Researchers in the Netherlands have found in a study that listening to a lot of loud music as a teenager increases the risk of that person using marijuana, drinking, and having sex without a condom.
Party on, indeed.
The Chicago Tribune has a pretty interesting / unintentionally hilarious round-up of the study. Apparently those with mp3 players (um, so, everyone with an iPhone?) are more likely to smoke pot! Who’d have thunk it?
Researchers led by Ineke Vogel at Erasmus MC University Medical Center in Rotterdam surveyed 944 students from inner-city vocational schools, aged 15 to 25, about their music-listening habits and other typical behavior. They assessed “music-listening dose” by asking students how much time they spent listening to tunes on their MP3 players or at a club or concert and estimating how loud that music typically was for each participant. The researchers then divided the students into those exposed or not exposed to risky music levels, based on a cut-off defined as one hour per day of music at 89 decibels — about as loud as a lawnmower — or the equivalent.
According to that definition, about one-third of the participants were risky MP3-player listeners and close to half were exposed to music at risky levels at clubs and concerts. Young people who often listed to loud music on MP3 players were twice as likely to have used pot in the last month, compared to non-risky music listeners, the research team reported in Pediatrics on Monday. And those who were frequently exposed to music at clubs and concerts were six times more likely than people who weren’t to binge drink and twice as likely to have risky sex with inconsistent condom use. Club and concert-goers also happened to be less likely to smoke pot than other youths.
As for the below video, I think you know what to do…