Peer Pressure

What is Peer Pressure?

If you’re living under a rock, peer pressure is the direct or indirect influence from peers.

When people close to your age try to influence you, it is called peer pressure. A peer could be anyone you hang out with like a friend, classmate or even a family member. Sometimes peer pressure will make you do outrageous or dangerous things.

Never fall into negative peer pressure. It destroys your self respect and the ability to think for yourself.

People who try to pressure people into doing atrocious things are dangerous. They aren’t good friends or people. I would suggest you distance yourself from them.

If you give in to peer pressure it’s kind of your fault but depending on the situation it doesn’t necessarily mean you are a bad person, but it means that you have to own up to your mistakes and learn from it.

Positive and negative effect of peer pressure

Peer pressure can have both negative and positive effects depending on your circumstances. It can influence you to reach your goals in life and not just that but push you to become a better person.

On the other hand the negative effects are based on the people that are around you, your environment and are part of your surroundings.

But all the blame shouldn’t be just put on the peer pressure we have around us. We should also be held accountable for the actions we make and the people we chose to be around us, that influence the way we talk and do things.

Life is about growing up and part of growing up is being able to choose what’s good and bad and make the best decisions for yourself even if it includes removing people that are very close to you but aren’t letting you develop to your best ability. This leads to us taking actions to remove people in order to be successful.

The negative effects it has in our lives.

Negative habits and/or behaviours that our peers may have influence over us. Those habits and behaviours can become unfavourable in our lives. Here are some of these troublesome behaviours:

Drugs and alcohol

Using the correct amount of alcohol at a legal age as a sense of reward also known as dopamine is fine. Using the correctly prescribed drugs precisely is also okay. The problem comes when you abuse these substances and you are not of age. This obviously does great damage to your physical and mental health.

Bullying

Harming other people in any way is not great, for obvious reasons.This is also one of the things that can tarnish your future.

Cheating

Whether it’s cheating on a test, or cheating on your romantic partner. Cheating is cheating, and cheating is awful. It can also kind of ruin your future if get caught or you admit to it publicly.

Stealing

Do I need to explain myself on how this is bad, or do you get the point already?

The positive effects it has in our lives.

Peer pressure as stated above cannot only have a negative impact in your life, well it can but it shouldn’t, it may also have positive effects on us. Doing these things can make us have a sense of belonging within our peers and make us feel supported.

Trying new things

By trying new things we mean, volunteering, joining a sports team or community service. Not the bad stuff, but trying something new is so beneficial to oneself.

Speaking up against bullies

As much as someone can pressurise you to bully others, they can also apply that same pressure into helping you stand up for yourself. This will then help you in the long run to prevent yourself from being mistreated.

Picking up new habits

Like not gossiping. I don’t know if that’s possible, but hey, it doesn’t hurt to try.

Anyways my point is, the influence our friends/peers have over us can actually make us accomplish some exceptional stuff.

How to deal with the negative peer pressure?

Focus on asserting your boundaries:

Confidently saying ‘no’ when necessary and surrounding yourself with positive influences. Communicate openly with friends about your values and make choices aligned with your beliefs. Good friends will respect your decision, knowing that you have a valid reason for declining their “offer”.

Have a plan:

Think about how you will handle such difficult situations before they actually happen.

Develop self confidence:

That could be by loving yourself. If you have enough confidence to look someone in the eyes and say no then you can resist the peer pressure

Words from members of The Teenager View

Thato:

There has been a time when my ‘friends’ tried to pressure me into doing something stupid. With a group of classmates we were discussing a school event and they tried to pressure me into buying alcohol. At first I thought it was a joke but once I saw how serious they were I started to panic and I was ashamed to tell them that I don’t want to drink. I then decided that I would ignore them and they might stop asking me If i’m going to drink the alcohol.

Moral of this story:
Don’t hang out with idiots. Say no when you need to.

Lethukuthula:

I never really get peer pressured, I know how to say no and set boundaries even with my closest friends. If I ever do get ‘peer pressured’, I honestly wanted to do it in the first place but had no one to validate my decisions at that moment.

Karabo:

Peer pressure doesn’t work on me. Just ‘hehe’ my way through life.

Conclusion

If someone ever tries to pressure you into doing something you don’t like and could potentially get you into huge trouble, that’s when you know It’s time to involve a parent or a trusted guardian.

And if you peer pressure anybody into doing anything they don’t want, we do think you’re a dullard.