The Effects of Peer Pressure

Peer pressure is something that everyone has faced at one time or another. It can happen at any age, but usually affects teenagers the most. Throughout junior high and high school teenagers are desperate to fit in. For example a group of four friends goes to the gas station after school. Three of the girls take a candy bar and slide it in their pocket. They told the fourth girl, Jenny, to go ahead and take one too. Jenny had never done anything like this before and she knows that it is not right. She is new to this school and she wants these girls to like her ,so she goes ahead and does it anyway. This is a perfect example of what teenagers do when they get around their friends. They try to be “cool” and impress their peers even if it means doing something that they would never do it they were with their parents or even if they were alone. Many times when people hear the words peer pressure they think of negative things, but peer pressure can also be positive.

When kids enter high school they begin to get involved in numerous activities. Most of these activities, such as sports, are after school. Teenagers start to spend more and more time with their peers and less time with their families (“Peer Pressure: Its Influence on Teens and Decision Making”, 2008). With this happening teens tend to pick up on habits that their peers have, or start talking and acting as their peers do; they start taking more risks. It often seems as if “peer influence can be hard to resist- it really has become “pressure”- and you may feel compelled to do something you’re not comfortable with” but they do it anyways (“Peer Pressure: Its Influence on Teens and Decision Making”, 2008).

There is a direct effect on brain signals dealing with risk and reward ...

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...opt or reject the behaviors of their peer group” when they are in a social group (Cho & Chung, 2011). Peer pressure can happen to anyone no matter how old they are. It even happens to “good” kids. It is hard to resist when others are around and the pressure is high. Peer pressure has many severe effects that are long lasting.

Works Cited

Cho, Y., & Chung, O. (2012). A Mediated Moderation Model of Conformative

Peer Bullying. Journal Of Child & Family Studies, 21(3), 520-529.

Parker- Pope, T. (2011). Teenager, Friends, and Bad Decisions. New York Times. http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/03/teenagers-friends-and-bad-decisions/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=1 Peer Pressure: It's Influence on Teen and Decision Making. (2008). Scholastic, Heads Up.

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