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The effects of peer pressure
Peer pressure and its effects
The effects of peer pressure
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High school is a combat zone. Perhaps incognito, high school is vile in all ways, shapes, and forms. High school is destruction of humanity. From blondes to redheads, nerds to football players, and albinos to bronzed beauties, there is no fair play. The people we hang out with show who we “truly are”. And automatically we are put into cliques. These cliques define us, and we are only to hang out with them. Right? Every school has their own cliques of people; the nerds, the jocks, the preps, the fresas, the freaks, the Goths and etc. We usually follow the high school trend, and keep into our own group. Why do we do this? Is it because we are scared to hang out with people who are below our social standing? And afraid they will corrupt our reputation? Who really knows? We just follow what we have learned to do, and created these groups of people. I suppose you could say there will always be those girls, who think they are better than everyone else, just because the have a lot of money. They My freshman year I took part in the production of a musical and fell in love with the cast. It was amazing how they made me feel so welcomed. I felt like I belonged. The seniors took me under their wing and guided me through the year. And then people started telling me, “Oh you hang out with the drama people,” “ Oh your in drama.” And I didn’t understand why it was such a bad thing. For the musical we needed actors of all shapes and sizes, therefore bringing in football players, the drill team, and other forms of people were necessary. We quickly bonded and became a big family. We all shared a passion for this musical we were producing and we all cared about each other. At that point a lot changed. We started tearing pieces away from the “High school status quo”. We proved that anyone could hang out together. I guess you can say there will always be those “popular girls.” The ones that think they are better than you, and can make you do whatever they want. Those girls really don’t see the cliques in high school because they are to busy with their own people.
In the movie Mean Girls the role of conformity is important to the central plot. The plot of the movie is focused on new girl Caty, who moved from Africa to start a new life, and is forced to attend America’s high schools. She at first has two friends, Damien and Janis, two kids who consider being in the “outside” group. However, the popular girls, called the “Plastics” try to take Caty into their group, because of her she looks. The leader of the group is the most popular girl in school named Regina, who is really hated by a lot of people, but is still considered extremely popular. Caty falls for their deceptive kindness, not realizing that really it’s all just a show. She begins to become more like them, she starts to talk to boys and dress
Every person has different personalities that they develop during different stages in life. Many personalities start with parents and how they educate their children. That is the basis of who someone is. Once you get older you start to finally try and figure out who you are. High school can be either the best or the worst place to figure it out. High school is usually thought of a new scary place when starting freshmen year. There are kids who will be older and you will meet different types of people that you might have never met before. The way parents treat their kids can affect their school life. Meaning that if student’s lives at home are not good living conditions that can cause a gap between other students at school. The movie Carrie made in 1976, Carrie was bullied at school but also in way by the hands of her mother who also bullied her at home.
High school is one of those milestones in an individual’s life that will be remembered for a long time to come. Whether one’s experiences are positive and allow him to find his purpose in life or whether they are so terrible that his view of education is tainted forever, what happens in high school affects how one’s future will turn out. Leon Botstein, author of “Let Teenagers Try Adulthood,” states that the traditional high school system should be abolished because it is not benefitting teenagers. He states that cliques of popularity and athleticism and teachers who care more about money than education stand in the way of proper learning for teenagers. Botstein further argues that school stifles students creativity and that they really do not want to be in school. His argument that the traditional high school setting should be abolished is somewhat justified on the fact that cliques make schooling experiences difficult; however, his statement that children’s creativity is stifled, they are bored in high school, and that they are ready to be adults at a young age is invalid.
For many of us, when asked “what social group do you fit in?” it may not take much time to identify our place in the society. Some people may respond being apart of a higher class, an artistic crowd, or just look around to their friends to say “I’m with these guys”. Being social may come as natural to most of us, yet why be social? Why be apart of a crowd? And how do the people you associate with affect you? Thinking about why your friend is your friend can help answer these questions. For instance, I became very close friends with someone at my school because they work at Chipotle. My reasoning for associating with this person is discounts. It is common for people to form relationships based on dependence, many teens wouldn’t associate with
Imagine being alone with no friends and no one to talk to. Now, place yourself in a location where you are surrounded by closed tight-knit groups where acceptance from those groups is a challenge to obtain. Then, picture yourself back when you were in high school, but this time, apply the image you have created for yourself. Do you wish for acceptance? Or friendship? Do you feel confident in taking the challenges that high school will bring? High school has a significant impact on an individual’s development. Whether it is their personality or behavior, an individual who goes through high school can see changes in their characteristics. A common stereotype in high school that is largely portrayed in the media is the existence of cliques. Cliques can give an individual a sense of belonging or a sense of betrayal. These two behaviors are commonly seen with the acceptance or rejection from these groups. An immediate result from these two actions is a change in morale or confidence for that individual. Cliques exist in high school due to individual conformity. An individual conforms to the group in order to feel accepted or to feel secured. Groups or cliques in high school have a significant negative effect on an individual’s development of characteristic and personality and the reasons as to why individuals join these types are not justified.
As an individual stuck amidst a foundation known for its propensity to breed social congruity, college has opened my eyes to numerous distinctive reasons why individuals decide to act in ways they wouldn't regularly act. Since they ordinarily aren't certain of their character, adolescents are more inclined to similarity than others. In the most essential structure, college is tormented with congruity through the generalizations that learners seek after and explore different avenues regarding trying to uncover their personality. There are two sorts of Conformity: the kind that makes you do your errands when your father authorizes you to, and the less than great kind in which you aimlessly take after the thoughts and tenets of an inner circle or gathering, without addressing the negative impacts it has upon yourself and the improvement of whatever remains of public opinion. Conformity is basic in that people strive for a feeling of strength and acknowledgement in their lives. As a result of this need, “we therefore figure out how to fit in with principles of other individuals. What's more the more we see others carrying on in a certain manner or settling on specific choices, the more we feel obliged to stick to this same pattern.” Despite the freedoms we are supposed to have in American society most adolescents find it difficult to have their own identity.
High school is a very transitory period for most teenagers. They are just beginning to discover who they are and what they care about in the world. Though within there are many battles for the individual, there also exist many social barriers. The "popular" crowd is generally full of the jocks. The boys who participate in sport every season: football, baseball and track, and the cheerleader girls who are petit in stature and care greatly about their outward appearance (I realize that this is quite a generalization, yet it has proven true in my experience). Somehow, it seems that these peoples' opinions always matter the most. They determine what is "in," they define "cool." Personally, I never was an active member of this crowd, though some close friends of mine were. My "group" of friends however, was fairly athletic. Practically every one of us participated in a sport, track, swimming, gymnastics, basketball, or soccer. One friend was always a bit different from the rest of the guys. While not feminine in his demeanor, he never distinguished himself as particularly "manly." For example, when one of the girls had to go to the locker room for some reason, she always asked Kawika if he wanted...
As preteens and teens push for increasing independence from their parents, they tend to turn to their peers for guidance, acceptance, and security. For those who are low in self-esteem and confidence, their safety lies in fitting in and having a place to belong. Most people find a group in which they connect with in a healthy way while others make their way in cliques that give them security but at the price of their own values and individuality. The movie Mean Girls portrays how high school female social cliques operate and the effect they can have on girls. I will argue how if one doesn’t have a strong sense of self-identity, the opinions of others will become their identity.
In today's society, our natural reaction is to put people into a specific class that we feel they fit into upon our first impression. When we were in high school, they were called clicks. There were your jocks and your cheerleaders, who were usually the most popular students. Along with stoners, nerds, and then the people who really didn't fit into any crowd, they were just there. When we were in high school, all of us wanted to be in the "cool crowd". As described in When I was growing Up by Nellie Wong, "I discovered the rich white girls...imported cotton dresses...and thought that I too should have what these lucky girls had..." In stereotyping people, we perhaps have ruined some great minds.
High school is supposed to be a one more step closer to college; it’s supposed to be preparing you for the future right? Wrong. My experience in high school was very different; I never quite fit in with anyone, the “friends” that I thought that I had used me for money. Let’s just say when I was a freshman I had a friend whom I knew from grade school, her name was Meghan Lawrence and she was the kind of person who I really believed I could tell her anything and she would keep it to herself. Once again I was proven wrong, I developed a crush on a boy and she knew that I had a crush on him; one morning before class both he and she went to the corner store, she thought it would be funny to tell him all about my crush, which he tortured me with, playing with my emotions, made me feel like he might actually like me back.
If you were to walk into a high school lunchroom, what is the first thing you would see? Groups, cliques, friend circles, and separations. Tables split up in detached formations, almost completely unaware of the other surrounding pupils nearby. The most common groups in high school are the populars and the outcasts. The kids who have endless friends, engage in team sports, and meet the ideal teenage standards, against the ones who are quiet, solitary, and unconventional. The ones that are outcasts fall into the second description. They don’t line up with society's norms therefore, they tend to be looked upon as bizarre and atypical. Outsiders are too often misjudged and misunderstood
In public schools, students are faced with the different groups among their peers. The popular group is most favored, which probably means that you go to school in the latest fashion, you are the team captain or captain of the cheerleading squad. If you are a “geek”, you are probably made fun of because you are smart and get good grades instead of spending the morning caring about how you look. If you a...
I remember a time a few years back when I had a group of fairly close friends. We would always hang out with eachother and we would await the day at which we were to enter high school together. When we finally reached high school, there where now a whole new group of people that were older than I. I still had my group of friends, but gradually I started to lose one of them. My friend was going against my other schoolmate, and before I knew it I was hurling the same insults as they were. It was all part of a process; a process, I thought, was going to make me popular. I thought that if I could make someone look lower than I was, I would gain self-confidence and become more popular.
Groups, such as cliques, are formed with other kids, most likely within their gender, who can all relate to each other in some aspect. According to Patricia Adler in Socialization to Gender Roles: Popularity among Elementary School Boys and Girls, she states that “segregated sexual cultures have been observed as early as preschool” (pg. 169). They observed both genders in terms of popularity and the formation of these cliques and had regular kids (meaning that they didn’t have popularity status) comment on each factor that either helped or diminished the “status” of boys and girls who are popular or more popular than them. In studying about the factors that determined what would make specifically a boy supposedly popular in a school environment as opposed to what would do that for a girl, “Eder and Hallinan (1978) compared the structure of boys’ and girls’ friendship patterns and found that girls have more exclusive and dyadic relationships than do boys, which leads to their greater social skills, emotional intimacy, and ease of self-disclosure” (Adler, pg. 170). The ways that kids believe they should go about making friends or being known in a place like school is definitely contributed by gender role socialization. This is true because why else would boys believe it’s okay to go forward with the behaviors and attitudes like toughness in order to gain such a status that only
You know, it is really strange how quickly time passes, after spending my whole childhood wishing I was an adult, now here we are and it's a little hard to grasp. It feels like just yesterday I was standing here in the same position at eighth grade graduation. Ahh, middle school, such a joyous time for all of us, free of maturity and not a care in the world. The biggest decisions I ever had to make then was deciding which group to stand with at passing time and choosing which shirt from my extensive collection of Stussy and No Feat apparel to wear. We were all naive to the danger that lurked just around the corner. We were unaware that the carefree world we lived in was about to come crashing to the ground in a blazing inferno of real school work and responsibility ... otherwise known as high school.