How many times today have you heard music?  Think about it.  Did you wake up to music from your alarm clock?  Was it on during your drive to work or school this morning?  Did you hear it in the hallways before class?  Did you hear it in class at some point? Did you have your IPOD on and heard it when you should have been listening in class ? Or maybe your cell phone went off to the tune of a song? Did you pay attention as you walked into a store or a restaurant—because music was probably playing? What about in the background of a TV show?

The fact is, music is everywhere:  The invention of digital music has only increased the constant availability of music to the masses.  As of 2008, the latest IPOD “Classic”, with its 160 GB of storage, allows us to hold 40,000 songs in our pocket, or 2000 hours of music listening (source: http://www.apple.com/ipodclassic/) . That’s 3 months straight of music if you had really good batteries.  Never more in the history of the world have God’s children needed to understand why the music they listen to matters.

President Steven Richardson, a stake president, wanted to teach the youth in his stake about the effects of music. So he decided to do a little experiment. He put plants in different parts of his house and made sure that they got equal amounts of light and water. The only difference between the plants was the music they listened to. Plants listening to music? Yes! One group of plants listened 24 x 7 to a station that played alternative rock. A second set listened to classical music. The results? Interestingly enough, every time the plants that listened to classical music grew better and appeared healthier than those that listened to harder music.

If music affects plants, it definitely affects people. Have you noticed how music can affect how you feel? Maybe you have heard a patriotic song being played and had a feeling of national pride. Or perhaps you have been hurt and then listened to loud angry music to make the pain go away. Hopefully you have had the experience of listening to sacred music and feeling the presence of the Spirit.

One reason why the music we listen is important is that music affects how we feel, and therefore our ability to recognize the Holy Ghost. For The Strength of Youth teaches, “Unworthy music may seem harmless, but it can have evil effects on your mind and spirit” (For the Strength of Youth, 20). The prophets specifically tell us to, “Pay attention to how you feel when you are listening” to music (“Music and Dancing,” For the Strength of Youth: Fulfilling Our Duty to God, 20; emphasis added).

On the positive side, if you listen to good music it increases your ability to respond to the Spirit. An example of this is found in the Old Testament, in 1 Samuel 16. The king Saul was being afflicted by an evil spirit that was not from God. When this happened, “David took an harp, and played with his hand: so Saul was refreshed, and was well, and the evil spirit departed from him” (JST 1 Samuel 16:23).  The effect on our feelings and the Spirit is the first reason why the music we choose to listen to matters so much.

Just a few short months after President Eyring prophesied of the torrent of sounds, sights, and sensations about to hit our youth, the first iPod was introduced to the general public. Two years later, the first video iPod came out. The youth of today are the first generation to be able to carry thousands of songs, images, and videos in the palm of their hand, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.

Not only have iPods blossomed, but since 2001, so have cultural phenomenons like You-Tube, Google Images, MySpace, Facebook, Wikipedia, Nintendo Wii, Sony PSP , satellite radio, high-definition TV, and home theater systems. Truly a torrent of sounds, sights, and sensations has washed over this current generation like never before in the history of the world. If ever there was a need to understand why it matters so much what we watch, it is now.