Protecting Children and Giving Information with Tags and Labels
In 1985, the Recording Industry Association of America, the National Parent-Teacher Association and the Parents' Music Resource Center developed the black-and-white warning sticker now used voluntarily throughout the music industry. According to the American psychologists, that kind of rating system was necessary to protect the children’s psychology. It is true that some songs have insulting, sexual or violence content as well but on the other hand a song can have educational, political or emotional content Although many people objected to the warning and information labels, actually they’re guides for educators and parents, allowing them to protect the psychological health of children.
Through the 1985 debate two types of labels were developed. The first type is warning labels. It contains three categories: violence, sexual content and insulting content. Those warning labels are absolutely perfect guides for parents as a warning. Children have to be protected from violence; because it affects their psychological health in a negative way and it makes them depressive. Also children have to be protected from the sexually aggressive lyrics because those songs can prompt teenagers to have sex at an earlier age. According to the researches on guilty children, a child who listens aggressive music has a tendency to violence. The second group of labels is information labels. It contains three categories just as the first group but these are: educational content, emotional content and political content. It is necessary for the listeners so they can have information about the content of the product before they buy a recorded music production. Although it has a role that makes the song lyrics categorized. For example if a song is about love or divorcing, it has to be categorized as emotional content.
The songs which are about education are guides for parents, educators and students. In Turkey, there are music bands for the children between the ages of 3-7 and one group called “Rock Class” who makes educator singles for primary school children. Due to the fact of the effect of emotional songs on people’s psychology, the songs which are about emotions have a necessity. Some people show their feelings with the music and music have a strong effect on these people. For this important event, giving people to express their ideas and emotions with music, there is a need for emotional content labels. In Turkey, if a singer comes out with a CD which has mostly love songs, that CD would have the first place at Top10 List. For example, when Umut Kaya – a rock singer – came with the album “Mevsimler Geçerken” (When the Seasons were Passing) – a love songs album- he placed as first because most of the girls who love somebody were listening him. However, if a group of people is interested in politics, they are enthusiastic about listening political songs. If a young person who is about teenager ages listen political songs that can easily affect his/her ideas and that would take a countries’ situation back to the 80’s Turkey. In 80’s Turkey was in a chaos of political conflicts. Some groups of university students were socialists and they were only listening the songs about politics. In Turkey, there is a band called “Grup Yorum” (Group Comment) and they were playing some political songs whose lyrics were about the political events in the past of Turkey. These kinds of songs made the teenagers more interested and enthusiastic about politics and with this, the university students became a part of those conflicts.
Nevertheless, the censorship could be limited with not censoring the lyrics of music bands and just giving their lyrics some kind of labels. Writing the lyrics as they want is one of the fundamental rights of music bands. With this categorizing system, these rights wouldn’t be infringed upon. In mass media there is a need for censorship because of the audience of children or young adults and every government is responsible for protecting children’s psychology. If a new rating system with warning and information labels is applied, the need for censorship would decrease. The behavior of teenagers is influenced by popular culture and the music they listen affects their psychology directly. For an eight year old boy, it isn’t suitable to listen a song about sex. Also if 50Cent came out with another CD which has 20 tracks of every one of them includes very crude lyrics, it has to have a warning label so the parents are able to make educated decisions about what to expose their children, and teens will be protected or warned. Although parenting practices may differ, parents would be able to protect their children from the injurious material if he chooses. Only if the parents support this system with controlling the products their children bought and the music markets give importance to this system, it can work. Every parent has different ideas about deciding which materials are injurious and if they do not support this rating system, the system won’t be able to work.
As it is seen clearly, there is a need for categorizing every product. It is making the markets more organized and every type of music more available. Thus, every music company should decide the categories of the contents of their songs and they should approval about this event. The rating system of song lyrics is produced to protect our children. “Undoubtedly, it is within your power to contribute significantly to shaping the societies of the coming century; youth can move the world (Messages from the Universal House of Justice, 615)”. Thus, we should protect the youth because a healthy youth means a successful future.
Bibliography
Duin , Julia. “Warning Labels Don't Keep Kids from Shock CDs” The New York Times Jan 12, 1998
Unknown.“Song Lyric Ratings are Backed by AMA”The New York Times. 23 June 1995
Messages from the Universal House of Justice page.615
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_of_music
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1571/is_n2_v13/ai_20121875/
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