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Any musical enthusiast, regardless of the genre of music, has one true passion in life to listen to the music they love and hold dear. Music is something that allows people to express themselves in a way nothing else can. The introduction of the IPod and similar devices into the world market was a genius move on the part of large technical corporations, such as Apple. These devices are practical for those of us who simply cannot drag a collection of over 100 compact disks everywhere we go. They are bulky, heavy, and essentially unreliable due to scratching and skipping. It only stands to reason that smaller devices, especially high capacity devices, would be gobbled up by music lovers around the globe. It's a nice way to make some easy cash, especially when you sell the product at a price about four times more than it actually costs to produce.

This new craze does create an interesting question has the simplicity of the IPod and other mp3 devices created a generation of socially inept individuals? Certainly, if your goal is to drown out the world around you, the IPod makes it tremendously effortless to put on your headphones and do just that. Indeed, one can hardly walk down the street in any city without seeing at least twenty people with those unmistakable buds perched neatly in their ears. But does this really mean that these individuals are any more or less socially competent than any other person passing silently on the street corner?
There are many arguments on both sides, but there is one irrefutable fact that still remains so-called "loners" existed long before the IPod was so much as a glimmer in the eye of it's inventors. Many people are under the misconception that music lovers, especially those who enjoy certain types of music such as hard rock and metal, are inherently loners. This could not be further from the truth. These individuals are no more prone to being socially inadequate than any others, they simply enjoy a different rhythm. Conceptions of music differ from person to person, and music is generally used as a mental schema in which to organize the world as a whole.
In fact, social competence has little to do with the type of music a person associates with. If anything, the degree of a person's social situation affects the type of music they enjoy, not the other way around. Blaming a generation of "loners" on an mp3 player is simply not rational. Perhaps, for some reason or other, our generation leans more toward introversion then extroversion, and who is to say that is a bad thing? The bottom line is that I am one of those people who walk down the street with my headphones blazing, and yet I am in no way considered socially awkward. Why do I opt to listen to my music? I do it because it is something I enjoy, something that I do indeed love, and if that makes me a loner in the view of some, than so be it. I agree that there are very many young people in this world who may qualify as a supposed loner, and I also agree that some of these people may indeed be socially awkward. I simply do not believe that blaming such a movement on an IPod, a device that helps people integrate many different variants of music into their otherwise limited scope, is unfair. There are larger problems in society today that cause people to develop a loner complex things such as our incessant obsession with appearance, or our ignorant disrespect for certain views that can better explain such a shift. Mp3 devices are, by comparison, a light in the darkness for those of us who wish to see our world in a different light. Music represents a glimmer of hope. If an IPod is the mechanism to spread that, than I, for one, am all for it.

Learn more about this author, Evelyn Owen.
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