More handpicked essays just for you.
Negative effects of peer pressure towards teenagers
Peer pressure influence on teens
Effects of peer pressure on adolescent in secondary schools
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: Negative effects of peer pressure towards teenagers
Well known article writer, Leonid Fridman, in his article, “America Needs Its Nerds”, describes the truthful idea that nerds and geeks, in our society, are ostracized while the kids who play sports and party are prominent. Fridman’s purpose is to impress upon the readers that nerds should not have to conform to society’s unimpressive values of what it means to be “popular”. He adopts an indignant tone in order to convey to his readers that the idea of nerds and geeks needs to fought. Fridman moves to the idea that children who would rather read and build model airplanes are the social outcasts compared to the ones who would rather play football and get wasted at parties.
This quote from The Giver is an amazing way to show you this. “I feel sorry for anyone who is in a place where he feels strange and stupid” Noyce. What this quote explains is that the protagonist feels horrible for all the people who don't fit in. Now teens can relate to this very well because even being pushed to be the same most teens feel different than everyone else, this is not always a bad thing either, but when they feel “strange and stupid” as the book says it’s not very great. This is an extremely great way to show you why teens find this genre interesting, but that's not all of the reasons
In addition, some high school students may not like the clique they are associated with and try to fit into a “popular” group. For example, I had another friend that wanted to hang out with the “popular” students. He was invited to a party but there was not alcohol so they told him if he stole a couple of bottles from the nearby CVS, he could hang out with them. They showed him how to steal a bottle of alcohol from the store and told him to do it after. He committed the crime and was able to get away with it because the store policy says that they cannot chase them.
Out of the few I mentioned I am going to focus on the jocks and the nerds. Nerds are the ones who catch the most heat meaning they are the ones who get picked on the most it makes them feel bad about themselves. Many students believe nerds think they’re so smart, I say this because I witness this before when I was in high school. Athletes (the celebrities) of school have a title to uphold so they go and bully the nerds around calling them out their names and one of the most common
Why They Did It Columbine High School is a dense populated school with many different types of groups and cliques. Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris did not fit into just one individual group, which predominantly classifies them as “outsiders”. Outsiders usually did not hangout with other cliques, and they did not seem to really fit in. Dylan and Eric were no exception and kept to themselves most of the time.
Adolescents often have the urge to be popular. When the narrator is talking about the popular
One Saturday morning, five students attended detention in the library at Shermer High School. Each student represented a different clique and high school personality. Claire Standish is the popular girl in school with parent’s who buy her whatever she wants. Andy Clark is the champion wrestler with a bright athletic future. Brian Johnson is the smart kid in school who never gets anything lower than an A. Allison Reynolds is the misunderstood outcast who is often times ignored.
When people think about high school students, they may imagine carefree teens who seem to have little to concern themselves with, except for petty drama within their social groups. However, students are pushed with expectations of achieving stellar grades and being accepted into the colleges of their, or their parents’ dreams. High school shouldn’t be about getting the best grades, or even stressing over being considered popular. Stephen King himself even said, “Let’s face it. No kid in high school feels as though the fit in.”
To begin with, there are the musically talented students; the band geeks. This group is a subculture because they did not go against the shared meaning of high school. They dressed in the normal way other students did. One could only know by looking at them that they were a band geek by
If you live in Stone Canyon your are labeled ‘popular’. But what does that matter? It won’t matter in 30 years, wheather you were popular or not. It wont matter how your hair looked, how nice your clothes are, if you always had the nicest shoes, or if you were ‘up to date’ with the idiosyncrasies of everybody at school. It won’t matter where you shopped at the mall.
When I was younger I thought that only way to be cool was to have friends that were high schoolers. I wouldn’t hangout or give anyone else a chance unless they knew older kids. I would completely dismiss giving anyone else a chance if I knew they didn’t know high schoolers.
To be an outsider isn’t a permanent term and everyone goes through it. The popular kids feel like outsiders too sometimes. In ‘Revenge of the Geeks’, the author, Alexandra Robbins says that the popular people tend to develop bad habits that will harm their future. She even mentions “Psychologists point out that high-status cliques in high school teach the exclusionary behavior that may be the foundation for eventual racism, anti-Semitism, sexism, and other forms of bigotry” So that would make them switch roles with the former outsiders, whereas the Outsiders would now be the successful populars.
In Mean Girls, the students are divided into very defined cliques, like the band nerds, jocks, popular girls, and math geeks. In real high schools, the cliques are not that defined. They still have cliques like those, but many of the students are in more than one clique and some of the cliques group together. Most of the of the students like to spend time with the people they like, so in many cases groups have a variety of people in it. An example of this would be a group that has a band nerd, a jock, and a math geek.
Being popular is a goal that all children or teenagers want to achieve. They want to be included, want to know everyone and want everyone to know them. It is hard to be popular because you will have to create a facade to please your peers, doing things you have never done to fit in. Therefore, out of the five peer statuses people would characterize me as the popular children because everyone knew me and I was actively involved with everything. I was friendly to everyone and was rarely disliked.
The most common groups in high school are athletes, cheerleaders, band members, and the smart students also known as nerds. Not every student is athletic, flexible, really smart, and can play a musical instrument. If the student is not either one of those than I think that it would be very difficult to fit in. When students are a part of social groups like the ones I gave examples of it is easier to be accepted by people in high school, because groups like athletes are role models and leaders of the school most likely. Nerds also play a leadership role in the school such as being president and valedictorian.
