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Negative consequences of peer pressure
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"Be yourself, not your idea of what you think somebody else's idea of yourself should be." -- Hussein Nishah
'Oh look, those are the new jeans everyone are buying, hey do you want to get high, smoke this.' Have you ever been in a situation like this, where you just purchased an item or said yes to something that you feel regretful for just to fit in with other people? If you have then you have gone through the social anxieties of peer pressure.
Many times in a teenager's life there are choices that have to be made. Many of the choices us teenagers make are influenced by peer pressure. Sure, I had obsession with many trends growing up, but later on in life I heard a quote that really aimed at my thoughts, the quote was "The shoe doesn't make the man, the man makes the shoe."
After hearing the quote I thought about what I did in my life to fit in, and realized that what a person wears, buys, or listens to, doesn't create who a person is. Peer pressure throws out the thought of being who you want to be; peer pressure is more reminiscent of "be like everybody else."
County High School is a perfect example of how teenager's deal with peer pressure. Being at High School for approximately a year, I have noticed all the fads, trends, and crazes High goes through. A massive issue about peer pressure is teen smoking and sex. I am highly agreeable that social pressures lead people to buy cigarettes and drugs, if it was up to the person I think drugs wouldn't even be in their mind. From my own experiences I know numerous people who did drugs just to be accepted into a group.
Sex is also a major contribution to the many issues that make up peer pressure. Sex to me is the one thing most people regret they did in their lives because 10 minutes of pleasure just because everyone else does it will never match up to the pain somebody may have to go through a lifetime because of a disease caused by sex. Peer pressure is just not worth having a disease the rest of your life, having to swallow 25 pills everyday for the rest of your life.
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
author Alexander Robbins states: “From the age of five children increasingly exclude peers who don’t conform to group norms. Children learn this quickly. A popular Indiana eighth grader told me ‘I have to be the same as everybody else, or people won’t like me anymore’” (150). The human brain is wired such that children will end friendships with kids that they find different. Robbins finds this behavior to be undesirable saying that it is not only unappealing, but it is a cop-out. In agreement with Robbins, parents across the world, organizations, and teen movies tell society that conformity is bad and that children should not conform to the group, rather they should stand alone and be individuals. However, Solomon Asch’s study may have discovered why this is. He concluded that: “The investigations described in this series are concerned with the independence and lack of independence in the face of group pressure” (1). Asch determines that in the face of pressure people are more apt to conform.
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.
¨ Show people who you are on the inside, not the copy of someone else that’s on the outside ¨ No one has heard this quote before, but it is telling everyone to be themselves and not be ashamed who they really are not the copy you have made over the years. People in our generation tend to believe that kids and teens are not being true to themselves and just wanting to be one within the crowd.
There are just so many ways teenagers can be influenced through advice and suggestions of others. It may be because they want to fit in, make someone proud, so they can have a certain item or even all of the above.
One of the most important reasons of teenage drug usage is peer pressure. Peer pressure makes drugs seem popular, makes you have a fear of being an outcast, and since everyone is doing it, it is the "cool" thing to do…right? Wrong. Peer pressure represents social influences that effect adolescents, it can have a positive, or a negative effect, depending on person's social group and one can follow one path of the other. We are greatly influenced by the people around us. In today's colleges, drugs are very common; peer pressure usually is the reason for their usage (www.nodrugs.com 1). If the people in your social group use drugs, there will be pressure a direct or indirect pressure from them. A person may be offered to try drugs, which is direct pressure. Indirect pressure is when someone sees everyone around him using drugs and he might think that there is noth...
One article that covers the results of a national survey states that ¡§Adolescents¡¦ levels of alcohol and drug use have been found to be strongly associated with peers¡¦ use. However, other studies have shown that a student¡¦s drinking was more strongly influenced by how much he or she thought close friends drank than by perceptions of the extent of use by students in general¡¨(Results 2). This is a statement that I can agree with because growing up I have watched many young people become greatly influenced by their friends. Now a days the phrase ¡§peer pressure¡¨ concentrates on pressure from a direct group of friends rather than a students peers as a whole. Another reason the article gives for the cause of Binge Drinking is that ¡§Students who perceive that more drinking occurs than actually does provide themselves with an excuse for drinking more because ¡¥everyone is doing it¡¦¡¨ (Results 2). Everyone knows that most youngsters want what every other kid has, this idea relates in the...
“Most teenagers feel insecure about who they are are still unsure of themselves. The safest way for them to feel accepted is to be associated with the popular clique.” Being socially accepted is something that teenagers long for. Being popular is a shortcut. If a person tells the school that they should wear black on Monday, then teenagers will wear black just to be like all of the others.
When I look back at these small changes that I would not have noticed otherwise and what we learn in lecture, I see the concern my school and parents had with teenagers and the changes after the transition from preteen to a teenager. I was so excited for that change because I wanted to be older, however, when I got older I was thrown all these expectations that I felt pressured to conform to. It seems to me that these expectations and pressures get thrown at all teenagers to get them to follow a certain pathway and only that. Wandering away from that pathway was seen as wrong but now I look back and wonder why it was seen as wrong. Why is society so scared of change?
... 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.
...wn life, peer pressure plays an enormous role in everyday society. People do unimaginable things when pressure is put on them by people that they admire. We comply and conform when brainwashed, influenced, and pressured. It creates huge and destructive problems and moral struggles as seen with Orwell, the victims of Jonestown, and the thousands of teens that fall prey to peer pressure everyday. The only way to combat peer pressure is for others to start being accountable for their own actions and for integrity to become a higher priority in day-to-day life. If society can begin to teach our youth this then we will be one step closer to eliminating the problem; however, complete elimination of peer pressure can only come when adolescents and adults alike stop being the problem, and start becoming the solution by resisting the urge to pressure and be pressured.
Alert! Alert! We 've all seen it on TV shows and in the movies: a good kid with a good home and a good family life, but questionable friends. Soon enough, the kid is going out every night smoking, doing drugs, and partying. Every parenting book on the planet, it seems, has a section similar to this with warnings all over about how to save your child from the harmful, gripping effects of peer pressure. This all promotes the idea that peer pressure is damaging to school-children and teenagers. As a whole, society has become obsessed with individuals making decisions for themselves, so much so that we 've been trained to hear alarm bells when we think of peer pressure. However, though it is usually connoted as a negative influence, peer pressure perpetuates many positive qualities within a number of social situations.
Children grow up and move into teenage lifestyles, involvement with their peers, and how they look in other peoples eyes start to matter. Their hormones kick in, and they experience rapid changes in their minds, and bodies. They also develop a mind of their own, questioning the adult standards and need for their parental guidance. By trying new values and testing ideas with peers there is less of a chance of being criticized. Even though peer pressure can have positive effects, the most part is the bad part.
For some people peer pressure may come from you directly, this may be because you are feeling different than everyone else even if they are not suggesting you join. Other times groups of friends can have certain activities and habits they do together. If you find that hanging out with people who tend to do things you wouldn't normally do and you feel unaccepted unless you follow through, "get out" so you don't fall into the pressure to "fit in"