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An essay on the influence of peer pressure on teenagers
An essay on the influence of peer pressure on teenagers
Negative effects of peer pressure
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Peer pressure should not be allowed because it may result in bad choices for the person experiencing it. Many kids entering high school, or middle school start experiencing all different kinds of peer pressuring. Whether it is encouraging you to join choir, track, or dance. But, sometimes your friends can be pressuring you to try very dangerous things. For example, drugs, drinking, and dares that lead to very hard consequences.
This is one of the toughest issues a teenageer will face. They feel if they don't do it they are not part of ¨the group" anymore. It's not always someone physically talking to you, and telling you to do it. Some are caused by the media. Society shows us on television, magazines, and advertisements, that this is in. But, is is not the case. Just to be someone they think their friends will love more, or simply to fit in.
One of the main factors that are harsh in the world of bourgeois life, with it's premius placed on appearance, skill, and ambition. According to The New York Times ¨Teenageers, friends, and Bad decisions,¨ Teenageers and peer pressure has a distinct effect on brain signals involving risk and rewarding, helping to explain why young people are most likely to misbehave and take risk when their friends are watching. They start feeling left out, not wanted. But, when they seem to talk about how much fun they are having doing it you can just hear but not relate. This is when they start to give up , and give into the dangerous situations they're friends are doing.
Another example is the book ¨Go ask Alice¨. Alice was once a shy innocent girl who got sucked into the world of drugs because of her need to be accepted. With teenageers feeling alone and no one being there to help them they will do anyt...
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... with guys to dance. Liz felt alone but, soon a guy approached her and started talking. He asked her to go somewhere quiet with him to talk. She said no but, guy kept trying and trying to pressure her to get with her alone. When Liz gave in the gut took her out on the garden where no one could even hear them going out because of the loud music The guy ended up raping Liz and no one came to help her because no one could hear her.”
Think about who your friends are whoever they are you are or will become. You don’t need anyone to tell you how to feel. There is so much more the world has to reveal to you.
“We all must take responsibility for our own actions. What seems like a good idea at the time-or maybe not all that good, but accepted could very well end up coming back to bite you. Then, it will be your problem and no one else’s.”- The Guide To Peer Pressure
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.
Everyone who has been peer pressured to do something knows that it is quite difficult to say no because you risk losing a friend or maybe you 're friends might not see you as “cool” anymore. An article about peer pressure and drugs states that when making a decision, teens think about both the risks and rewards of their actions and behaviours. The teen’s decision might be influenced by who is around and if they think others will be impressed (Teens.drugabuse.gov) Being peer pressured to do drugs is like being little and having your parents tell you to try a food you thought was disgusting, but once you try it you automatically fall in love with it, one may or may not like what they are pressured to do. Maté doesn 't mention anything about peer pressure but he does mention people who were forced to have undesirable actions towards them, including a 36 year old native who had dishwashing liquid poured down his throat at age 5 for using foul language, these are the unhappy moments that can cause people to try drugs with hopes of easing the pain. As I said before, drugs give the user a very pleasing and satisfying experience but most people unfortunately forget about the negative outcomes that can result from doing drugs. Peer pressure leads to experimentation
One should remember that not all peer pressure is bad, although that is mostly what you see today. Good peer pressure needs to be done more, because why would you want to make someone do something bad, instead of helping them do something good and impacting them, because honestly who would want a worse world rather than a better one? Truly the way to improve our lives as human beings lies on peer pressure, it is at the core of ways we can make a change for a better, and not more for the
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...
"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."
Peer pressure is doing something that is not quite normal, but your friends pressure you into the situation because they do it. This definition of peer pressure is something that is always happening, especially with the world changing each day. Things like tobacco, alcohol, and drugs, are all possibilities that peer pressure is related to. However, in the texts “Shooting and Elephant” by George Orwell and “No Witchcraft for Sale” by Doris Lessing demonstrate peer pressure among many thing; however, there are many solutions resulting in good things compared to the bad things that have happened. Solutions to peer pressure in these texts could be many things, but the three that would work best would be: ignore the person, walk away, and lastly, know that you should not do anything you do not feel comfortable with.
... 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.
Living with positive pressure is a great way to grow up for an adolescent. Kids always need an influence. If they are shown that doing something positive is cool, such as going to college to earn a degree, they will want to emulate that person. Pressuring a child to do negative things is not a great way to influence an individual. If a kid sees that stealing is the only way he can have friends, he is never going to go far in life. There are many things I regret in my life that I have done because of negative peer pressure, but there are also many things that I'm proud of because my close friends have positively pressured me to do my best at whatever I do.
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.
.... They will care the feeling of their peers and did not want their peers disappointed or get throw away from peer’s group. Want to or not, teenagers will follow their negative peer activities, examples like smoking, taking drugs, and joining gangs. Although teenagers did not want to do it, they will try it at once because of the peer pressure from their friends.
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-
As children get older they seem to spend a lot more time with their friends, and a whole lot less time with their parents. Therefore what their friends say and do rub off on them, or they start to adopt what their friends do as right or routine. Even though they have been taught most of their lives that it was wrong, or they were taught what was right. They adapt a new style of clothes and a new vocabulary, mostly slang. And they get new hobbies and new tastes in music, friends have a big impact on all these things.
Many of the choices teenagers make are influenced by peer pressure. Sure, I had an 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.
Peer pressure can be both a positive and negative influence and will challenge us do things whether they are right or wrong. This is left for you to determine. Peer pressure can influence several areas in your life like; academic performance, who you choose for friends, it can influence who you mat choose for a boyfriend or girlfriend, it can influence decisions about sex, it may change your feelings about alcohol and drug use, and it can even determine your fashion choice.