The Playlist Is the Point: What Music Does for Teenage Brains and What We Can Do About It in the Classroom

I was always the headphones kid.

From my first Walkman, to Discman, to a revolving door of MP3 players, and now my phone, which can stream music in an instant, I have always needed music in the background. I was even the kid who would try to break my over-ear headphones to run them up my sleeves so I could sit with my head on my hand and listen while I worked. It did something to help keep me calm and centered.

Every time my students look at the clock, they see this sign.

To this day, I am a headphones adult. It is very rare to spot me without at least one earbud in. Even if the music is barely audible, the variety of rhythms, tones, and even all of the screaming helps cancel out the noise that distracts me from tasks or pushes me toward overstimulation. Some people believe it makes me ignore the present. The opposite is true. Disconnecting from the ambient noise is exactly what allows me to connect to the task and/or the people in front of me.

I think being a headphones person is what allows me to connect more easily with my students today. Why? Because I know what the student who appears to be checked out is like. You know, the one who sits in the very back or the farthest side of the classroom. The one with the hoodie up, or the earbud in. The ones that colleagues may label as disengaged or disrespectful? I was that student. I am still that person today. What I didn't need as a teenager was to be told to put my headphones away. What I needed was a teacher who understood that the music was not the problem; the noise of everything else was — and that the jankity earbud was the solution I had engineered for myself before anyone had taught me about regulation.

Our students are still doing the same thing I was in the late 90's and early 2000's. They are finding the easiest way to regulate the surroundings they have no control over. They are finding a way to carve out control in an institution made to leave them feeling powerless and at the mercy of their teachers or principals. They are coping in a world where they feel like they may not be able to advocate for their environmental needs. Yet research, and my own nervous system, suggests that they are onto something. It feels fitting that while scrolling through a recent ISTE-ASCD Smart Brief email, I stumbled onto an article that sent me down a research rabbit hole I have not fully climbed out of yet.

What the Research Actually Says

The article that started all of this is from the New York Amsterdam News, "More Than a Playlist: How Music Shapes Teen Mental Health," published this week by Jocelyn D. It says something that every teacher who has ever watched a student walk into first period with headphones still in already knows intuitively: music has become a daily companion for many teenagers (East End Arts), helping them cope with mental health struggles and providing comfort during stressful and difficult times.

Around 40% of high school students experience persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness, according to 2024 CDC data. Four in ten students. In your classroom right now.

A study published in Frontiers in Neuroscience found that adolescents can more easily understand and manage their emotions through creating and listening to music, and that music serves as a tool for emotional regulation.  That is not a small finding. Emotional regulation is the foundational skill underneath everything else we ask of students: the ability to be present, to focus, to take a risk, to try again after getting something wrong. A tool that builds emotional regulation is a tool that builds learners.

Gotta show some love to MCR as well as the Alliance!

The Amsterdam News article also makes a point worth sitting with: music can help teenagers explore their identities and become more independent. As kids grow, they start to gravitate away from the family's usual genre. It's a way of discovering who they are and establishing their sense of self.

That identity work is not happening in isolation from the classroom. It is happening in the same brain that is trying to learn history, analyze a primary source, and figure out what the teacher wants from this essay. The two are not separate. The question is whether we treat them that way.

The research supporting these claims extends well beyond a single article. USC researchers found that students who started music education before age 8 were more hopeful about the future, and that students participating in multiple forms of music education scored higher in measures for competence and hopeful future expectations.  A study published in Frontiers in Psychology found that music education improves students' psychological well-being, which in turn improves their academic performance, with self-efficacy and self-esteem serving as the mechanism between the two. The National Association for Music Education notes that music listening can have a profound impact on students' mental, emotional, and cognitive health, while helping teachers offer guidance to students on skills like emotional self-regulation and social integration.

The cognitive case is equally compelling. Music training fosters neuroplasticity, enabling the brain to strengthen connections and adapt to new challenges, which is essential for effective learning. Students with musical backgrounds often develop stronger neural pathways, which translate to better cognitive flexibility and problem-solving skills.

None of this requires students to be musicians. It requires students to be listeners. And most of them already are.

None of this requires students to be musicians. It requires students to be listeners. And most of them already are.

The Gap Between What We Know and What We Do

Here is the frustrating part.

All of this research exists. Teachers have access to it. And yet the typical classroom response to a student with headphones in is to ask them to take the headphones out.

I understand why. There are real questions about distraction, equity of access, and whether a student listening to music is actually focusing on the task at hand or using it as an excuse to disengage. The Amsterdam News article is honest about this too: music does not affect everyone in the same way, and some music may reinforce negative emotions for certain listeners.

In addition to all of the history funko pops, Liana Kangas Art, and my Kids Artwork are some music pops that stick with me!

But there is a difference between using music thoughtlessly and using it intentionally. The research suggests that intentional music integration, not just tolerating headphones during independent work, but actively designing moments where music is part of the learning, produces measurably different outcomes for students.

The question is not just whether to let students listen to music. The question is also how we can design with music in mind.

What This Actually Looks Like in a Classroom

Here are some specific, low-barrier ways to bring music into the learning environment in a way that is purposeful rather than passive:

Entrance and exit music as a tone-setter.

The two most emotionally loaded moments of a class period are when students walk in and when they leave. Play music during both! Deliberately chosen music for the mood or theme of the day does something a syllabus cannot. It signals that this classroom has a culture. Some teachers play music tied to the historical period being studied. Others play music that matches the emotional register of the content, something reflective before a difficult primary source, something energizing before collaborative work. The music is not the lesson. It is the frame.

Music analysis as primary source work.

Song lyrics are primary sources. Always have been. A protest song from the Civil Rights Movement, a corrido from the US-Mexico border, a sea shanty from the Age of Exploration, a work song from the antebellum South...these are documents that tell us things about lived experience that official records often cannot. Teaching students to read a lyric the way they read a newspaper article or a government document is genuine historical thinking wearing a format students already understand.

It doesn't just have to be as a primary source either! I am absolutely obsessed with the History of Rock & Soul course from Teach Rock! This is not the only resource they offer; if you check out their website, you can find links to hundreds of different topics and themes across every content area! I better see some of my math-oriented friends put together a lesson on the math rock genre!

Soundscape activities for empathy and perspective-taking.

Ask students to find or create a playlist for a historical figure, a time period, or an event. Not music from that era necessarily, but music that captures something true about the emotional experience of it. I'll share my "let's celebrate a world with/out the First Amendment" assignment later! What would the Dust Bowl sound like if it had a soundtrack? What would a refugee hear in their head on a boat crossing the Mediterranean? The constraint forces students to think about emotional interiority in a way that a DBQ prompt rarely does.

Quiet listening during independent work, with intention.

This one is the simplest and the most undervalued. Allowing students to listen to music during independent work, with clear expectations about what that looks like, reduces cortisol, improves focus for many learners, and closes the gap between the way students naturally work outside of school and the way they are asked to work inside it.

Music's soothing effect is well-documented; playing or listening to music can reduce cortisol levels, which lowers stress and anxiety, allowing students to focus more intently and make better decisions. Not every student will benefit equally. But giving students the option, and having a conversation about when and why it helps, is itself a piece of metacognitive instruction.

Student playlist curation as a formative assessment.

Ask students to build a five-song playlist that represents a unit, a historical period, or a character from a text — and write a liner note for each song explaining the connection. The liner note is where the learning lives. It requires synthesis, evidence, and the ability to make an argument about why one thing represents another. It is a transfer task wearing a very convincing creative costume.

What the Article Made Me Think More About

The New York Amsterdam News piece ends with something I keep returning to: for teenagers, music can be a source of comfort, self-expression, connection, and identity... but its impact can depend on the individual and how they use it.

That last clause is where teachers come in.

Students are already using music. They are using it on the bus, in the hallway, in the parking lot, in the bathroom between classes. They are using it to regulate emotions that the school day produces but rarely addresses. The question is whether the classroom becomes one more place where music is something they put away, or whether it becomes a place where music is taken seriously as the powerful cognitive and emotional tool the research confirms it actually is.

Your story matters is the theme running through my Year Zero classroom this year. Music is one of the most direct ways I know to help a student find out what their story sounds like.