The Official Journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics published a study linking sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll, the trifecta of modern day excesses. A university in Rotterdam took a survey of 944 students from inner-city vocational schools between the ages of 15 and 25 to assess their music listening habits and social behavior.

According to the research, listening to loud music on MP3 players meant you were twice as likely to have smoked marijuana in the last month. Those who went to live music clubs were six times more likely to binge drink and twice as likely to engage in unprotected sex.

The study concluded that there is a “high prevalence of risky music-listening behavior among youth attending lower education and its coexistence with other health-risk behaviors” and that more research is needed to understand behavior and the means to prevent it.

In an interview with Reuters, Sharon Levy, head of the Adolescent Substance Abuse Program at Boston Children’s Hospital said:

“We know that high-risk behaviors certainly run together, so in some ways it’s not a big surprise.”

Although there is a correlation, one must also take into account that correlation does not mean causation. One behavior might be found in close proximity to another behavior, but it is not clear whether loud music itself is to blame for risky behavior.