Many teenagers have a hard time being accepted in social situations with their peer group. Adolescence is more about fitting in than not standing out. Teenagers more often than not are accepted by those who are like them. Bullying occurs because many don’t want to accept those who are not like them. Students have a responsibility to those who want to fit in but struggle. Fitting in is not as easy as it seems. While some people don’t want to fit it, it does not exclude anyone from having a certain responsibility to their fellow man.
Adolescence is more about fitting in than not standing out. While they seem similar, fitting in is much harder. Fitting in involves being accepted and having friends. Not standing out is just doing your best not to be noticed, but you don’t try “hard enough”. Fitting in involves dressing and behaving similarly to a person’s peer group. It also involves being interested in certain things. The character Piggy in Lord Of The Flies represents the struggle to fit in. Once Jack leaves, he is deemed part of the in crowd, and he feels like he can share ideas openly. He feels like he finally fits in and is accepted. After having one of his ideas accepted, Golding writes that “Piggy was so full of delight..., so full of pride in his contribution to the good of society, that he helped to fetch wood,” (Golding, 186) which is something that he would not have done otherwise due to people possibly making fun of him and the way he does things.
Teenagers are more often accepted by people who are like them. Those who have similar interests to their peer group are more likely to be accepted and have friends. Take the things that interest teenage girls for example. Today they involve kittens, dogs, clothing and music ch...
... middle of paper ...
...de it.
Fitting in is not as easy as it seems. In the movies, we are constantly told to do certain things to fit in, but they almost always fail to work. In my experience, trying hard to fit in can lead to even better results than not caring to begin with. You end up with the same result, which is not caring, but it’s so much easier to accept those who are different. I tried so hard to fit in up until my sixth grade year that after that, I stopped caring whether the people I were hanging out with were the right or wrong crowd. This has left me with many amazing friends, most of whom are scattered over the realm of right or wrong. Teenagers should realize that fitting in is hard. It’s not easy at all, and sometimes it’s not even worth the struggle. Being happy with yourself and accepting yourself is all you need. Once that is done, you will have no trouble fitting in.
In life you will be faced with the challenge of fitting in many times, but you should not let the people around you define who you are. At school there are lots of trends and I see it here at collegiate where people wear certain clothes or shoes because it’s a fad. In third and fourth grade the largest fad by far was “Silly Bandz” and everyone had them and everyone wanted to have them. It may seem to be an unsophisticated example, but it is very relevant to the topic. Everyone should be individual and not just what other people are pressuring them to be, but truly themselves. Be a leader not a
High school can be a place full of cliques and groups of friends but some people aren’t always in cliques. If there is a person who doesn’t always like the same things as other people they might not fit in with a group of people. In high school a person may become different and not find a group of friends that they fit in with. With no group of friends a person in high school may start to become an outcast. Laurie Halse Anderson, the author of Speak used Melinda to show that any high school student can become an outcast.
Up till middle school, it seemed like I fit in pretty well at school. I was decent at sports and I had a good amount of friends. Life was pretty good at the time and I was enjoying it. Once high school started, I could see a shift in my life. I had lost most friends from prior years, and I was not good at sports; I struggled to fit in.
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...
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.
“Fitting in” is a concept that is seen a lot in adolescence. Teenagers will do pretty much anything at times to have friends or appear to be “cool.” That is exactly what happens to Tracy in this film. As the film begins, Tracy is a good, simple girl, and her pureness all changes when she befriends the most popular girl in school, Evie Zamora. Evie is very rebellious. She does not have a strong authority figure in her life (Levy-Hinte, London, & Hardwicke, 2003). The sweet, innocent young Tracy is soon to be completely transformed. Evie is vividly a bad influence on Tracy from the beginning, as seen when she influences Tracy to steal something the first time they hang out together (Levy-Hinte, et al., 2003). Stealing is illegal and considered a minor crime and turns Tracy into a delinquent (Berk, 2011). Tracy’s identity development is heavily influenced by her new friendship with Evie from that moment on. Evie is so popular, but she makes very poor choices and Tracy follows her lead because she wants ...
Adolescent years are a time period in a human beings life where we search for a place that we are most comfortable. It is a time where we try to find friends with similar interests and those who will easily accept us for who we are. Once we are accepted by those friends, we tend to do more things with hopes of getting approval from “the group.” Trying to fit in during adolescence is a significant factor for self-motivation because it determines the level of being accepted and popularity amongst our peers. Through our year of adolescence we experiment and try to discover oneself as a person, but we also find what our strongest traits are that are used in order to be accepted, or to feel more popular. Popularity is defined as a state of being liked or accepted by a group of people (cite). As the group of people gets larger, so does that person’s popularity. For some people, popularity may come easy due to their charisma or looks, but there are those children who feel lonely due to their lack of popularity.
If you were to walk into a high school lunchroom, what is the first thing you would see? Groups, cliques, friend circles, and separations. Tables split up in detached formations, almost completely unaware of the other surrounding pupils nearby. The most common groups in high school are the populars and the outcasts. The kids who have endless friends, engage in team sports, and meet the ideal teenage standards, against the ones who are quiet, solitary, and unconventional. The ones that are outcasts fall into the second description. They don’t line up with society's norms therefore, they tend to be looked upon as bizarre and atypical. Outsiders are too often misjudged and misunderstood
Bullying is a growing concern in a society where status and exercising power over another human being are increasingly important in developing one’s social circles. Dan Olweus (Norwegian researcher and founder of the Olweus Bullying Prevention Program) defines it as an “aggressive behaviour that is intentional and that involves an imbalance of power. Most often, it is repeated over time” (Violencepreventionworks.org). School victimization is an especially delicate matter that has only really been in the public eye for the past half century, as more and more researchers and psychologists pointed out its short- and long-term negative effects on targeted individuals. It has since been widely investigated and numerous programs have been developed in an effort to address and prevent the many forms of bullying that exist today. The negative effects of such an abusive behaviour are various and can greatly differ from individual to individual. However, there are three main consequences that can be associated with school bullying, which are: school avoidance, depression/anxiety and even suicidal attempts.
Adolescence is, for the most part, about fitting in. Most everybody wants friends and wants to feel like they are a part of a social group. Young childhoods are spent meeting new people and making friends that share your common interests. However, in the teenage years, it gets a lot more complicated. Some people will start to leave their old friends for newer, “cooler” ones, and start to wear new clothing to make themselves popular. Everyone wants to fit in, and some people will make more of an effort to do so than others. In middle school specifically, cliques and social groups start forming. This is the time when teens and pre-teens figure out who they are and start to fit in with their friends.
It may also be simply that the student has fallen in with the wrong group of friends, and is being pressured into bullying, or is learning that bullying is an acceptable behavior.... ... middle of paper ... ... The 'Secondary' of the 'Secondary'.
Teenagers constantly worry about their body image. Magazines, newspapers, and television don’t exactly help to boost their confidence. The portrayal of stick thin woman and body building men forces teens to believe they need to achieve that “perfect” body and look. The biggest issue of these images being broadcasted to teens is the effects that the images have on them. Teenagers who obsess over their body image can experience stress due to trying to impress others, develop an eating disorder, and neglect, and even jeopardize, important aspects of their lives when they focus too much on their body image.
Bullying is something that is not something new and is actually something that society continues to face. Over the years, bullying has been looked at as being so ordinary in schools that it is continuously overlooked as an emanate threat to students and has been lowered to a belief that bullying is a part of the developmental stage that most young children will experience then overcome (Allebeck, 2005, p. 129). Not everyone gets over the extreme hurt that can come as an effect from bullying, for both the bully and the victim. Because of this, we now see bullying affecting places such as the workplace, social events and even the home. The issue of bullying is not only experienced in schools, but the school environment is one of the best places
Bullying can also be considered as a major problem in the teenager bracket. This can occur in any social environment not just schools as mostly portrayed. Bullyi...
From as young as grade school, kids are worried about being socially accepted. The trend these days is to be the bully or be bullied. This is most common in schools. According to Jay Foster, author of The Social Nature of Bullying, “Both genders may be bullies, but their techniques vary. Girls tend to be more verbally abusive, while boys more often use physical intimidation.” Classmates will often bully one another often because of their height, weight, disability, sexual orientation, or even clothing. If one person sees another person pick on someone, that person may think it is funny and will make themselves look “cool.” They think that by them bullying someone else, they won’t get bullied themselves and that bullying will make them feel much better