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Effects of peer pressure on adolescents in secondary schools
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The short story “A&P” by John Updike is about a young man named Sammy who is spending his sweet summer vacation working at a supermarket called A&P. Sammy eventually becomes influenced by a few young women in a short amount of time. Prior to these females entering the establishment, Sammy couldn’t believe that these girls didn’t care much about the rules as they walked in only wearing bikinis. The young women eventually influenced Sammy to quit his job without even telling him to do it. Peer pressure is an immensely powerful tool that can have both a positive and a negative effect on nearly every person; the words or actions of others can alter a person’s state of mind. The average person in his or her sane state of mind does not normally decide to quit their job randomly, there must be some kind of outside influence that would convince someone to do such thing. How much of an effect can the actions of others have on oneself? Anyone can …show more content…
Everyone is in the need to ‘fit in’. Peer pressure can be both a dangerous or beneficial to a teens development. It can also affect someone depending on the situation physically and emotionally. “We examined the potential of negative peer pressure within a treatment-focused residential care setting” (Huefner 719). Teen are always being pressured to do something, but the most common issue to being pressured is into alcohol and drug abuse which have a negative long term affect on their development. A lot of the times this happened at parties, after prom etc. When Sammy was working at the A&P, he might have found it very uninteresting and boring, he was neither satisfied or unsatisfied with his job, but merely content with it all. After Sammy had spent some more time deeply thinking about what it was that he was doing as a job, he started to become more and more dissatisfied with the position. As the aspects of his life and this summer job in particular began to draw on
As a teenager we are all looking to be accepted by our peers and will do whatever it is they want us to so we can be accepted. That is to say the feeling of needing to be accepted by ones peers is done consciously; the person starts to do what their friends do without thinking about it. (Teen 3) In fact, teens are more likely to be affected by peer pressure because they are trying to figure out who they are. (How 1) Therefore, they see themselves as how their peers would view them so they change to fit their peer’s expectations. (How 1) Secondly, the feeling of needing to rebel and be someone that isn’t who their parents are trying to make them be affects them. (Teen 2) Thus, parents are relied on less and teens are more likely to go to their peers about their problems and what choices to make. (How 1) Also, their brains are not fully matured and teens are less likely to think through their choices thoroughly before doing it. (Teen 6) Lastly, how a child is treated by his peers can affect how they treat others; this can lead them into bullying others who are different. (Teen 3) Consequently this can affect a teen into doing something good or bad; it depends who you surround yourself with.
Peer pressure plays a huge role in today's society. About ninety percent of teens have been influenced by peer pressure in their lives. The narrator in the short story, The Bass, the River, and Sheila Mant, was greatly influenced by Sheila Mant. She caused him to change his personality for her. It didn’t work. Sheila wasn’t interested in him even after he worked so hard to impress her. The narrator instantly regretted the situations in which he changed his personality. He regretted those instances throughout his entire life. It is important that a person does not change themselves for their peers because they will most likely regret it at some point in their
Friendship can be debated as both a blessing and a curse; as a necessary part of life to be happy or an unnecessary use of time. Friends can be a source of joy and support, they can be a constant stress and something that brings us down, or anywhere in between. In Book 9 of Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle discusses to great lengths what friendship is and how we should go about these relationships. In the short story “Melvin in the Sixth Grade” by Dana Johnson, we see the main character Avery’s struggle to find herself and also find friendship, as well as Melvin’s rejection of the notion that one must have friends.
Conformity means a change in one’s behavior due to the real or imagined influence of other people. As a teenager, the pressure to conform to the societal “norm” plays a major role in shaping one’s character. Whether this means doing what social groups want or expect you to do or changing who you are to fit in. During class, we watched films such as Mean Girls, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, and The Breakfast Club which demonstrate how the pressure to conform into society can change who you are. In the movies we have seen, conformity was most common during high school.
Teens are offered multiple illegal substances, they must decide between sports or a job, and they must get homework done. These are just the beginning, as said by Equality in the book Anthem,“The learning was to easy for us....this was a sin… It is not good to be different from our brothers”(Rand 22-23). Teachers are telling him it's bad to be unique wich pressures him to try and change. Teens and children are commonly bullied or laughed at which causes them to try and change who they are. They are pressured to be like everyone else. Anthem is a playground of emotions and so are teens. It’s no wonder why they connect so
Peer pressure can be to do something that is legal but against one 's morals, and some peer pressure can be for a person to do something illegal. In The Breakfast Club, the viewer sees that stereotypes can create peer pressure. For example, as the "brain", Brian experiences pressure from both friends and family to maintain a very high GPA. This isn 't necessarily bad peer pressure until Brian gets a failing grade on a workshop assignment. This peer pressure and the expectation of living up to his given stereotype leads him to contemplate suicide. Like the other detention students, the viewer realizes there is a person behind the "brain" who has feelings such as fear and disappointment. The film also presents another type of peer pressure that occurs in every high school, the treatment of other students who are not in your social group. For instance, Claire admits that when Monday arrives, there is a good chance she will not speak to any of the kids in the Saturday detention because of what her friends might think. She admits she "hates having to go along with everything" her friends want. She further explains, "you don 't understand the pressure that they can put on you!" This type of peer pressure isn 't directly spoken, but it is caused by fear of judgment from her own social class. Another example of peer pressure is show in the library when Bender goes to the back of the library to
Sammy, a young cashier at the local A & P Store in John Updike’s short story is a character that we see as someone who is ever changing and has deep level of subconscious thoughts and feelings. Sammy is well aware of his surroundings and the process of human nature, seeing as people watching is the thing he spend the most of his time doing. Throughout the story we start to see that Sammy has a subconscious disrespect for authority and hypocrisy.
Researching John Updike’s story, "A&P", I found many readers agreed that the main character Sammy is viewed as a hero or martyr for quitting his job at an A&P store in a northern beach town. I did, however, find that critics disagreed on why Sammy quit. Initially it appears that Sammy quits his job to impress girls who were reprimanded for wearing bathing suits in the A&P. Sammy did not ultimately quit his job to be the hero for three girls who happened to walk into this A&P. This is not just a story about a nineteen-year-old guy trying to impress a group of girls by quitting his job, but it is also a story describing in detail the day this nineteen-year-old realizes that sometimes, in the transition from boyhood to adulthood, one must take a stand and ultimately follow through with this affirmation of adulthood.
A large majority of teens want to fit in and feel like they belong, but how far are they willing to go to fit in? The more they want to fit in the more likely they will be easily influenced by suggestions from others. During my second week of eighth grade, I felt like I wasn’t fitting in and that everyone was silently judging me and criticizing me. Of course now that I think about I don’t think anyone really cared about me, but I was more self-conscious about myself then. One day during lunch my friends and I sat next to a couple of girls who were known as the “popular” girls and I thought that maybe I would fit in more if I was friends with them. I spent the rest of that lunch hour trying to build up the courage to talk to them and at last minute I told the friendliest looking girl, that I loved her shirt and I asked her what store she bought it from. She told me that it was from Free People; she then gushed about the store and told me how everything there was amazing. She suggested that I should check it out sometime so I did. I, of course couldn’t wait to shop there. I told myself that if I shopped at Free People, I could maybe fit in with her and even be a part of the popu...
"Parents and teachers often miss children's nascent understanding of group dynamics, as well as kids' willingness to buck to the pressure," Killen explains. Children begin to figure out the costs and consequences of resisting peer group pressure early. By adolescence, they find it only gets more complicated."
Growing up is one of the most important stages of human life. It is the part when humans reach maturity, become adults, and attain full growth. Also, it means one more thing. It means understanding more about the society. Harper Lee's, To Kill A Mocking Bird, shows the different ways of growing up. There are three characters who go through the process of growing up, Scout mentally grows up, Jem goes through a mental growing up that every adolescent will go through and aunt Alexandra also goes through a mental growing up.
... instead of following the majority. The issue of peer pressure can relate to teens, as they are in constant pressure to be ‘cool’ or to be in the ‘in’ group. It does not really promote individualism, so people cannot develop their own ideas but rather follow the leader of their group.
One type of effect that can tip any decision balance to another side is peer pressure. In an experiment done by a psychologist Youtuber called Vsauce, he demonstrates this phenomenon in a shocking experiment called the Ash experiment. He puts a participant with a chosen group of paid actors. Their job is simple, to match the length of a stick drawn on a board with three sticks labeled 1 2 3. At first, the paid actors choose the correct answer to gain the participant’s trust. After round three, the actors began to lie and choose an incorrect answer. At first, the participant did not follow the crowd and stick to the correct answer, but two rounds later, she began to follow the actor’s choice blindly. This experiment is a clear example how peer pressure can sway
Teenagers become caught up with following peers, because the decision is made to become involved in experimental activities by choice. On the other hand, peer pressure in teens can allow mature growth in the student, because the individual can them become a leader within an environment in a positive manner. According to kidshealth.org, “Getting to know lots of different people-
When you are a teenager and you have friends that ask you to do something for them and you do not then they get mad. Then think you are a loser and that is ever person's nightmare, to not be liked. Peer pressure is no piece of cake. It is like choosing the wrong thing for what you think is right at that very moment, and then regretting it afterwards, because your parents find out. But most would not care about what they do wrong or right. Unless there is a chance of parental disappointment, and a lot of the time that is the case.