Peer Pressure Perils

As a social-being, humans can’t live without other people. They always need a help from others so they try to socialize and make friends to lead their life easily. This also happens to teenagers in a different way. Adults mingle with all of people, no matter their friends have same style with them or not. On the other hand, usually, some teenagers live in a group have same styles and characters. Therefore, all members persuade each other by encouraging individuals to change their attitudes, values, or behaviors, called peer pressure (Wikipedia). It might give some positive effects to teenagers when they are pressured toward positive behaviors, such as volunteering for charity or excelling in academics or athletics by their peers. Yet, many cases in peer pressure affects negatively to teenagers’ personality. As said by Wall Mueller (founder and President of the Center for Parent/Youth Understanding), “The ugly reality is that peer pressure reaches its greatest intensity at just the age when kids tend to be most insensitive and cruel.” In other words, since peer pressure influence teenagers negatively such as grooms, bad characters, and some self-destructive habits, it should be controlled.
First of all, peer pressure affects teenagers’ appearance. They are forced to follow the gang’s style, especially for grooms. Teenagers trusting on their close friends do anything to make their gangs solid, so they look like gangsters with tattoos, low-rise jeans, tank tops, and bandana or doo-rag. At the first time, maybe they aren’t comfortable with the attributes of their appearance, but keeping on wearing them. As the time flows, they get confident with their new looks. Yet, because of their appearance, many people become anxious about them. Besides, people disrespect and hate them. In other case, some teenagers get inappropriately dressed if they mingle with their friends. For example, teenage girls in a group get have the same fashion style. We can see at the mall, some groups of teenage girls are inappropriately dressed like wear a very short skirt and tight shirt which is very eye-catching. They might feel comfort to wear their clothes, but not for seen by other people. So, people will see them with bad judgment. In other words, teenagers’ appearance will depend on the peer pressure.
Next, teenagers’ negative characters also depend on peer pressure. Anti social is one of the examples. One of the reasons why it can happen is because teens in a group usually don’t have any time to socialize with other people. They are always forced to do everything together with their group, such as going to school, shopping in the mall, watching a movie, even gossiping. Unconsciously, they will be isolated in their own world and people will judge them as an anti-social group. Being judged, they will never talk or ask for a help to other people, so people around them won’t care about their existence. Moreover, the pressured will get bad tempered if they can’t stand with the pressure anymore. They will easily get angry when other people disturb them. Even, when their friends try to persuade them to do some avoided things, they will resist them. If it happens continuously, it can impact to their health like heart attack, stroke, depression, and so on. Besides, those who have a very bad temper may kill some people disturbing them. In brief, peer pressure will makes teenagers have some bad characters.
Eventually, peer pressure can make teenagers do some destructive habits. Their friends, especially in their own group will lead them in committing some risky behaviors, such as drug-abusing or having free sex. It goes without saying that drug abusing evokes severe impacts on teenagers’ health. So, they suffer from depressions, emotional changes, digestive disorders, brain damages, finally perishing them. Also, having free sex will give some complicated problems like pregnancy, norm violations, even causes some sexually diseases, such as gonorrhea, syphilis, or HIV/AIDS which put them on stressful life. Besides, it can cause laziness to them. When teenagers are bored to do their tasks, their friends come to persuade them to do other enjoyable things like watching movie or shopping. Feeling lured, they will approved their friends’ persuasion. Consequently, they will stop studying, but begin hanging out and time wasting. Then laziness becomes mounting, and neglecting homework surely occurs. In conclusion, some destructive habits like risky behaviors and laziness could be developed by the peer pressure.
It goes without saying that peer pressure can give some good influences for teenagers. By mingling with their friends making good decisions and getting involved in positive activities, like study, teenagers can get academic motivation. First of all, they decide to make a wish together with their friends: getting accepted at dream school or the university. They are confident to be successful in their own way. Therefore, they always motivate each other when one of them is lazy or unmotivated to study. They realize motivation is badly needed to reach their goals. Furthermore, they will have more empathy to their friends when interacting with each other. For example, when one of the people in group has a problem, the others help to solve his/her problem or give some advices to him/her. By having an empathy feeling, they won’t let their friends feel hurt or sad. They will always try to help their friends so the long-lasting-friendship will be formed. However, apart from improper grooms, negative characters, and self-destructive habits, dependency is the other effect. They may be very dependent on their friends since they feel that they needed each other. It makes teenagers unconfident to take their own decisions. What they do always depends on their friends’ thought. And if it happens continuously, teenagers will lose their self-esteem. In brief, although peer pressure gives some good influences, yet it affects teenagers to grooms, build negative characters, do some self-destructive habits, and peer dependency.
To avoid some negative effects from peer pressure, it should be controlled, firstly by parental involvement. It is very important to build teenagers’ personality. So, their parents should protect them by giving some advices when they have any problems or made mistakes. For example, when teenagers start to smoking because of their friends’ persuasion, their parents should prohibit them and tell the negative effects from cigarettes. Also, their parents should pay more attention and care to them because at their age, they still need that. In fact, some teenagers who have bad habits and are involved by peer pressure come from a broken home family. They don’t get attention from their parents, so they mingle with their friends who lure them to negative activities. Secondly, careful choice is the next solution to avoid negative effects from peer pressure, especially when choosing friends. They should choose good people become their best friends, because only good friends can lead them to be good persons. For example, when teenagers mingle with their friends who have high spirit to study, they will be motivated to do so. So, they can improve their grades at school and they are not lazy. Besides, by choosing good friends they will get confident and self-esteem because their friends always support them to do what they want, not forcing them to do what their friends’ want. In other words, parental involvement and careful choice can control peer pressure, so its negative effects can be avoid.
To summarize, peer pressure can give some negative effects for teenagers, so it should be controlled. First of all, it can forces teenagers to get groomed improperly, for example gangster like-appearance and inappropriate dress. In addition, their characters are also affected by peer pressure, such as anti-social and bad temper. Eventually, they will do some self-destructive habits, such as risky behaviors and laziness. Although some good influences are molded by peer pressure, yet grooms improperly, negative characters, self-destructive habits, and peer dependency are severely impacted to teenagers. Therefore, its negative effects should be tackled by parental involvement and careful friendship. Somehow, the effects of peer pressure depend on how they anticipate it.