Peer pressure is a part of everyone’s daily life. Peer pressure is something that you cannot take back, so you should think about what you are doing before applying your own choices to someone else.
Peer pressure doesn’t seem like a big thing in some ways. It is not just pressuring someone into doing something new, like a sport, it is also pressuring someone into doing something that can destroy their lives, like pressuring someone into doing drugs, or trying alcohol just because you do. Even when you think that you have done something that is harmless, you are not that person and you cannot judge how they are going to react and how they are going to go about what you are pressuring them into doing. Peer pressure isn’t just doing something because your friend wants you to, peer pressure is also pressuring yourself into doing something because everyone else is doing it and you want to fit in.
Things like peer pressure can take a lot out of someone’s mental health. There are pros and cons of peer pressure, more cons than pros because everyone wants to fit in with everyone else. Wanting to fit in with everyone else isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but doing things to yourself and changing dramatically can be a bad thing. Many people have been pressured into doing something by their peers and many people are still being peer pressured. Sophomore Madelyn Kepple said, “Social media is a strong piece of peer pressure.” Social media is a very strong aspect in peer pressure, you see all these other people doing things and posting these things and it seems so fun that you just can’t help but try to fit in so you go and do the same things. People do things to feel accepted by everyone, to feel accepted by society. Little do they know that society doesn’t accept itself, and society doesn’t even know what it wants.
Peer pressure starts for kids around age 9. Age 9 is when kids start to develop these dynamics and it’s when they start to shape themselves into what they want to do and what they want to become. When you were a kid playing on the playground and you wanted to play with other kids but they didn’t want to play with you, you would change yourself or do something to make them like you and make them want to be around you. That is a form of peer pressure. They didn’t want anything to do with you, until you did something to change yourself and they saw that you were like them as well.
There are some good things that can come from peer pressuring as long as it is in a category of doing good for others. Pushing a friend to study, telling someone to follow through with their dreams and helping them with that, helping a friend push themselves to become better in a sport, these are all positive things about what peer pressure can do, but it rarely happens.
Unspoken peer pressure, what is that? When you see someone out and about and they have all of these people surrounding them and they look so cool, what do you do? You get jealous and you wish you could be like them, and over time you change things about yourself to become like them, that is what unspoken peer pressure is. Peer pressure is a part of everyone’s daily life, and it probably always will be, people are constantly changing for themselves, for society, and for other people close to them. When asking people if they feel like they can say no to their friends peer pressuring them some said yes and other said no. Some people said yes because they didn’t have to change themselves from the beginning to have their friends like them. Others said no because they just want to be accepted.
Peer pressure is not something that just goes away overnight, when someone peer pressures you into doing something, you keep doing it because you want to be the same. There are dark and light sides to everything, but peer pressure can have a very dark and damaging side to people.
