How Does Rap Music Affect Children

Music plays a significant role in the socialization and development of children and teenagers. Music as a whole has a variety of genres, each one particularly different. One of the most controversial genres of today is rap. Rap is a certain genre of music that is generally associated with sex, violence, drug and alcohol abuse and the disrespect of others. This harsh connotation causes parents to forbid their children from listening to rap music, believing it will, in turn, impact them negatively. However rap music does not have any impact on the behavior of teenagers, and does not have any correlation to them.
In young children, certain types of music can ignite all areas of development; intellectual, social and emotional, motor, language, and overall literacy. Music is also known to bring joy to children. However, rap music does not help further the development of young children. A study conducted by the American Academy of Pediatrics tested the effects of different types of music on the behavior of young children. They found that …show more content…
The Rap Research Lab is an organization that studies the influences of hip-hop on society, and engages teenaagers in exploring hip-hop cultural data through research. They recently conducted an experiment around one question, “Do people really just put on a rap song, and go out and do all of the same things as they heard?”. The study ultimately found that question to be false, as most people do not listen to a rap song then go out and commit a crime. In fact, most teenagers do not let the music lyrics influence them at all. The researchers created a data set and then graphed the correlation between mention of possession of guns, crimes, and drugs in lyrics to actual possession of guns, crimes and use of drugs. They found that the two sets of data had no correlation to each other, and found the question to be