Causes Of Peer Pressure On Teenage Suicide

How Peer Pressure can be the Motivation behind Suicide

Why are so many teenagers and young adults nowadays killing themselves before their life even begins? What drove them to take the rash decision of taking their own life? On average, in the United States, about 44,193 people die by suicide in a year. This equates to about 121 suicides per day. The total rate of suicide deaths in 2015 was around 19.6%, 12.5% of which were composed by teenagers and young adults between the ages of 15 and 24. There are various perspectives regarding the reasons behind a teen’s suicide. Experts say that the top factors for teen suicide are due to causes that are out of their control, such as divorce, substances, abuse or any other typical teen pressures. Nevertheless,

Their mind and their body have not been thoroughly developed at this age, therefore causing that throughout this time, their brain is susceptible to other people’s opinion of them. This is because they are always in search of who they are and where they belong according to their constantly changing body and mind. The reputation and the acceptance of the people in their surroundings create their social-identity (the identity that individual gets from the others) which alters the way in which a teenager identifies him or herself. In the early stages of the adolescent’s development, teenagers begin to develop internal conflicts about their body and try to restore normality as their desire to be independent increases (Youth, 2017). This stage is when teenagers prefer to be farther away from their parents and rather spend more time with their friends. In the middle stage, they start to set high self-expectations, which subsequently lead to a low self-esteem, for their body cannot easily reach these impossible standards. (Miller, 2017)This is when social identity becomes involved in developing one’s identity; therefore, the peers that surround them are the most important factors that can influence the establishing of one’s

According to Brett Laursen, a fellow of the American Psychological Association and a psychology professor, there are two types of peer pressures that can be experienced by any teenager: implicit and explicit peer pressure. The example that Laursen uses to explain his point is the following: “a young man who just started middle school and started it with long hair and a couple of months into middle school he got his hair cut very short. This could have been because somebody made fun of his long hair. That would be the explicit form of peer pressure. But, it could also be very implicit. He could have wanted to fit in. He could have been eager to make new friends, other kids with short hair who didn't want them to be off put by his long hair. He could have thought this was some form of status – that people with short hair appear to have more status than people with long hair.” (Laursen, 2017) This implicit pressure is what makes teens feel as though they are being left out from a group due to a behavior or an aspect of themselves and causes them to change it accordingly in order to feel accepted. When asked about the susceptibility to succumb to peer pressure, Laursen mentions how those who have few friends tend to conform to their needs in order to protect their friendships. Since childhood,