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Gifted Children Find Heavy Metal Comforting

Posted by samzenpus on from the the-soothing-side-of-slayer dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The Daily Telegraph is reporting that intelligent teenagers often listen to heavy metal music to cope with the pressures associated with being talented, according to research. Researchers found that, far from being a sign of delinquency and poor academic ability, many adolescent "metalheads" are extremely bright and often use the music to help them deal with the stresses and strains of being gifted social outsiders."

10 of 585 comments (clear)

  1. Or the simpler explanation... by MisterCookie · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Maybe they just like the music? I'm a member of the International Baccalaureate program and few of my peers have similar tastes in music. I waste my life listening to video game soundtracks, a few other members like classical, one likes techno. And for every smart kid who listens to heavy metal, there's fifty moronic ones that do the same. Only six percent of intelligent students like it and they act like its a massive majority.

  2. Marilyn Manson by ScaryMonkey · · Score: 5, Insightful

    As a side note, I've seen a couple interviews with Marilyn Manson and he comes across as surprisingly intelligent and well-spoken, even while still wearing the freaky makeup.

  3. Labels are bad news by EmbeddedJanitor · · Score: 5, Insightful
    As soon as you label a kid as being gifted, you stop treating them as a kid. Poor behavior: "Oh, that's just gifted kids for you". Don't want to take out the trash: "He really shouldn't be wasting his talents". There seems to be a complete obsession with labelling people to get status or to excuse behavior. Worst is when the kids are told that they are gifted: they soon learn to use this as a manipulative tool: "I need to do $FUN_ACTIVITY to expand my experiences. $CHORE crushes me".

    Most kids are gifted one way or another, some academically, some otherwise. Just most kids don't experience the environments that bring the best out of the kids.

    --
    Engineering is the art of compromise.
    1. Re:Labels are bad news by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Oh please! Can't we get an article about gifted children or aspergers or something like that without someone making a stupid lowest common denominator post like this? Yes. I'm sure the things you have stated in your post happen. It is stupid, it shouldn't happen, but it does. The problem is, it has nothing to do with the article. Do you really find it so hard to believe that there are smart kids who find life stressful because they don't fit in, so they listen to heavy metal music?

      There really are people out there who think that kids who are called "gifted" are just spoiled brats, and that people with asperger syndrome are just shy and need to get out more. Simply because some spoiled brats get called gifted or because some nerds falsely claim to have aspergers. Posts like yours just add to that, without bringing anything useful. Just the same obvious "damn I'm such a rebel for pointing this out" obvious boilerplate post.

      P.S. The title for your post is "Labels are bad news". Believe it or not, all words are labels. Do you think words are bad? Just because using a single word like "gifted" doesn't perfectly describe something as complex as a person? This whole anti-label thing is idiotic. Just speak in complete sentences and you fill find that words/labels work to convey a point of view, even if they don't carry enough meaning one at a time. Imagine that!

  4. My experience was just the opposite... by AmazingRuss · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ...when I got my 'gifted' label. It was all about "Why the HELL are you smoking dope and making strangled cat sounds with the guitar when you are flunking out of high school? You're GIFTED...it shoud be EASY for you! Now do your goddam homework!"

    1. Re:My experience was just the opposite... by arlo5724 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Same here, I certainly never got to use it as an excuse. I think I would have had my ass kicked if I had.

      In my experience kids who use labels to manipulate their parents only do so because they are allowed to, the parents tend to be push-overs.

  5. Re:Punk by Original+Replica · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Heavy metal and punk both have two characteristics that could easily appeal to gifted kids. There is a rejection of the mainstream average(you-don't-understand-me) and an inclusion in a brotherhood of "different-but-better". This misunderstood elite is obviously going to appeal to kids that are bored in class and frequently ostricized because of thier intelligence. Why do you think "news for nerds" is a source of pride for /.ers ?

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    We are all just people.
  6. Re:Heavy metal as a detox? by Khan · · Score: 5, Insightful

    For me, Heavy Metal is a way to sooth my anger. The angrier the music (NIN, SoAD, Slipknot, etc.) the quicker I come down from being pissed off. And hey, it's cheaper than therapy :-D

    --

    "Klaatu, verada, necktie!" -Ash

  7. Re:Punk by AcidArrow · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Meh.

    Linking music tastes and intelligence is really, really, wrong. What kind of music you like depends on so many factors, mostly environmental but... anyway.

    Let's take a look at the article:

    Mr Cadwallader then held an online discussion involving 19 members of the academy, 17 of whom were heavy metal fans.
    Translation: Some psychologist asked some kids what kind of music they liked and they answered heavy metal. Oh and they also weren't complete idiots.
    Since the sample was so big (almost 20 people!), obviously all "gifted" (definition?) children must listen to heavy metal. But since most of heavy metal is crap, he couldn't help but wonder why did these kids listen to this kind of crap.

    One student said: "It helps me with stress. It's the general thrashiness of it. You can't really jump your anger into the floor and listen to your music at the same time with other types of music."
    Ah! That makes sense, because smart people worry about society and stuff. The psychologist thought that his findings were so great he had to share them with the rest of the world, but he needed some statistics, so on his way home he asked some more kids about what kind of music they liked so he can make useless statistics that help make a research look all that much more professional:

    The researchers surveyed 1,057 members of the National Academy for Gifted and Talented Youth - a body whose 120,000 student members are within the top five per cent academically in the 11-19 age range. Asked for their favourite type of music, 39 per cent said rock, 18 per cent R&B and 14 per cent pop. Six per cent said heavy metal and a third rated it in their top five genres.
    Okay so he found that from a group of supposedly smart kids (although I'm not sure that academia equals intelligence), SIX percent really likes bands like tool, slipknot and system of a down (which are very popular bands anyway) and about one third said "tool? they're cool, I used to listen to aenima a lot". Did that miniscule percentage surprise him that much that he had to go and tell the world?
  8. Re:Punk by anaesthetica · · Score: 5, Insightful

    in a very warped way geeks are punks in many ways, we tend to over lap and have a usually left wing mentality

    I think this may reflect you reading your own political position into punk/geek culture more than anything else. Geeks and Punks share a kind of anti-authoritarianism that doesn't map well into the (mostly bullshit) left-right political spectrum. Geek libertarianism and Punk DIY-anarchism fit parts of the left and parts of the right. Matching the left, they care about solidarity, anti-corporatism, and socio-cultural liberty. Matching the right, they care about negative freedoms (small, limited government as opposed to the nanny state) and "rugged individualism."

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    The Rise and Fall of Online Community