Op-ed: The harm of Airbuds

By Paige Purifoy

Photo of students’ AirBuds accounts taken by Paige Purifoy

For teenagers, music could be considered the best form of self-expression out there. Concepts we struggle to put into words are interpreted and contrived into pieces by musicians, beautifully displaying what we can’t say ourselves. Many of us have perfectly curated playlists that give an observer a glimpse of who we are as people.

Chances are you once looked or are looking forward to playing music in your car with your new license, and it's impossible to not see at least one pair of headphones when walking through the halls of OHS. Concerts are vital events to the teenage experience and talked about for months afterward, as well as new album releases from favorite artists. I can recall with crystal clear detail several moments in my life where it felt like a song perfectly encapsulated my situation, a lyric motivated me in a hard time, or just floored me by its magnificence.

That being said, something so personal and unique to the individual should stay that way. AirBuds, a new app that is gaining particular popularity and influence at OHS, endangers the privacy of one’s personal music taste and listening habits. The app allows users to see what friends—people who have mutually added each other—are listening to in real time as well as see how many times someone streams a song. They can react to each other’s listening history with comments and stickers and get a “round up” to post on their social media that recaps what they listened to that week.

AirBuds also has a “ghost mode” feature that a user can turn on when they want to listen to a song without it showing up on their profile. It’s ironic that the app turns what should be the norm of music-enjoying into a feature that users turn on and feel guilty for, hiding a piece of themselves from their peers. This level of access to something as personal as music taste can be damaging and anxiety-inducing. 

It’s been long understood that social media is detrimental to the mental health of teenagers. The very nature of having your life on display, open to scrutiny and judgment, has been linked to anxiety as well as depression, disorientation, dissociation and other negative symptoms. Even though we’re aware of the negative effects social media has on our generation, it’s a part of our daily lives to the point where entire businesses and occupations rely on it. Such a staple would be out of the question to extinguish from society, but it’s a good idea to stop similar ones in their tracks by not feeding into them any longer.

AirBuds is a perfect example of how teenagers act without thinking of how their actions will impact their mental health and permeate their lives. While installing the app might be something you do on a whim that lets you share your music with others, it's important to consider the effects of doing so. Do you really want your unique, personal music taste to be constantly monitored and judged by your peers? Should the finest form of self-expression be butchered into yet another social media outlet and anxiety-inducing activity? Think these questions over before installing Airbuds.