AFRI-INLEO INITIATIVE 18: THE TWO SIDED INFLUENCE OF MUSIC ON THE YOUTHS🎵🎤👫

4 months ago

One major ability of we humans is the ability to hear and recognize sound especially the beautiful ones all things been equal. Music as defined is the combination of sounds which are pleasant to the hearing. Right from childhood and most especially during youthful days, this ability finds expression as people develop interest and engages in music right from childhood or youthful days. Infact, many people that are musically inclined or have something to do with music starts the engagement as early as the youthful days except very few ones that started lately in their adulthood.

The impact i.e. influence of music is appreciable and easily noticeable when looking at the youths because the youths easily engages with music and gives more expression to it in diver forms. The influence of music on the youths is two sided; the positive and the negative influence. The positive influence of music on the youths are the good effects music brings on the youth in their engagement with it while the negative influence is the other way round.

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• POSITIVE INFLUENCE OF MUSIC ON THE YOUTHS
Undauntedly, music has positive impacts on the youths. For example, music serves as a platform where the talented, gifted and skilled youths who are musically inclined or has something to do with music are discovered and brought to limelight to be the best they can be. For example, i personally started my music journey early in life as a young boy in a choral music group based on my talent and i have been positively influenced by music. In Nigeria my country for example, many afrobeats singers like Davido, Wizkid and others are youths and have been positively influenced by music up to the global scene. Thia also applies to the gospel music artistes like Nathaniel Bassey, Dunsin Oyekan etc.

In addition, aside been a music artiste, many youths earn their living through the income, salary, commission etc as a result of engaging in music in several forms like a music/sound producer, instrumentalist, music trainer/instructor, music teachers, music DJs etc. Also, music has influenced the youths to peace and unity through the national anthem, professional anthems, music collaborations involving music artistes of different tribes/gender, some inspiring lyrical contents etc. Music has also influenced the youths positively in the learning process and in communication of information, ideals or in awareness creation as musical platform stood out in reaching out to the youths.

• NEGATIVE INFLUENCE OF MUSIC ON THE YOUTHS
On the other side, music has also negatively influenced the youth especially when some guidelines are not followed in this digital age. It is good to note here that music itself is good (except compromised) but the negative influence is specific to individuals discretion, exposure, maturity and control. There is much access to all kinds of contents now than it was before and not all contents are good for the youths as some brings about wrong believes, ideologies whose aftermath are not good. Some songs has negatively inspired the youths through their lyrical content into all kinds of social vices and has led to it been ban because of bridge of set guidelines. For example, the Nigeria government banned smoking, ritual killings in music videos because of the negative alarming effects on the youths. Reference.

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In addition, another negative influence of music on the youths is the growing concern of hearing loss among the youths through exposure to loud music and use of earpods, headphones etc. For example, the World Health Organization (WHO) stated that: "Over 1 billion people aged 12 to 35 years risk losing their hearing due to prolonged and excessive exposure to loud music and other recreational sounds." Reference. Therefore, uncontrolled exposures of the youth to loud music can negatively influence the youths to hearing loss.

Also, aside hearing loss, promotion of bad visual contents like pornographic contents, killings or bad lyrical contents inspiring violence, crimes etc., uncontrolled or immature exposure and handling of music on the part of the youths has negatively affected the concentration, focus or dilligence inturn output of some youths in what they do or their endeavors. Some youths are easily distracted by music due to their own lack of self control. As mentioned earlier, these negative effects arises from individual's lack of self control, immaturity or wrong exposure to music and not the music itself all things been equal. These are the two sided influence of music on the youths. Thank you for reading as comments and contributions are welcomed.