Music has a therapeutic effect. Soft music such as classical or lullabies can calm a child down and help the child sleep. Kids also often turn to music to feel a certain mood or to validate the mood they are already feeling. In the book "Media Violence and Children," the authors of a chapter on "The Effects of Violent Music on Children and Adolescents" cite numerous studies that show that adolescent girls often turn to music to lighten their mood, while boys sometimes use music to increase their adrenaline.
Music also helps children orient themselves socially. Kids who listen to popular music tend to have more friends and achieve a higher social status in school. A shared preference for a certain style of music can serve as the basis of a friendship, or listening to popular music can win social approval. Listening to popular music helps children feel a sense of belonging, in addition to creating an individual identity, as kids look for music that not only includes them in, but also sets them apart from their peers. Music plays a key role in the developmental stage of middle-school aged children.
Not all music is created equal, however. In the journal "Youth and Society," Jeffrey Arnett reported links between exposure to heavy metal music and problematic behavior in older children. Even the sound of heavy metal music, irrespective of the lyrics, negatively influences the attitudes of its listeners. In a 1991 study by Janet St. Lawrence and Doris Joyner published in the "Psychology of Women Quarterly," the authors surveyed young men who listened to heavy metal music, of both secular and Christian genre, and found that, over time, the views of these adolescents towards women grew increasingly negative.
Children also look to song lyrics for guidance, almost as much as they look to parents and other authority figures in their lives. This is worrisome because many popular song lyrics contain racist, violent, misogynistic and suicidal themes. There has been concern over the years about a correlation between fans of heavy metal music and rates of depression and suicide in young adolescents, although other risk factors are usually present as well. Clearly music can have a powerful effect on children of all ages.