Peer Pressure: Positive and Negative Influences
Peer pressure, which is additionally referred to as peer influence or social influence, can generally be described as the influence that one receives from the member of his or her peers. It can be viewed as a form of compulsion that comes from seeing or hearing what different people in one’s friends are doing.
Effects of Peer Pressure
Everyone in this world is affected by peer pressure. Social have an effect on is a psychological phenomenon that plays a vital role in shaping one’s existence in the attempt of doing what is acceptable and preferred by many. The effects of peer pressure can be either tremendous or negative and it affects people at all ages. For young adults, peer pressure is more pronounced and has massive and conspicuous effect as compared to old individuals. Peer influence is a vital force in changing one’s behavior, attitude, and way of thinking. Depending on the type of peers one has, social pressure is responsible for shaping people’s personality.
Positive Impact of Peer Influence
Firstly, peer influence is an impetus in molding an individual’s behavior positively. Everyone has a different upbringing. Parents play a huge role in helping children to become good people, as they grow older. Most of the time, parents are seen teaching their children how to behave. During childhood, it is easy for parents to shape their children.
As a person grows older and starts gaining independence, he or she tends to learn different aspects of life from their peers. For instance, seeing a fellow peer friend assisting an old woman cross the street can compel a person into doing the same, especially if the actions are applauded by other friends. As one sees that his or her peers value good deeds, he or she will tend to do the good deeds more often. In this case, the peer pressure will result in a positive transformation of personality of this individual.
Negative Impact of Social Influence
Secondly, social influence can affect a person negatively and be a tool of destruction to one’s personality. For instance, people can be influenced to become lazy. Human beings are lazy by nature, but it is important that people work hard in order to meet their daily needs among other needs. If an individual hangs around a group of peers that do not find diligence an important virtue and whose job is to engage in sedentary activities such as watching movies the whole day, he or she will tend to become more repulsive to working hard. The actions of the peers will slowly crush the attitude of hard work and promote laziness. Other instances that peer pressure has been seen to play a negative role is on participation in substance about and criminal activities.
Conclusion
In conclusion, it is evident that peer pressure is a significant factor in everyone’s life. People learn plenty of things from each other knowingly and unknowingly. As seen from the discussion, the peers are a great element in shaping an individual. The discussion has emphasized on the fact that one can gain positively or negatively from social pressure. However, it should be noted that as humans, we know what is right and what is wrong. In this regard, we should not let peer pressure force us to make wrong decisions. Despite the fact that friends are important to us, we should not allow them to lead us into making wrong decisions or taking wrong actions.
