Censors have primarily targeted controversial elements in music and there have been efforts to blame the actual music for causing the ills of society. Today's society largely views censorship as a practice that has disappeared from liberal cultures. Traditional censorship assumes the guise of capitalist retailers and distributors, special-interest groups, and less influential but still passionate religious and government authorities. Parental censorship of music, specifically heavy metal, should be enforced because many of the lyrics contain profanity, and the artists in music videos are seen as promoters of sex, drugs, and alcohol.
Composers of heavy metal lyrics are often cited as using obscene language, ideas, and imagery in their lyrics. The obscenity that is targeted by censors is usually a documentation of real people and real events expressed through language. Though lyrics can be shocking to most of the middle and upper classes in society, they describe the reality of some people's lives in the lower classes, which include sex, violence, pain, suffering, and unusual human acts. Some of the lyrical content of heavy metal is blamed for the rise of Satanism. Cardinal O"Connor, head of the New York City Catholic Diocese, holds heavy metal liable for the increase of Satanism followers in that city. Many songs that include lyrical content relating to explicit sex, explicit violence, or explicit substance abuse are now being censored. (Radziewicz 2) .
Lyrics of heavy metal music communicate potentially harmful health messages, which pose unprecedented threats to the health and well-being of adolescents. Due to these lyrics, some of the things that have become part of the landscape of everyday life for many American teens are pregnancy, drug use, sexual transmitted diseases, injuries, homicide, and suicide. The attitudes embodied in the lyrics may also act as a catalyst for change from childhood to adulthood.