In one earbud and out the other: Millennials hear but don’t listen.
Many argue that never before has the world been so accessible. With information and media available virtually anywhere in the world in the palms of their hands, today’s young adults have been called the iGeneration. In a survey conducted by the Pew Research Center, “technology use” and “music/pop culture” were the top two ways Millennials said their age group is unique from previous generations.
“It’s not just their gadgets, it’s the way they’ve fused their social lives into them,” the Feb. 24 article reported.
Dr. Jean Boyd, division director for academic studies in the Baylor U. School of Music, studies popular music as a professor and researcher of American pop music. “I’m not as worried as I might be — because most of the music is so bad — but people don’t really seem to be listening to it. Not really. They are hearing it, but I don’t think they are paying that much attention,” Boyd said. “It is always in the background to everything that they do.”
Dove Award-winning worship leader and University Baptist Church music and arts pastor David Crowder agreed with Boyd in the omnipresence of music in everyday life.
“Music is there in spaces we walk in. It’s unavoidable,” Crowder said. “You used to have to go experience music together or you used to have to make music as a community of people. It was a very communal experience. Currently it is a very individual, selective experience, which makes our culture different.”
Dr. Gary Small, a University of California at Los Angeles professor and neuroscientist, said he requires his students to learn to listen by putting them “through a series of empathic listening exercises to help them rebuild the face-to-face skills that have fallen between the cracks of their smartphone keyboards,” according to an article in Insight Magazine, a publication of the Chicago School of Professional Psychology.
Boyd said stress and technology overload is common for both her students and herself with e-mail reminders beeping and cell phones ringing.
“Young people are so busy multitasking that they don’t have time to devote to any one thing anyway, so ‘Please don’t bother me with anything that is going to draw me in,'” Boyd said. “That’s what all good music does. I don’t care whether it is classical or pop or jazz or church music, it draws you in. You can’t ignore it.”
Boyd said that this generation has the power to change the music industry but might not know what it is missing out on.
“The only thing I can say to this generation is that they are missing a great deal of pleasure and intellectual stimulation by not listening. Hearing but not listening,” Boyd said. “My guess would be that if they ever started listening, commercial music would have to change drastically because right now they are buying into a formula.”
Crowder said the influence of music is all the more important because of its omnipresence.
“I think it provides almost like a background as atmosphere for how you experience life,” Crowder said. “You inject it into pretty much every moment you experience.”
Boyd said she would advise members of the iGeneration to go deeper inside the music beyond turning it on as background noise.
“Find something that has the potential to be really meaningful,” Boyd said. “Music is a powerful medium unless it is misused as it is in pop music today and treated like a commodity. It’s such a waste. If you introduce young children or adults or anybody to good music, any genre, it will so enrich their lives. It will take them away to wondrous places and give more meaning to being human and being alive.”