Negative Effects Of Peer Pressure

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According to Rosenberg, Mckeon, and Dinero (1999), the strongest influence on teenagers today were their peer groups, or their social circle outside of their family. Since more and more mothers take day jobs to help support the family (Schwartz, 2005), teenagers spend most of their time with their peers rather than with their family. As a result, teens develop intimate relationship with friends, leading to a higher probability of their conformity towards them.

Almost all teenagers have conformed to peer pressure, mostly because they long to feel like they belong in a certain group of people, regardless of how they really feel inside. Some respondents stated that they were afraid of isolation and they did not want to be left alone, which catapulted their conformity to their peers.

Peer pressure had its good and bad sides. The good side being it allowed the person to go out of his/her comfort zone and try new things. This led to experiences from which an individual can learn from, regardless if it was happy or sad. Also, peer pressure sometimes help people to recognize whom they really were without the stigma of other people defining them. They developed a sense of personal identity. Individuals began to appreciate themselves more for who they really were rather than for who they were pretending to be, or who their peers were.

However, majority of the participants have stated that peer pressure negatively impacted their lives. Most believe that they were manipulated by

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