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No Earbuds In Class
No Earbuds In Class
“...no matter what we profess to believe about teenagers and their vital importance to the future, we tend to value them most as consumers.” - Grace Palladino, xi
Listen to the playlist as you read along
When you imagine a modern teenager, or even a teenager from fifteen or twenty years ago, what details do you picture? Dyed hair? Piercings? Or do you picture some other stereotype, a well dressed “mean” girl, or an uptight nerd with his shirt tucked in too tight? One detail that probably exists in that image is a pair of white earbuds,oversized headphones, or bluetooth earbuds. The culturally significant image of a teenager in the media comes with earbuds in as a requisite, a grumpy kid listening to music too loud and ignoring their parents' rules. Why is that? In the 1950s no one imagined teenagers with a pair of clunky Navy pilot headphones on. A major cultural development since the popularization of the concept of a “teenager” has taken place to stamp them indelibly with some form of music player in hand. The technological development of portable music technology has mirrored the development of the teenager as a cultural idea. By tracing the dual histories from 1954, when the first pocket-sized transistor radio was released, through to modern day, it can be shown that the the cached ideas of what teenagers seek– independence, individual identity, social success and “coolness—are seen just as strongly in the design and marketing of music technology.
In the postwar period, the idea of adolescents which had existed prior (moody, troublesome teenagers who were hard to be around and needed to be stowed away) had not faded, but added to it was a new concept, that teenagers were workers, wage earners, and most importantly, spenders. The power of the teenage market had grown. This generation, the first real teenagers, who had been children when WWII began were now entering high school. The culture of raucous dancing and tenuous sexuality remained cloaked in euphemism, but it reared its head more than ever (1). The picture of teenagers into the 50’s was an abject terror by parents that their innocent children would become delinquents. Music played an essential role in this fight, teenagers who wanted independence and a chance to go have fun with friends, and parents who were convinced the new “black” music would turn their children into sinful sex-addicts and drunks (2). Movies of the day reflected this fear. The Delinquints from 1957 followed a good ol’ boy who was corrupted by meeting some new friends, with whom he rides around picking fights, drinking, dancing, and having premarital sex (3).
“Trailer”, The Delinquents, directed by Robert Altman (Hollywood, CA: United Artists, 1957.)
Butters, James. “1955 Regency TR-1 Ads.” Transistor Radio Culture and Design, James J. Butters, 2007. https://www.jamesbutters.com/1955regencytr1ads.htm.
Wikimedia Commons contributors, "File:Vintage Newspaper Advertising For The Regency TR-1 Transistor Radio, The Eugene Oregon Guard, September 30, 1955 (22950220762).jpg," Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Vintage_Newspaper_Advertising_For_The_Regency_TR-1_Transistor_Radio,_The_Eugene_Oregon_Guard,_September_30,_1955_(22950220762).jpg&oldid=708337536 (accessed May 4, 2023).
What more perfect device could come across the market for teenagers than the transistor radio. The Regency TR-1, developed by Texas Instruments and Industrial Development Engineering Associates (I.D.E.A.), was the first pocket-sized portable radio ever created. It used the “transistor,” a new type of solid-state amplifier which was far smaller than its predecessors, allowing the radio to be roughly the size of a deck of cards and still able to pick up radio signals clearly(4). The design was simple and sleek, the radio came in a number of bright colors, and the listener did not have to be near a wall outlet (or their parents). Ads for the radio boasted about the ability to listen “wherever you are” or that the radio allowed the user to “hold the world of radio in your hand.” Ads feature young women holding their radios, with prominent painted nails, or show the radio slipping neatly into a clutch bag. Cool young women listened to transistor radios, and they did so wherever and with whomever they pleased. Earphones could also be connected to the radios, beginning the characterization of the checked out teen with earbuds in. The transistor radio, which could be used in private, away from parents, let teenagers tap into the exciting culture of R&B, satisfying a hunger for inclusion and facilitating a pared-down version of horrifying delinquency. Though teens could listen to music on their preferred station, choice was still limited by the broadcast strength and weather on a given night (5). The next phase of technological development would be allowing listeners to select which music, exactly, they listened to when they were alone.
“Teens and cocaine,” “teens and steroids,” “youth smoking marijuana,” “drunk driving.”. These are some of the titles of nightly news segments about teenagers between 1979 and 1986 drawn from the Vanderbilt Television News Archive. In the late 70s and early 80s, little had changed from the mid-50’s: parents were still worried about teenage delinquency, and new vices were added to the list of dangers for teenagers. A segment from Tuesday, Oct 14, 1986, discussed the concerns of many Americans that cigarette advertisements were influencing teens to smoke.
Not among the list of fears for teenagers on the news was dancing, but parents still took action to control what their children listened to. The Record Labeling Hearing at the 99th Congress in 1985 pitted the Parents Music Resource Center (PRMC) against congresspeople and rock stars, accusing the record industry of selling records to their kids which promoted sex, drugs, and satanism. Dee Snider, of the hair metal band Twister Sister, was in attendance to argue against the censorship of music. This characterizes the 80’s teenagers, similar issues to before, but more aggressive and rebellious. Movies reversed the prior characterization of teenagers, rather than horror films about gangs of teenagers, movies about delinquents painted them as cool, relatable, and oppressed. Take Marty McFly, from Back To The Future, the picture of a teenage rocker, late to school and messy, but the hero of his story. (4:45-6:00).
GiuseppeM. “Dee Snider vs Tipper Gore 1984 Senate Hearing PMRC (Parents Music Resource Center).” YouTube. YouTube, June 14, 2009. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=veoYcsH7Wrs.
Back to the Future, Directed by Robert Zemeckis. (Universal City, CA; Universal Pictures, 1985, YouTube.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uduqQYfJ0_w
How does music technology play into all this? Well, look at what Marty is wearing in the opening scene. A Sony Walkman and earphones. The Walkman, released in 1979, revolutionized music listening by allowing buyers to listen to cassette tapes on-the-go, making personal choice of music and portability simultaneous possibilities. The Walkman only had an aux cable, removing the collectiveness of speakers (6). It immediately became a hit among teens, allowing for greater musical independence than ever before, and total listening privacy via headphones.
Dan Rather. "Walkmans vs. Ghetto Blasters." (CBS Evening News. New York, NY: CBS, May 22, 1981.) Accessed from Youtube May 5, 2023. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GL5k9oTWqBw
Walkman, Sony. “Monkey Civilized.” Advertisement. YouTube, 1988. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2iCNvbAJUU
Walkman ads posited the new technology as revolutionary. The Walkman can be seen turning a man’s world colorful and bright. Another ad, from 1988, says the Walkman “changed the way the world listens to music, civilized or not,” with a very silly monkey. The Walkman is life changing, the human race is experiencing something unique. Sony’s innovation presented the first time that a person could go about their entire day with a personalized soundtrack. The Walkman also took on a second meaning, as an essential part of the Young Urban Professionals. Yuppies are shown on the cover of “The Yuppie Handbook” wearing a Sony Walkman—an essential for the up-and-coming working person. A similar phenomenon is seen in the news clip here from a CBS broadcast in 1981, sophisticated young people walk the streets protected from the bustling noise, listening to Motzart or Beethoven. But why are these young professionals portrayed as upstanding and classy, while teenagers in the same headphones are destroying their brains with the devil’s music? Teenagers were portrayed differently for using their Walkmen even though millions of Americans had one; the cultural image of a teenager alters the idea of using a Walkman. Unlike a suit, or a leather biker jacket, the Walkman as an accessory is reframed by its user, to fit the most prudent stereotype. The walkman epitomized the desire for privacy and freedom of choice that so many teenagers espoused, and helped create a stereotype of absent, distant adolescents.
Here it feels prudent to make a case for the single largest shift in how teenagers interact with their music devices, which comes between the late 50’s and the late 80’s, and then another jump in the 00’s. This would be the gradual shift from music representing simply a personal taste, to a cultural idea that one;s music taste forms their personal identity. As Jason Reid puts it in “Get Out of My Room,” a book on the history of teenagers' bedrooms, “...room decor and teen identity were indelibly linked during the latter half of the twentieth century,” (7). Teenagers having their own rooms was the subject of mass scholarship in the earlier half of the 20th century, and by the 80’s it was ubiquitous. Teenagers felt an enormous sense of agency in decorating their rooms, and “...by the 1970s and 1980s, one would be hard-pressed to find an American teenager, male or female, who did not have at least one type of audio equipment in their bedroom”(8). Two things then are clear, that teenagers defined their identities partially by how they decorated their rooms, and that a part of that decoration process involved the collection of music players. Music, then, is a matter of personal identity, not merely a feature of taste, like a favorite snack or type of car. Furthermore, what teenager's room is complete without a band poster? Ferris Bueller’s perfect teenage room is wallpapered with posters. Molly Ringwald in 16 Candles and Juno MacGuff in Juno both have rooms decorated with band posters, despite their major differences. “Cool” girls in two different ways, twenty years apart, but sharing that feature of teenagedom. If the early period of music players is characterized as creating one teenage identity, this period might be held as using music to create many distinct group identities, rebellious rockers or delinquent punks. Another shift would then come in the early 2000’s, as the iPod tightened this capacity for musical identity to ultra-individualism.
Sixteen Candles, directed by John Hughes. (Universal City, CA; Universal Pictures, 1984.)
Juno, directed by Halfon Lianne et al. (Beverly Hills, CA; 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, 2008.)
The iPod, released in 2001, was, according to Steven Levy, “...the most familiar, and certainly most desirable, new object of the twenty-first century”(9). The iPod introduced a pair of monumental new quirks to the personal music player. The first was the medium. Rather than a Walkman or Discman, iPods played MP3 files, compressed audio files made small enough to be stored by a small computer processor. The tactility and physicality of music could be replaced by one slim silver rectangle; “The iPod, 20 odd years after the Walkman, revolutionizes music players again, this time by removing the physical media of music entirely. Now, mp3 files from your (Apple, hopefully) computer could be added to an iPod and carried around with you”(10). Sleek white headphones pumped this invisible music to your ears, whenever and wherever. Albums could be purchased and loaded onto the iPod, but so could individual songs, each just $0.99. This was unique—singles available before usually had a B-side, and mini CD singles could hold up to 24 minutes of music, enough for an entire EP. There was no precedent, “...nobody ever really sold a song,” but the feature was descended from the MP3.com and Napster websites of the late 90’s (11). The user could purchase their favorite songs from an artist, from all their favorite artists, and listen to them in random order. Here is the second huge change: shuffle. Shuffled music was not utterly new, many CD players had a shuffle function, but that could only shuffle around the order of an album. The iPod could shuffle every single song you had, creating a unique mix of every bit of your music taste. To quote Levy again, “You could revel in constant novelty from the building blocks of your own song passions”(12). This shuffle function was an enormous hit, and became the main way people listened, particularly after the introduction of the iPod shuffle, a miniaturized version which only shuffled music. Shuffling was “...not just a feature on a gadget but an entire way of viewing the world…Google shuffles the Web, and iPod shuffles the music”(13). This concept, that music might be totally personalized, and that to many Napster users it should be freely available was popular among teenagers. In 2009, 92% of teenagers surveyed had some form of media player, and 86% of those were some variation of iPod (14). The iPod’s white headphones quickly became a part of the teenage image. “[T]he sheer number of white earbuds you see slouching youths with backpacks and baby mustaches wearing,” was the image painted of that 86% of teenagers. The iPod advertisements aided in creating a teenage identity which attached itself to the music player.
The iPod advertisements quickly found a culturally impactful aesthetic, slack silhouettes of people dancing against bright monotone colored backgrounds, their only defining feature being the bright white iPod earbuds. Each commercial in the clip gallery above is slightly different, with different dancers and songs, but the message is the same: you are your iPod. The ads indicate that music taste supersedes any other feature of the person—they are blank colorful silhouettes who are defined by the music they have playing. The music you listen to and your personal music player represent a facet of personal identity. Compare this to the Walkman, which in its ads supposedly changes you, and the world, and to its role in the culture, where the user changed the connotation of the device. The iPod cuts through all that, the music (and the taste of the listener) is front and center. Your music was more personalized than ever, carefully curated by the user, saved to the device, completely invisible and intangible. The teenager, too, is advertised more directly than ever before. The dancers in the silhouette ads are all young people, but the target ads go even deeper than that. Here, from a Best Buy ad, Drake Bell helps explain what teenagers really want (an iPod). The iPod helps conform with visions of teenagers of the time as fragile, emotional, internet obsessed, and newly vulnerable to bullying and self-esteem issues (16).
iPod. Best Buy. "Drake Bell - Teenage Language Translation," Advertisement, 2008. Accessed via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5hg9PWHdmU
The music player, and the headphones attached to them, become a sort of cultural shorthand to demonstrate that a person is a teenager. This is, like most tropes or characters, partially based in truth, teenagers purchase and use music playing devices more than any other demographic (17). On the other hand, media portrayals of teenagers as delinquents at risk of innumerable possible pipelines into drug use or pregnancy, and showing said delinquents always with headphones in creates an impression that the two are connected, when in reality most teenagers probably just want to listen to music on the go, not hide their satanist metal tapes. Teenagers have a stringent desire for agency and privacy and want to carve out space for themselves in the world, as technology develops, music players become increasingly effective towards furthering those goals. A listener can shut out the world, have absolute control over what they hear, and can go wherever they want with a personalized soundtrack. In a world where helicopter parenting and digital surveillance is easier than ever, music continues to exist as an escape, a series of personal choices even down to the color of your iPod. Digitized music makes it virtually impossible for parents to control what their children listen to. Bluetooth technology and a massive market share of personalized music equipment make every aspect of music listening absolutely individual now, spotify playlists play your favorite songs in whatever order you like, your airpods can have a case that looks like Garfield or a boba cup, and a range of hi-fi audio equipment is available for listeners who want to hear the best sound quality possible from a vinyl collection. A trend exists across time that as parents and media and schools pile on more and more dangers and fears and expectations for children, the music devices they are already predisposed to use become a safe haven, to hide from gun violence and competitive college admissions and mental health crises. The music tech industry develops alongside, with more pressures comes a greater ability to carve personal identity out of music.
The throughline of the history of teenage identity is tied inherently to music players. Their appearance at nearly the same moment in history is coincidental, teenagers didn’t invent transistors, but the development from that point on was connected. Music players became more portable, allowed for more personalization of music, and popularized the individual experience of music listening through headphones. In the late 1950’s, transistor radios helped teenagers carve out a singular teenage identity, one which any teenager could buy into. By the 80’s, music players had become far more private, and assisted with the creation of stereotyped and socially upheld group identities, allowing teenagers to define themselves and their groups of peers partially via the music they shared an affinity for. These group identities were utterly stratified by the iPod, however, which alongside other new technologies helped create a new teenage vision of a personalized world, where they could exact unprecedented control over the content they absorbed. Perhaps one could imagine this expectation of control as a reaction to the increasingly tenuous and controlling world which teenagers entered, or as the expression of a consistent ideal of young people seeking to define themselves. In either case, personal music players are a foundational part of the modern teenage experience, the two histories have never existed separate from one another.
Endnotes
Endnotes
Grace Palladino. Teenagers: An American History. (New York: BasicBooks, 1996), 118
Palladino, Teenagers, 119
“Trailer”, The Delinquents, directed by Robert Altman (Hollywood, CA: United Artists, 1957.)
Geoff Barker. “TR-1 the World's First Transistor Radio.” Inside the Collection. Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences, July 17, 2019. https://www.maas.museum/inside-the-collection/2013/05/27/tr-1-the-worlds-first-transistor-radio/.
Palladino, Teenagers, 119
Design Museum Staff. “Sony Walkman.” Design Museum. The Design Museum, London, 2016. https://designmuseum.org/discover-design/all-design-objects/sony-walkman#.
Jason Reid. Get out of My Room! : A History of Teen Bedrooms in America. (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2017), 109
Reid, Get Out Of My Room, 145
Steven Levy. The Perfect Thing : How the IPod Shuffles Commerce, Culture, and Coolness. (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006), 1
Levy, The Perfect Thing,
Levy, The Perfect Thing, 147-152
Levy, The Perfect Thing, 179
Levy, The Perfect Thing, 179
Darrell Etherington. “Teens Love Ipod and Don't Have or Are Just Ashamed of Zune.” The New York Times Technology. (The New York Times), April 13, 2009. https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/external/gigaom/2009/04/13/13gigaom-teens-love-ipod-and-dont-have-or-are-just-ashamed-21360.html.
Marc Fisher. "In an 'On-Demand' IPod World, Something's Gotta Give." The Washington Post (Washington, D.C), 2005.
Fisher, Ipod World.
Bibliography
Altman, Robert. dir. The Delinquents. Hollywood, CA: United Artists, 1957.
Barker, Geoff. “TR-1 the World's First Transistor Radio.” Inside the Collection. Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences, July 17, 2019. https://www.maas.museum/inside-the-collection/2013/05/27/tr-1-the-worlds-first-transistor-radio/.
Buckingham, David. "Troubling Teenagers: How Movies Constructed the Juvenile Delinquent in the 1950s." Growing Up Modern: Childhood, Youth and Popular Culture Since 1945. (2017).
Butters, James. “1955 Regency TR-1 Ads.” Transistor Radio Culture and Design, James J. Butters, 2007. https://www.jamesbutters.com/1955regencytr1ads.htm.
COMMITTEE ON COMMERCE, SCIENCE, AND TRANSPORTATION UNITED STATES SENATE. Record Labeling Hearing. S. Hrg. 99-529. Washington, DC: GPO, 1985. https://joesapt.net/superlink/shrg99-529/index.html, accessed 5/4/2023.
Design Museum Staff. “Sony Walkman.” Design Museum. The Design Museum, London, 2016. https://designmuseum.org/discover-design/all-design-objects/sony-walkman#.
Etherington, Darrell. “Teens Love Ipod and Don't Have or Are Just Ashamed of Zune.” The New York Times Technology. The New York Times, April 13, 2009. https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/external/gigaom/2009/04/13/13gigaom-teens-love-ipod-and-dont-have-or-are-just-ashamed-21360.html.
Fisher, Marc. "In an 'On-Demand' IPod World, Something's Gotta Give." The Washington Post (Washington, D.C), 2005.
GiuseppeM. “Dee Snider vs Tipper Gore 1984 - Senate Hearing PMRC (Parents Music Resource Center).” YouTube. YouTube, June 14, 2009. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=veoYcsH7Wrs.
Hagood, Mack. "Quiet Comfort: Noise, Otherness, and the Mobile Production of Personal Space." American Quarterly 63, no. 3 (2011): 573-89.
https://tvnews.vanderbilt.edu/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&query=teenagers&button=
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbqfzIyzTV8
Hughes, John. dir. Sixteen Candles. Universal City, CA; Universal Pictures, 1984.
iPod. Best Buy. "Drake Bell - Teenage Language Translation," Advertisement, 2008. Accessed via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5hg9PWHdmU
Juburbia, Ray. "PUT DOWN YOUR CHAINSAW AND LISTEN TO ME!" Maximum Rocknroll, May 01, 2014, 30-31, https://ezproxy.bu.edu/login?qurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.proquest.com%2Fmagazines%2Fput-down-your-chainsaw-listen-me%2Fdocview%2F2575456630%2Fse-2%3Faccountid%3D9676.
Levy, Steven. The Perfect Thing : How the IPod Shuffles Commerce, Culture, and Coolness. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006.
Lianne, Halfon et al., Juno. Beverly Hills, CA; 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, 2008.
No clips were actually taken from this archive, but the titles of 4-5 of the segments were used as evidence of rising concern for teenagers in the news. Found with search criteria of 1980-1990, keyword “teenagers.”
Palladino, Grace. Teenagers : An American History. New York: BasicBooks, 1996.
Rather, Dan. "Walkmans vs. Ghetto Blasters." CBS Evening News. New York, NY: CBS, May 22, 1981. Accessed from Youtube May 5, 2023. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GL5k9oTWqBw
Reid, Jason. Get out of My Room! : A History of Teen Bedrooms in America. Chicago,
IL: University of Chicago Press, 2017.
Walkman, Sony. "Bringing Color." Advertisement. Internet Archive, 1981. https://archive.org/details/walkmandec81.
Walkman, Sony. Advertisement. YouTube, 1983. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lipckhgG5g
Walkman, Sony. “Monkey Civilized.” Advertisement. YouTube, 1988. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2iCNvbAJUU
Wikimedia Commons contributors, "File:Vintage Newspaper Advertising For The Regency TR-1 Transistor Radio, The Eugene Oregon Guard, September 30, 1955 (22950220762).jpg," Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Vintage_Newspaper_Advertising_For_The_Regency_TR-1_Transistor_Radio,_The_Eugene_Oregon_Guard,_September_30,_1955_(22950220762).jpg&oldid=708337536 (accessed May 4, 2023).
Zemeckis, Robert. dir. Back to the Future. Universal City, CA; Universal Pictures, 1985, YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uduqQYfJ0_w
Miles Forrest is a second year student at BU studying history with a particular interest in post-Reconstruction United States cultural and political theory. He once scored 113 in a game of bowling, and he has never finished a game of Risk without pitching a fit. In high school his nickname was "Miles." He spends his time making bad Spotify playlists and seeing how far he can walk from his dorm without opening his eyes.
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