in its 2011 Hot 100 edition, the risk of growing up with fictitious or distorted concepts becomes a threat in the integral formation of adolescents. One of the coeducational considerations of musical training is precisely to deconstruct the existing violent stereotype that could be internalized in the minds of adolescents.
If we evaluate how many social norms, laws, names, properties, customs, habits, attitudes and qualities are learned from children through songs, it can be understood that if adolescents study music directed to a purpose, their result is positive and above all it is real. The positive quality is that you can take advantage from teaching by bringing students closer to songs that immerse them in good customs, habits, among others, but it is equally important to know that adolescents use music to evoke memories, feel part of of something and therefore utility is above all something real for them too.
Educational institutions dedicated to teaching music bear great responsibility in this process. The task of ensuring that students achieve results and have fun at the same time so that student retention allows the main objective of singing an instrument to be completed falls on the institutions. In the same way, musical educational institutions absorb the responsibility of sensitizing the community about the coeducational objective, which aims to add to the training of children and adolescents by guiding them in their attitudes, habits, behaviors based on all the influence that music has on them as previously stated.
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