SONGS AND EMOTIONS

Music is a  phenomenon that crosses all borders of nationality, race, and culture. A tool for arousing emotions and feelings, music is far more powerful than language. An increased interest in how the brain processes musical emotion can be attributed to the way in which it is described as a “language of emotion” across cultures. Be it within films, concerts or a simple home stereo, music can be so evocative and overwhelming that it can only be described as standing halfway between thought and phenomenon.

But why exactly does this ecstasy of music distinctly transcend other sensory experiences? How is it able to perpetuate emotion in a way that is incomparable to any other sense?

Skilled composers manipulate the emotion within a song by knowing what their audience’s expectations are, and controlling when those expectations will (and will not) be met. This successful manipulation is what elicits the chills that are part of any moving song.

Music, though it appears to be similar to features of the Language, is more rooted in the primitive brain structures that are involved in motivation, reward, and emotion. Whether it is the first familiar notes of The Beatles’ “Yellow Submarine,” or the beats preceding AC/DC’s “Back in Black,” the brain synchronizes neural oscillators with the pulse of the music (through cerebellum activation), and starts to predict when the next strong beat will occur. The response to ‘groove’ is mainly unconscious; it is processed first through the cerebellum and amygdala rather than the frontal lobes.

Music involves subtle violations of timing and, because we know through experience that music is not threatening, these violations are ultimately identified by the frontal lobes as a source of pleasure. The expectation builds anticipation, which, when met, results in the reward reaction.

More than any other stimulus, music has the ability to conjure up images and feelings that need not necessarily be directly reflected in memory. The overall phenomenon still retains a certain level of mystery; the reasons behind the ‘thrill’ of listening to music is strongly tied in with various theories based on synesthesia.

When we are born, our brain has not yet differentiated itself into different components for different senses – this differentiation occurs much later in life.  The extent of this connection is seemingly variable among individuals, which is how certain musicians have the ability to create pieces of music which are brimming with emotional quality, and others simply cannot. Be it classics from the Beatles and The Carpenters or fiery riffs from Metallica and Led Zeppelin, the preference for a certain type of music has an effect on its very experience. It could be this heightened level of experience in certain people and musicians that allows them to imagine and create music that others simply cannot, painting their very own conceived image.

Privacy in Public: Creating “MY Space”

 “My mom always uses the excuse about the internet being ‘public’ when she defends herself. It’s not like I do anything to be ashamed of, but a girl needs her privacy. I do journals so I can communicate with my friends. Not so my mother could catch up on the latest gossip of my life.” – Bly  Lauritano-Werner.

 For Lauritano-Werner, privacy is not about structural limitations to access; it is about being able to limit access through social conventions. This approach makes sense if you recognize that networked public makes it nearly impossible to have structurally enforced borders. However, this is not to say that teens do not also try to create structural barriers.

 Teens often fabricate key identifying information like name, age, and location to protect themselves. While parents groups often encourage this deception to protect teens from strangers, many teens actually engage in this practice to protect themselves from the watchful eye of parents.

Fabricating data does indeed make search more difficult, but the networked nature of MySpace provides alternate paths to finding people. First, few teens actually lie about what school they attend, although some choose not to list a school at all. Second, and more problematically, teens are not going to refuse connections to offline friends even though that makes them more easily locatable

Another common structural tactic involves the privacy settings. By choosing to make their profile private, teens are able to select who can see their content. This prevents unwanted parents from lurking, but it also means that peers cannot engage with them with some without inviting them to be Friends. To handle this, teens are often promiscuous with who they are willing to add as Friends on the site. By connecting to anyone who seems interesting, they gain control over the structure. Yet, this presents different problems because massive friending introduces a flood of content with no tools to manage it.

While deception and lockdown are two common structural solutions, teens often argue that MySpace should be recognized as myspace a space for teenagers to be teenagers. Adults typically view this attitude as preposterous because, as they see it, since the technology is public and teens are participating in a public way, they should have every right to view this content. This attitude often frustrates teenagers who argue that just because anyone can access the site doesn’t mean that everyone should.

In unmediated spaces, structural boundaries are assessed to determine who is in the audience and who is not. The decision to goof off during lunch is often made with the assumption that only peers bear witness. In mediated spaces, there are no structures to limit the audience; search collapses all virtual walls. Most people believe that security through obscurity will serve as a functional barrier online. 

It is easy to lambaste teens for accepting the cultural norms of the ‘in’ crowd, but social categories and status negotiation are core elements in teen life; this is part of how they learn to work through the cultural practices and legal rules that govern society. On MySpace, teens are directly faced with peer pressure and the need to conform to what is seen to be cool. Worse, they are faced with it in the most public setting possible – one that is potentially visible to all peers and all adults.

Teens are not necessarily well-prepared to navigate complex social worlds with invisible audiences, but neither are adults. While MySpace is public, it is unlike other publics that adults commonly face. This presents a generational divide that is further complicated by adults’ mis-readings of youth participation in new media.

TEENS AND FASHION

    

Adolescents undoubtedly are a unpredictable bunch. At that stage of physical and psychological progress, they are consistently using things to improve their particular appearance. Teenage jewellery fashion performs a major part with the development of their own identity along with efforts to possibly blend in with everyone else or establish their own persona. Virtually any parental endorsement of fashion accents is quite like the kiss of death, and youth turn to different influences in terms of teenage jewellery fashion.

The celebs that teens look at in music clips, television shows as well as motion picture screens usually are largely accountable for dictating developments throughout teenager jewellery fashion. The extra-large, ostentatious accouterments used often by rap musicians have created the hip hop jewellery trend, and teens have already been using lower-priced nonetheless precise replicas of celebrity bling bling. Rather than the diamonds and other precious gemstones used in superstar jewellery, more affordable zirconium and base metals are used for copies. Body jewellery (both the pierced in addition to non-pierced varieties) which is unusually tailored and produced by using low-cost materials has additionally seen a growth in teenage patrons.

Beaded jewellery plus woven friendship anklet bracelets and rings are a couple of the different popular trends in teenage jewellery style. Countless teenagers create these clothing accessories by themselves and present them to buddies as presents. They are tailored using beads that have the characters of the recipient's name in it are designed into the weaved materials. Many teens also wear certain kinds of jewellery to distinguish them within a clique or circle. Some of these could take the shape of uniquely designed pendants, rings or perhaps charms that contain spiritual or mystical overtones.

Feminine teenage jewellery fashion designs are usually influenced largely by teen celebrities nowadays. Items put on by teen celebrities, for example Hilary Duff's slave bracelets; happen to be copied by her non-celebrity counterparts. Even so, unique styles remain widely loved by this list of young individuals. Gold or silver plated jewellery and jewellery containing gem stones has not lost its following among teenagers.

Several masculine teen jewellery fashion trends, on the flip side, have a tendency to lean more toward bead-work, silver-work, leather-work, along with unconventional stones. Teen guys apparently feel that sporty-looking accessories, such as so-called surfer-dude bracelets and arm bands made from bone fragments, solid wood, as well as shell beads using a rubber or leather wire are cool. Stainless steel jewellery is usually popular with these individuals.

Jewellery has been utilized by everyone throughout history as marks of splendour in order to denote social standing. Young people are not immune to these types of habits; the truth is they are most likely much more prone to them because of their need to be able to concurrently conform and be noticeable. Teenage jewellery fashion is part of their social system as well as a tool in the development progression.

                                             ANOTHER YEAR GONE BY

                                                                By: Vishwapriya Iyer

Such as the falling of leaves, so is the passing of men

Such as the stirring of trees, so is the breathing of men

Winds move the sighing of myriads,

 loose In the rhythm of dying,

Ready to fall from the restless movement of being

Each generation cries with the coming of seasons

The old will remember the wind in the stillness of noon

And the infant will cry unheard in the tremulous silence

Such as the movement of stars so is the living of man

And as the living of man so is the weeping of years

We crush through the brown dead leaves uncaring

And thrill to the impotent

Such as the man so is the juggling leaf in the wind

Such as the foliage, so is the ephemeral flock of immortals

Only the winter is barren of fear of the wind

When the seasons have ended and men have forgotten the leaves.

Another year gone by ! 

                                                       Teen Attitude

One thing that always comes with the growing teen in order to become a grown adult is Attitude. Some teens have an attitude that are usually worse than others, But there's nary an argument over the fact that a teen hasn't been affected by the attitude of their parents. It's just how the life shows you it's true colours.

Teenage years can be rough as well as good, According to an
old psychology data, It's been proved that one-fourth of teens has rough times. Another data proves that one- fifth of teens experience a carefree adolescence.

WHY SUCH DIFFERENCES?

The main objective of a teen is to find oneself. Adoloscence helps you in finding what you really want by doing things you like.Anyone should have a right of living his or her life on his/her terms. And one mustn't be judged, But apprantely in the world especially in INDIA, People are somewhat judgmental, while in other developed nations it's not the case, They are free to do whatever they want and live their life on their terms.

However finding an identity is just very easy to say, but it isn't necessarily a cakeawalk. There is always a transition from childhood to puberty, That leads on to adulthood.

Being a teenager isn't easy as you think. And although we may occasionally get an attitude with adults, It's just a part of growing up.

TEEN THINKING

"OUR MIND IS A DELIGHTFUL CREATURE, IT CAN BE A BEAUTIFUL SERVANT OR A DANGEROUS MASTER. WHAT WE REALLY HAVE IS A 'CHOICE'" 

What was he thinking?" It's the familiar cry of bewildered parents trying to understand why their teenagers act the way they do.

How does the boy who can thoughtfully explain the reasons never to drink and drive end up in a drunken crash? Why does the girl who knows all about birth control find herself pregnant by a boy she doesn't even like? What happened to the gifted, imaginative child who excelled through high school but then dropped out of college, drifted from job to job and now lives in his parents' basement

If you think of the teenage brain as a car, today's adolescents acquire an accelerator a long time before they can steer.

Adolescence has always been troubled, but for reasons that are somewhat mysterious, puberty is now kicking in at an earlier and earlier age.

At the same time, first with the industrial revolution and then even more dramatically with the information revolution, children have come to take on adult roles later and later.

What happens when children reach puberty earlier and adulthood later? The answer is: a good deal of teenage weirdness. Fortunately, developmental psychologists and neuro scientists are starting to explain the foundations of that.

The first of these systems has to do with emotion and motivation. It is very closely linked to the biological and chemical changes of puberty and involves the areas of the brain that respond to rewards.

Becoming an adult means leaving the world of your parents and starting to make your way toward the future that you will share with your peers. Puberty not only turns on the motivational and emotional system with new force, it also turns it away from the family and toward the world of equals.

The second crucial system in our brains has to do with control; it channels and harnesses all that seething energy.

Instead of simply giving adolescents more and more school experiences, those extra hours of after-school classes and homework—we could try to arrange more opportunities for apprenticeship.

"Take your child to work" could become a routine practice rather than a single-day annual event, and college students could spend more time watching and helping scientists and scholars at work rather than just listening to their lectures. Summer enrichment activities like camp and travel, now so common for children whose parents have means, might be usefully alternated with summer jobs, with real responsibilities.

The good news, in short, is that we don't have to just accept the developmental patterns of adolescent brains. We can actually shape and change them.

                                Emotional maturity in teens

It can be defined as the ability of one person to control it's emotions and have full accountability with his life and it's related dramas. A significant part of developing a high emotional quotient does revolve around having the ability to handle anger, disappointment, guilt, resentment, fear, jealousy, grief, insecurity and emotions that involve any other person.

Emotional maturity is the perception or vision about seeing life clearly and accurately, and further dealing with it. If you think life is a cakewalk then you can't be any more naive. It doesn't mean you should live life in make-believes and fantasy, but living in the present and shaping your future by learning from your past.

Emotional immaturity can be extremely difficult to cope up with, it's because when you are not matured enough, you don't posses the ability of interpreting and reacting to various changes going around you. They try to control their world by shaping it into what they idealize than seeing the reality.

     "PEOPLE LIVE THEIR LIVES BOUND BY WHAT THEY ACCEPT AS CORRECT AND TRUE. THAT'S HOW THEY DEFINE "REALITY". BUT WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE "CORRECT" OR "TRUE"? MERELY VAGUE CONCEPTS.....THEIR "REALITY" MAY ALL BE A MIRAGE. SO CAN WE CONSIDER THEM TO SIMPLY BE LIVING IN THEIR OWN WORLD, SHAPED BY THEIR BELIEFS?"


These are the signs of an immature person:-

> When things go wrong, it is always someone else's fault.

> They are highly sensitive about when something is done to them,  but completely unaware of what they do to others.

> They are victims, They enjoy playing this part. Bad things always happen with them, but their poor choices play no part

> Relationships are short lived


As a mature,  person you might think that you can fix this person, But the reality is these issues are often deeply seeded and you can find this very challenging to have fair, balanced relationship or friendship with someone of this kind.