Think critically, listen carefully and watch out.

According to a newly issued report from The Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, 'teenagers listen to an average of nearly 2.5 hours of music per day' (Parker, 2008). Now knowing what they may be listening to, it is important to understand how we can help fight hatred and lower such horrid suicides as the ones mentioned earlier on the blog this week.

While emo and murder music may in itself be harmless as they are merely tunes being played, people should pay close attention to their surroundings and look for indications that friends and family are not changing their behaviour, or even getting signs of depression from listening to especially emo music.

As stated by M.D., Vincent Iannelli, author and writer on About.com:Pediatrics it is important to distinguish between adult and teenage symptoms. Where older people tend to outward their aggression, it is often seen that children and teenagers become more silent and moody - often also easily irritable.
Iannelli composed a list of symptoms one should look out for when watching media exposed teenagers:

• Persistent sad or irritable mood
• Loss of interest in activities once enjoyed
• Significant change in appetite or body weight
• Difficulty sleeping or oversleeping
• Psychomotor agitation or retardation
• Loss of energy
• Feelings of worthlessness or inappropriate guilt
• Difficulty concentrating
• Recurrent thoughts of death or suicide (Iannelli, 2004)

The lack of attention could possibly affect schoolgrades and especially parents should regularly keep an eye on their childrens hobbies and interests. Furthermore it should be mentioned that while children recover quicker than adults from depressions, the risk of recurring depressions is very likely.

But people can do more than just monitoring their surroundings. Being an active part of an organization focused on fighting the hatred of murder music is also an option. With a little research most local organizations can be found, otherwise there is the Egale community located in Canada, but also working across borders to put a pressure on governments to ban murder music completely. Private people can also make a clear statement by openly not tolerating and going to concerts of well known murder-inspired musicians as Buju Banton, Sizzla and Elephant Man. Spreading the message that lyrics such as the following are simply not acceptable:

Buju Banton:

"Oral sexer, lesbian and queer must be assassinated
I am going to shoot you in the head, you are going to meet up with my big gun
shoot queers, my big gun goes boom" (Brown-Martin, 2004)

While it is close to impossible to ban emo music in the same way as murder music, everyone should be encouraged to think critically about what they hear, and what they expose other people to. Is self-pity, self-harm or even suicide values we want promoted as good things in our society? If not, let your voice be heard and show the world that life is worth living, and we should all be able to live here no matter of sexuality, ethnicity or religion.

If you would like to read more about symptoms of depression (whether caused by music or something else) please visit the Teen Depression Research Study issued by About.com.
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Brown-Martin, Graham. Murder Music. Ammocity.com. Sep. 10 2004. http://www.ammocity.com/artman/publish/article_195.shtml

Iannelli, M.D., Vincent. Symptoms of Depression in Children and Teens. About.com: Pediatrics. Feb. 11 2004, http://pediatrics.about.com/cs/mentalhealth/a/depression_stdy_2.htm

Parker, Tara. Under the Influence of... Music?, NYtimes. Feb. 5 2008, http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/02/05/under-the-influence-ofmusic/