Being a teenager is really tough. This is the time where you have to deal with the most changes in your life. Today in class we were asked to write an essay on the top three pressures we feel as teenagers. The three pressures I feel are the most common among teenagers are being popular or fitting in, academics, and living up to everyone else’s expectations along with your own. I will clarify these terms and provide tips on how to confront them. First, “being popular” and “fitting in”. What does that even mean? These phrases could have so many different meanings. The confirmed definition of popular is: regarded with great favor, approval, or affection especially by the general public. Why does this even contribute to teenagers. It is upsetting that society nowadays has to rank people or judge them by popularity. There are even articles and tutorials on the internet about how to become popular in school! Honestly, it’s pathetic. Teenagers are faced with so much pressure because of popularity issues, most of them are bullied or become bullies because of it. All the cliques and groups go to your head and make you feel like you are worthless. That can lead to depression, but that is another topic and will be elaborated on another time. Secondly, Academics. In the world today, education is key to success. You have to do extremely well in your educational career, to even look into a job. Because if you don’t study well, you fail your big test. If you fail your big test, you fail the class. If you fail the class, your get stressed out. If you get stressed out, you fail more classes. If you fail more classes, you don’t graduate high school. If you don’t graduate high school, you don’t get into college, and if you don’t get into college it ... ... middle of paper ... ...else’s expectations, but also live up to your own. If you are a teenager, you cope with stress and pressure everyday. You may face pressure about, friendships, family, grades, tests, homework, lack of sleep, health, extracurricular activities, your love life, your future, the list is endless. So if you are considered “unpopular” or people look at you as an “outcast”, don’t sweat it. You may end up being their boss someday, and it’s really not worth your time. If you struggle with school and can’t seem to keep a decent GPA or you can never get your homework done, set up a routine and stick to it and ask for help when needed. Lastly, if you can’t live up to everyone else’s expectations along with your own, do what makes you happy and you will find that everyone else around you will be too. These are the top three pressures I feel are the most common among teenagers.
As a teenager we are all looking to be accepted by our peers and will do whatever it is they want us to so we can be accepted. That is to say the feeling of needing to be accepted by ones peers is done consciously; the person starts to do what their friends do without thinking about it. (Teen 3) In fact, teens are more likely to be affected by peer pressure because they are trying to figure out who they are. (How 1) Therefore, they see themselves as how their peers would view them so they change to fit their peer’s expectations. (How 1) Secondly, the feeling of needing to rebel and be someone that isn’t who their parents are trying to make them be affects them. (Teen 2) Thus, parents are relied on less and teens are more likely to go to their peers about their problems and what choices to make. (How 1) Also, their brains are not fully matured and teens are less likely to think through their choices thoroughly before doing it. (Teen 6) Lastly, how a child is treated by his peers can affect how they treat others; this can lead them into bullying others who are different. (Teen 3) Consequently this can affect a teen into doing something good or bad; it depends who you surround yourself with.
While college times today are faced with more and more peer-pressure there are ways on getting through this. Everyday college students are pressured to either not go to class or leave work till the last minute for a little bit of fun. Surrounding yourself with positive people who share similar values helps a lot in overcoming this. I...
Is adolescence really about fitting in or not standing out? Do you have any responsibility to those students who do not fit in? Do you hear that? Hush, and listen closely. Do you hear it now? The cries for help of the kids who don’t fit in with the crowd. The cries aren’t always loud. Sometimes they don’t make a sound. Stop and listen to them. Take responsibility for those kids and stand up for those kids who won’t stand up for themselves.
Conformity means a change in one’s behavior due to the real or imagined influence of other people. As a teenager, the pressure to conform to the societal “norm” plays a major role in shaping one’s character. Whether this means doing what social groups want or expect you to do or changing who you are to fit in. During class, we watched films such as Mean Girls, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, and The Breakfast Club which demonstrate how the pressure to conform into society can change who you are. In the movies we have seen, conformity was most common during high school.
High school is a very transitory period for most teenagers. They are just beginning to discover who they are and what they care about in the world. Though within there are many battles for the individual, there also exist many social barriers. The "popular" crowd is generally full of the jocks. The boys who participate in sport every season: football, baseball and track, and the cheerleader girls who are petit in stature and care greatly about their outward appearance (I realize that this is quite a generalization, yet it has proven true in my experience). Somehow, it seems that these peoples' opinions always matter the most. They determine what is "in," they define "cool." Personally, I never was an active member of this crowd, though some close friends of mine were. My "group" of friends however, was fairly athletic. Practically every one of us participated in a sport, track, swimming, gymnastics, basketball, or soccer. One friend was always a bit different from the rest of the guys. While not feminine in his demeanor, he never distinguished himself as particularly "manly." For example, when one of the girls had to go to the locker room for some reason, she always asked Kawika if he wanted...
A large majority of teens want to fit in and feel like they belong, but how far are they willing to go to fit in? The more they want to fit in the more likely they will be easily influenced by suggestions from others. During my second week of eighth grade, I felt like I wasn’t fitting in and that everyone was silently judging me and criticizing me. Of course now that I think about I don’t think anyone really cared about me, but I was more self-conscious about myself then. One day during lunch my friends and I sat next to a couple of girls who were known as the “popular” girls and I thought that maybe I would fit in more if I was friends with them. I spent the rest of that lunch hour trying to build up the courage to talk to them and at last minute I told the friendliest looking girl, that I loved her shirt and I asked her what store she bought it from. She told me that it was from Free People; she then gushed about the store and told me how everything there was amazing. She suggested that I should check it out sometime so I did. I, of course couldn’t wait to shop there. I told myself that if I shopped at Free People, I could maybe fit in with her and even be a part of the popu...
“Most teenagers feel insecure about who they are are still unsure of themselves. The safest way for them to feel accepted is to be associated with the popular clique.” Being socially accepted is something that teenagers long for. Being popular is a shortcut. If a person tells the school that they should wear black on Monday, then teenagers will wear black just to be like all of the others.
During adolescence, teens are engaged in forming their position in society and in developing social connections with their peers. The transition from childhood to adolescence can place them in a distressful and unstable status like social isolation and loneliness. Teens may begin to feel confused or insecure about themselves and how they fit in to society. Teens may experiment with different roles, activities and behaviors when they seek to establish a sense of self. According to Erikson, this is important process in forming a strong identity and developing a sense of direction in life.
In times where most kids or teenagers find very important to be popular and to step out on everyone else in their field, it is often difficult to be the divergent kid among everyone else, because of the fact that different kids are usually the ones to be rejected. In other words, being unique around popular teenagers who tend to fit in with each other can cause these special ones left out. Nevertheless, many people argue that teenagers should find a group that they fit into, otherwise they would suffer from lonesome and rejection from every other teenager. However, in my opinion I think that stepping out from everyone else and being different is more important than just being another kid who tries so hard to fit in to some group that he does not belong in.
In one journal entry I wrote, I brought to light that the popular group is something that every one of us, for some reason feels as though we need to be a part of. This is from my own experience and things I have observed throughout my four-year career in high school. I think it was perhaps worse in junior high, however. When you are in seventh and eighth grade you are not sure of who you are and are desperately searching around for something to belong to, to be a part of. Why is this, why are we a society that are most often drawn to the most popular, "cool" and "beautiful" that high school has to offer? Why is acceptance the most important thing to us, is belonging really as important as losing your own sense of self? Who you hang out with, who your closest friends are as an adolescent without a doubt help to shape who you are. And it's funny that you seem to end up being friends with the ones who are the same type of people as you. Same fashion sense, taste in music or cars and movies. When searching for an identity in high school, it is hard not to just attempt to pick up the one that seems the most socially acceptable. I know that my personal experiences include these conforming characteristics. Still as a freshman in college I am constantly looking at the fashion of my peers, wondering to myself "do they think I fit in"? This was especially true the first few weeks of college when I wasn't sure who my good friends were going to be; I made sure that I dressed as well as I could everyday, in all the new clothes I had bought specifically for college.
... instead of following the majority. The issue of peer pressure can relate to teens, as they are in constant pressure to be ‘cool’ or to be in the ‘in’ group. It does not really promote individualism, so people cannot develop their own ideas but rather follow the leader of their group.
Adolescents today are growing up in a totally different setting than the generation before them. New problems and choices are entering these young, and influential kids' lives. There are a lot of different factors in children’s lives that weren’t as common one generation ago. Adolescents today are filled with stress due to everyday problems in their lives.
It seems as though that popularity is a main issue to teens. The need to feel accepted by others in order to be the center of attention, and the need to be distinguished greatly from everyone else is a strong force that exposes itself to nearly all teens at school. We spend most of our years at school, and begin well-known can almost seem to complete an emptyness that we feel.
Education is a very important aspect of the lives of all people all over the world. What we learn, not just in the classroom, shapes who we are. We take our education everywhere we go. We use it when talking to our buddies about sports or music, we use it while solving a math problem, we use our education while debating with our family whether or not we should watch TV or go to the movies. Our education is the foundation of who we are, since every decision we make and every thought we think is dependent on what we know. Imagine how different the world would be if everyone craved learning to such a degree that at lunch tables all over the world the topic of conversation isn't who likes who, or how drunk someone got over the weekend, but it would be what books were read over the weekend, and what new ideas were thought of. This crave for learning would be an ideal but still suggests need for improvement with the current educational system. It seems that the problem with education is that somewhere along the lines the human race forgot (assuming they, at one point, understood how valuable information is) that learning is not just a mandatory process, but also an opportunity to transcend and open the gateway to a better understanding.
Teenagers have to deal with the adaption process twice, in terms of school. The first time they have to adapt is from middle school to high school. When you are thirteen you are in eighth grade. That's the oldest grade in my elementary school building. When you are younger you look up to the eighth graders, because they are the "cool kids". But the eighth graders are dealing with their own pr...