What Is Peer Pressure Essay

Peer Pressure: A Change in Perspective Alert! Alert! We 've all seen it on TV shows and in the movies: a good kid with a good home and a good family life, but questionable friends. Soon enough, the kid is going out every night smoking, doing drugs, and partying. Every parenting book on the planet, it seems, has a section similar to this with warnings all over about how to save your child from the harmful, gripping effects of peer pressure. This all promotes the idea that peer pressure is damaging to school-children and teenagers. As a whole, society has become obsessed with individuals making decisions for themselves, so much so that we 've been trained to hear alarm bells when we think of peer pressure. However, though it is usually connoted as a negative influence, peer pressure perpetuates many positive qualities within a number of social situations. Peer pressure is simply the influence people have on others who are on the same social level. It existed long before anyone pointed to it and gave it a name. The desire to be accepted by others is uniform in not only humans but in most other animals as well. Just like buffalo travel in herds and birds flock together, humans are known for their tendency to categorize themselves in groups.

However, peer pressure depends more on who the peers are than the pressure that comes from them. In other words, the negative effects of peer pressure can only be blamed on those who act as bad influences. So, it follows that the type of people we surround ourselves with determines whether our experiences with peer pressure are positive or negative. If we surround ourselves with good influences and people who share our values, it is more likely that the peer pressure that we are affected by will be beneficial. It is not peer pressure itself that can be dangerous. Rather, it is the people who are around