Effects Of Peer Pressure On Teenagers

The Effects of Peer Pressure on Teenagers

Peer pressure has become a well-known social issue crossing the world, especially for teenagers. As teens grow up, putting more and more attention on the comparison with their friends, they tend to be influenced by peer pressure that is generated by their social groups. In general, peer pressure has several negative effects on teenagers from their daily behavior to their ability of judging their identities. Specifically, peer pressure affects kids’ health, forcing them to follow the trends and negatively influenced them to try something bad. On the other hand, it also has some positive influences on teenagers: it increases teens’ attendance on activities and helps them practice their critical thinking

Peer pressure is generated among teenagers because of their desires of being liked. A website organized by The Nemours Foundation in the aim of educating children about their physical and mental health problems, the KidsHealth, advertises that it mainly because they worry whether they will be laughed at if they do not go along with the social group (2017). Besides, teenagers can also cause peer pressure when they are curious about trying new things that everyone around them does. They are especially vulnerable to peer pressure, because they just leave their parents and may have not yet established their own values about human relationships or the consequences of their behavior (Hartney, 2017). Therefore, in order to be fit to the groups, teens maybe willing to engage in some activities to gain positive impressions. Influenced by these two factors, the peer pressure among students occurs

Teens sometimes may feel pressured to do something they know is wrong, such as smoking, drinking, doing drugs, or stealing, or something they don’t want to do such as having sex. Statistically, according to The Canadian Lung Association, "my friends smoke" and "I thought it was cool" are two of the main reasons those between the ages of 12 and 17 start smoking (Zeiger, 2017). The Canadian Lung Association also pointed out that 70 percent of teens who smoke have friends who smoke because of peer pressure, and two-thirds of 10th graders and two-fifths of 8th graders have tried alcohol and smoking influenced by their friends (Zeiger, 2017). The data from the internet is astonishing; the majority of students who have been in the survey were somehow affected by peer pressure that led them into a bad degenerate way in doing bad things. Thus, from both the professional analysis and the statistics, peer pressure’s negative impacts on teen’s try of wrong things really have to be considered