Peer Pressure Health Article

Definition

Peer pressure is the influence of a social group on an individual.

Description

Children and teenagers feel social pressure to conform to the group of peers with whom they socialize. This peer pressure can influence how children dress, what kind of music they listen to, and what types of behavior they engage in, including risky behaviors such as using drugs, cigarettes, and alcohol, and engaging in sex. The intensity of peer pressure differs from situation to situation.

Peer groups are usually cliques of friends who are about the same age. Peer pressure can begin in early childhood with children trying to get other kids to play the games they want. It generally increases through childhood and reaches its intensity in the preteen and teen years. Virtually all adolescents in middle and high school deal with peer pressure, often on a daily basis. It is how children and teens learn to get along with others of their own age group and eventually learn how to become independent. Depending on the group trying to apply the influence, peer pressure can be negative or positive.

Starting in middle school, children begin to spend more time with their friends and less time with their parents and family. Although some children remain loners and not part of any group, most preteens tend to be part of a small group of friends called a clique. In children ages eleven to fourteen, it is most common for members of these cliques to be of the same sex. Children will spend a lot of time with friends in their clique, interacting by going to the movies or the mall, talking on the telephone, or chatting online with instant messaging. They know which kids belong to particular cliques and who the loners are. Within the cliques, talk about the opposite sex is popular as is making arrangements for out of school activities.

Children also generally belong to a crowd, which is a larger group of kids from several cliques. While members of the cliques are close friends, members of the crowd outside a clique are casual acquaintances. Crowds are often large groups with common interests such as athletes (jocks), kids who like school (preppies), kids lacking good looks or social skills but who excel at particular intellectual interests (nerds), and drug users (druggies).

Some kids give in to peer pressure because they want to be liked, to fit in, or because they worry that other kids may make fun of them if they do not go along with the group. Others may go along because they are curious to try something new that others are doing. The idea that "everyone is doing it" may influence some kids to ignore their better judgment or their common sense. Peer pressure can be extremely strong and seductive. Experiments have shown how peer pressure can influence children to change their minds from what they know for sure is acceptable behavior to unacceptable behavior just because everyone else in their peer group is doing it. These studies have also shown that all it takes for individuals to stand their ground on what they know is right is for one other peer to join them. That principle holds true for youth of any age in peer pressure situations, according to the Online organization KidsHealth (<www.kidshealth.org>).

Children and adolescents cannot always avoid negative peer pressure. It may continue to be a fact of life through childhood, adolescence, and into adulthood. Quoted from an article in the September 2002 issue of Current Health 2, A Weekly Reader Publication, the following are strategies young people can use to deal with negative peer pressure effectively:

• Avoid putting yourself in situations that make you feel uncomfortable. For example, if you don't want to start smoking, stay away from areas where you know kids go to smoke.
• Choose your friends wisely. If you hang around with people who share your values, chances are you'll never be asked to do something you don't want to do.
• Think about the consequences whenever you are asked to do something you are not sure about. Stop for a moment and ask: Will this activity get me in trouble? Will it be harmful to my health?
• Be true to yourself. Think about the reasons why you are considering doing something you are uncomfortable with. Is it to gain popularity? Although there is nothing wrong with wanting to be popular, there are right ways and wrong ways to achieve it. If you change your behavior just to fit in with a particular group, you are not being true to yourself.
• Learn how to say no. This is perhaps the most difficult thing in the world for many people to do, but it is an essential skill if you are to successfully fend off negative peer pressure. There are many ways to say no, some of them subtle and some of them a little more "in your face." Several examples are: "You see it your way. I see it my way." "If you are really a friend, then back off." "You must think I'm pretty dumb to fall for that one."