Psychology in the Media

The CDC estimates that underage drinking is responsible for more than 4,700 annual deaths, and that people aged 12-20 years drink 11% of all alcohol consumed in the United States. Since this subject hits close to home for me, I decided to make alcohol my focus for this project, specifically teen binge drinking. This information is what makes you question the factors that influence teens drinking. You will find influence in many Hollywood hit movies, video games, and even TV shows. However, I believe that one very common and over-looked influence lies in the music industry.

The problem with mixing drug and alcoholic references in music is that music is often thought of as harmless entertainment, a pastime. Movies are rated with PG-13 or Rated R, so are video games. They also usually list the reasons for the ratings like violence, drug reference, mature content, etc. Usually, the guardians of the child will pay attention to the ratings for the movies and video games before deciding if it is appropriate for their children. When I was growing up I don’t recall my parents, or any of my friend’s parents, monitoring our music selection. While they would monitor the movies we watched and the video games we played, our music was never questioned. This is a very important oversight as when you consider the amount of time teens spending listening to music, and how they often hear the same songs over and over, that becomes questionable.

My search for references to teen drinking in music wasn’t difficult. I found dozen of songs pushing alcohol on teens. The difficulty came when deciding on just one song. Initially, I had the singer Ke$sha in mind, as I have heard several of her songs mention alcohol. Ultimately, I picked “Last Friday Night”. The song title alone makes you notice that they are referring to a party. A few highlights of the lyrics are: “We danced on table tops and we took too many shots Think we kissed but I forgot” and, “Last Friday night Yeah I think we broke...