Teenagers and the Impacts of Peer Pressure
Parents strive hard to instill in their kids the ability to make good judgments from the very beginning. However, as kids get older, parents’ influence wanes and peer opinion gains significance. Academic performance, substance usage, and mental health are just a few of the many ideas, deeds, and behaviors that can be influenced by social pressure.
“Teens have so much on their plates,” observes Stacie Goran, LPC, LCDC, manager of Children’s HealthSM’s Teen Recovery Programme. “It’s simple to get overwhelmed and join the group because of the demands of school, parental rules, the desire to fit in, and peer pressure. To escape peer pressure, it’s crucial for teenagers to forge their own identities and learn how to stand by their morals.
Peer pressure is when individuals experience internal or external pressure to act in particular ways, both good and bad. Peer pressure increases during adolescence, during junior high, and throughout high school. It starts as early as age 10 when social groupings are formed in elementary school.
Peer pressure is most powerful at the beginning of adolescence because of changing hormones, maturing brains, and forming identities. Additionally, during this period of life, friendship groups are crucial, and the desire to fit in influences a lot of choices. Teenagers and children may suffer a variety of various sorts of peer pressure. There are various forms of peer pressure, including positive and negative, direct and indirect, and spoken and unspoken. Each individual may experience peer pressure in a different way.
Peer pressure can capitalize on an adolescent’s abilities or existing difficulties. For instance, a teenager with low self-esteem and few close friends can be more vulnerable to the negative impacts of peer pressure, whereas a self-assured, outgoing teenager might be more likely to exert and be exerted by positive peer pressure.
Peer pressure is harmful and can also impact mental health. It can lower one’s self-esteem and result in subpar academic performance, estrangement from family and friends, or an escalation of depression and anxiety. Teenagers may eventually start self-harming or have suicidal thoughts if this is not addressed.
Social media communication can have a positive or bad impact, just like in-person contact can be both positive and negative. Since social media is always accessible, teens can see those messages whenever they choose, day or night, seven days a week. Thus, social media has a significant potential to intensify both positive and negative sensations of peer pressure.
When users publish just the “best” parts of their lives on social media, a false sense of reality is created. Teenagers may compare their own circumstances to the “picture-perfect” portrayals of others’ lives as a result, feeling under pressure to measure up. Additionally, the absence of personal criticism might foster a culture in which people communicate offensive information or remarks that they otherwise wouldn’t make in person. On social media, this phenomenon (also known as trolling) is a remarkably prevalent example of unfavorable peer pressure. There have also been instances of dangerous online challenges that could have a bad effect on a child’s health.
