Types And Impacts Of Peer Pressure
Imagine you're sitting around with your cousins watching a TV show and someone mentions a particular show that happens to be one of your favorite. "Oh, that show is so boring. So not worth the time, " one of your cousin says scornfully. The others agree. Inwardly, you know that it is a show that you enjoy a lot but, outwardly not wanting to debate, you go along with the crowd. Everyone wants to be accepted by people they admire. Some people, especially teens, will do anything to fit in with a group, including drinking, doing drugs, lying to their parents, rejecting childhood friends, and having unsafe sex. This pressure to do things that you may not do on your own is called Peer Pressure.
Types of peer pressure
Peer pressure or social pressure can be of 2 types: Spoken, Unspoken.
Let’s understand the difference between these two types with an example.
Case 1: There are 3 boys in this case. Boys 1 and 2 are on the right side and seems to be friends. Boy 3 is on the left side playing with a ball.
Boy 1 to boy 3: Hey! Come smoke with us.
Boy 2 to boy 3: Yeah ! We will have more fun than playing with a ball. Don't be a loser.
This is called spoken pressure. It is when some close friend says you something directly that puts a lot of pressure on you and you cannot say no to them.
Case 2: Imagine a group of people are standing on right side and are wearing hats. There is a lady on the left who is not wearing a hat.
The lady without hat thoughts of herself wearing a hat and standing with the group of people.
This is called unspoken pressure because this is a situation where you imagine yourself doing the things that other people are doing though nobody has said you anything about it. These are the important types of peer pressure that everyone faces in their life. But the right choice is to make a right decision when a peer pressure situation comes up.
Effects of Social pressure
No doubt, peer pressure has both positive and negative effects. This depends on us that what decisions we take when a peer pressure situation comes up.
Individuality is lost: Peer pressure can cause loss of identity. Severe peer pressure may lead you to follow what your peers feel fair. You may feel forced to do the things that your peers think is right. You start following them with closed eyes, practice their lifestyle, habits, clothes, this may actually lead you to lose your own taste.
Hard mentality: There can be situations when you do not like a fixed idea or plan but are still forced to join the race. In result, this can ruin your career as you are just not interested in doing the things that you are doing due to the current trend. However, in such cases the chances of failure are more because you cannot put your heart in the work. While it can be hard for teens sometimes to cope up with peer pressure, it can also have some positive effects. People can influence others by helping them in making choices, just as they influence in negative choices. A teenager can join a football club or can work hard to get good grades because all of his friends are doing so. Just because we are so much influenced by the people around us, eventually the decision of how to act on a peer pressure situation is up to us.
