Dragons at Foothill Technology High School (Foothill Tech) listen to music on a daily basis, whether it be through the passing of a shop’s loudspeaker or the background to their study session. Music continues to be a major aspect of these students’ personal and academic lives, but does music have an overall beneficial or negative influence on teens in 2026?
Listening to music during personal time boosts teens’ mood and allows them to implement songs as a study strategy, but when utilized at school, music has the ability to improve students’ focus on various assessments.
According to Oxford Learning, a study was conducted to research the relationship between listening to music and studying. The results showed that out of 2,000 participants, 60 percent stated that studying was more productive when there was background sound, rather than silence and 75 percent believed that listening to music helped them digest information more successfully.
Payton Kennedy ‘28 expressed how music not only helped her to connect with other students at Foothill Tech who have similar tastes in music, but how it has also helped her academically.
“At home, I have to listen to country music or else I get super distracted, and I can’t focus and do my [schoolwork]. I feel like it just puts me in a zone where I feel good and I can do the [assignments] that I need to get done,” Kennedy said.
Not only does personal study productivity improve for her, but she also explained that listening to music could increase students’ concentration on in-class assignments as well.
A 1993 theory known as the “Mozart Effect” suggested that 10 minutes of listening to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s sonata for two pianos could temporarily increase spatial-temporal performance, according to the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine. People who have increased spatial-temporal performance means they are faster and more accurate at making decisions which combine mental images in both space and time simultaneously.
Along with the temporary improvement of spatial-temporal performance, music can also be incorporated into the curriculum throughout class time rather than solely at home; according to The National Center on Safe Supportive Learning Environments, music can potentially improve remembering significant dates or formulas.
“It could definitely help you remember certain [information] … adding a song to what you’re learning that correlates with [the curriculum] really helps,” Kennedy said.
Teachers do not need to center a course around music for it to be implemented in their curriculum. Even though parodies containing significant information are useful for memory improvement, music continues to have its advantages as a calm background to an essay or a mathematical assessment.
National University explained that listening to music helps to minimize tension and reduce unease for tests. Music can shift a teen’s mood, from stressed to calm, from feeling downhearted to literally dancing on the sidewalk.
Not everybody recognizes how many different ways music has the ability to positively influence teens’ lives, but they instead view music as an overall distraction rather than a tool.
“Some people probably don’t like a lot of noise when they’re working, but I know that [music] would help me a lot in school because I get in this mood where I start enjoying myself and I’m doing the work with a positive attitude,” Kennedy said.
Even though there are individuals who struggle extra to focus in class, music can be applied in ways that benefit them. Background noise has greater advantages than silence and may help teens with difficulty concentrating. However, if learning is hindered by music, then instead of becoming absent in classrooms, music should be listened to independently through personal audio devices.
Whether a teen listens to music independently, as a class, or with friends, there are undeniable advantages. Teens have opportunities to bond over sharing favorite genres, and they can connect memories to times they heard certain songs. Music improves concentration and performance with teens like Kennedy, who recognize that the benefits of music outweigh the distraction some people believe it to be. Some teens simply have to “have their music,” Kennedy being one of them; their personal and academic growth should not be limited to inside or outside of the classroom, as the positives of music are greater than the disadvantages.