The music they choose: Are teenagers really choosing it?

This is not to suggest that teenagers do not have genuine preferences. They do. But adolescent preferences are rarely formed in isolation. Adolescence is a developmental period marked by experimentation with identity, increasing sensitivity to peer acceptance, and a strong desire to belong. Music provides an effortless way of signalling all three.

The song everyone is listening to becomes a shared cultural language; knowing the lyrics becomes a form of social currency; liking a particular artist can become part of how a young person defines themselves. Add the extraordinary influence of recommendation algorithms, short-form video platforms, and celebrity culture, and the distinction between “I chose this” and “this was repeatedly placed in front of me until I chose it” becomes less straightforward.

The hidden messages

This is especially true when we look beyond the beat and examine the messages embedded within popular music. A teenager may say that they love a song because it is catchy, without consciously registering that the lyrics repeatedly portray possessiveness as romance, persistence after rejection as desirable, women’s bodies as objects of attention, or male dominance as a marker of masculinity.

Music videos can also reinforce messages through visual imagery, casting, and power dynamics. Research examining adolescents and popular music has found associations between exposure to sexualised or degrading music content and attitudes related to gender and sexuality.

The most influential messages are often not the explicit ones. They are the assumptions hidden inside humour, romance, and innuendo. A lyric may make controlling behaviour sound like devotion. A joke may reduce a woman to her appearance while being presented as harmless entertainment. A music video may portray sexual availability as the primary measure of female attractiveness. A male character may be celebrated for pursuing multiple women while a female character displaying the same behaviour is ridiculed.

None of these messages arrives with a warning label saying, “This is a gender stereotype.” They arrive wrapped in rhythm, glamour, humour, and familiarity. That is precisely why young people need the ability to decode them.

Learning what’s okay, what’s not

This is where parents can play an important role, beyond simply deciding which songs are acceptable and which are not. The instinct to ban a song is understandable, particularly when its lyrics appear sexually explicit, misogynistic or otherwise inappropriate. But prohibition alone rarely develops judgment. In fact, it can make the song more attractive precisely because it has become forbidden. More importantly, it leaves the teenager without the cognitive tools to evaluate the next song, the next reel or the next influencer’s message.

Here’s what you should consider (Photo: AI Generated)

The more constructive approach is to help adolescents distinguish between enjoying a piece of entertainment and accepting the worldview embedded within it. A teenager can enjoy a song’s rhythm without agreeing with its depiction of women. They can admire an artist without endorsing every lyric. They can understand an innuendo without accepting the stereotype behind the joke. The ability to hold these two thoughts simultaneously is an important marker of critical media literacy.

Gender quality and innuendo

Gender equality, therefore, cannot be taught only through formal lessons or occasional conversations about respecting women. Young people learn gender through the everyday stories they encounter. They observe who is expected to compromise in a family, whose anger is considered acceptable, who is encouraged to be emotionally expressive, who is told to protect their reputation and who is given greater freedom.

Popular culture adds another layer to these lessons. If a boy repeatedly encounters the message that masculinity means sexual conquest, emotional detachment and dominance, while a girl repeatedly encounters the message that femininity is closely tied to beauty, desirability and male approval, those messages become part of the cultural environment in which identity develops. This is why conversations about songs are not really conversations about songs. They are conversations about relationships, consent, dignity, equality, and power.

The same applies to innuendo and hidden meanings. Teenagers are often far more aware of sexual references than adults imagine. The problem is not necessarily that they understand the double meaning; it is whether they have learned to question it. There is a considerable difference between recognising that a lyric is suggestive and understanding what the lyric communicates about relationships or gender.

A parent who simply says, “You shouldn’t listen to this,” closes the conversation. A parent who asks, “What do you think that line is actually saying?” creates an opportunity for reflection. The latter approach does not require parents to approve of the content. It simply recognises that adolescents are more likely to develop independent judgment when they are invited to exercise it.

Making choices, consciously

A teenager’s playlist will inevitably contain influences from friends, films, celebrities, algorithms, and the larger culture. That does not make their preferences meaningless or inauthentic. It makes them part of a social world. Our responsibility as adults is not to pretend that world does not influence them, but to help them understand how it does. Because genuine independence is not the absence of influence; it is the ability to recognise influence and still make a conscious choice.

And perhaps that is the real test of whether a song is truly theirs: not whether they chose it without influence, but whether, after understanding its words, its assumptions and its hidden meanings, they can still decide for themselves what they want to hear—and what they choose not to carry into the way they see themselves, others and the world.