Just as it has for countless years, music continues to play a major and crucial role in the lives of humans. The oldest form of music is drum based music from prehistoric times. As of now, music has changed and genres have died or adapted. However, with the inclusion of apps such as Tiktok, Instagram, and other streaming platforms, music can now reach larger audiences with much more ease. Yet, people continue to argue that music is a distraction and is negatively influential. I disagree with that. Music is necessary for the following reasons: humans are naturally attracted to it and music has health benefits, so there is no use trying to limit listening to it.

According to “How Music Resonates in the Brain” written by Allison Eck, a Harvard medical writer, the earliest mammals were hyperattentive, meaning that they listened to everything extremely closely. This partially explains our natural attraction to music. Our close hearing was an evolutionary feature that we humans obtained as time progressed. As we listen to music and its combination of intricate sounds and chords, our primitive actions show as we closely listen, capturing the sounds most appealing to us, making the sound or song enjoyable. This connects to the article “The Scientific Mystery of Why Humans Love Music” written by Brian Rensick, a science and health editor, because humans release dopamine when performing actions that encourage and promote survival, such as eating, reproducing, etc. Rensick also found that music releases the same dopamine as the other actions, despite not being essential for survival. This demonstrates our natural appeal to it. In all, music easily engages the listener and keeps the brain excited, making it no use to try and live without.

Another factor to consider are the health benefits that music also provides. Allison Eck’s article also explains how the piano piece entitled “ Mozart’s Sonata for Two Pianos in D Major” was capable of reducing frequencies of seizures in patients with epilepsy. The way this works is that certain music that appeals to the patient, creates motor or emotional responses that will slightly improve the healing process in the subject. This essentially provides a free way to slowly heal patients, and improve their health conditions. Not to mention the many other positive effects music has on the body. In the articles “9 Health Benefits of Music,” and “How to Manage High Blood Pressure,” the research emphasizes that blood flows more easily when music is played, ultimately lowering blood pressure. Having low blood pressure improves kidney health and reduces risks of cardiovascular events such as heart attacks, strokes, and heart failure.

On the opposing side, though, studies have shown that music containing violent lyrics can increase hostile actions and aggressive thoughts in the listener. In 2006 Fischer and Greitemeyer, two social psychologists who focus on the effects of media, found data supporting this. The “hot sauce paradigm” is a social experiment to measure a person’s aggression by allowing them to decide how much hot sauce to put on a person’s food, knowing they don’t enjoy spicy foods.This is important because in the 2006 experiment Fischer and Greitemeyer realized when listening to misogynistic or neutral lyrics, then presented with the opportunity to aggress the other gender using the hot sauce paradigm, they found that the group listening to the misogynous/men-hating lyrics were more aggressive towards the opposite gender. On the other side of the same spectrum, according to a 2012 experiment by Krahé and Bieneck, they found that people who listened to soothing music were more kind and likely to help afterwards. This demonstrates that the lyrics that are being listened to, do have emotional/mental effects on the listener.

In the very end, though, it was the genre and sound of the music that had the negative impacts. Music in general is not the main culprit. However, my stance still remains the same. Music has many benefits that by far outweigh the negatives brought by specific genres and lyrics. Therefore, music should continue to remain a part of peoples’ daily lives.