Peer Pressure’s Potential

At its finest, peer pressure is a way for young adults to get good grades and contribute to the community. At its worst and most extreme, though, it can possibly land you in jail. But how do we know if peer pressure is a positive or a negative force in a teenager’s life? The only way to truly know is to identify what peer pressure can accomplish, and when you do that, it’s fairly easy to see that peer pressure is actually quite good. As a person who has been exposed to both sides of the issue, I can comfortably attest to just how overwhelmingly good peer pressure can be.

Positive peer pressure almost always manifests itself as a subtle, subconscious force. This was my own experience with it. While no one actively told me to get involved in the community, or to become a high-achieving student, sitting in an AP class full of students with GPA’s of 90’s or above, definitely drove me to want to be their academic equal. The same can be said for my drive to contribute to the community; watching my friends participate in volunteer work made me feel left out, and in turn got me to join them. The effects of peer pressure in my life went far past the short term. Because of my high grades, and because of all the extracurricular work I was doing, studying in the United Kingdom wasn’t just a dream; it was a possibility. Instead of just talking about getting merit-based scholarships as if it were just a hope, I knew that I could now apply for them. Perhaps most important of all, though, were all the positive memories and lessons left over from my work, both in the community and in student government.

Another aspect of peer pressure that can be entirely beneficial is called peer intervention. These programs of peer intervention are designed so that young adults working in the community organize awareness campaigns targeting people of their same age-group. These programs can deal with any number of issues, and have been most successful in dealing with HIV/AIDS prevention, safe-sex awareness and drug use awareness. These programs have become so effective, in fact, that Julie Hoare, a senior HIV/AIDS prevention officer at the International Federation has stated that peer education programs are their most commonly used method for HIV/AIDS prevention (Ytre, “Positive Peer Pressure”) . These programs build off the fact that people have more influence amongst their own age group, as well as credibility. Because of this influence and credibility, young adults are more likely to open up or listen to them than anyone else. The spread of information in these peer intervention programs can be crucial to awareness campaigns for that very reason. This is just another example of how peer pressure can do a lot of good.

Peer pressure can also affect a person’s eating habits. This is especially true for females, who seem to pick up their friend’s eating habits, despite not even having the same tastes in food (Rohan, “Friends and Food”) . This can be a good thing, though; forty percent of the girls in a survey cited by Cait Rohan in her article, “Friends and Food” stated that they ate around their friends, but eighty percent of these girls stated that they didn’t have eating disorders, which supports the fact that peer pressure can actually be a positive influence in terms of eating healthier portions of food. In fact, seventy-one percent of the girls in the same study stated that they ate healthier around their friends. This report truly helps to illustrate just how beneficial peer pressure can be, even when it comes to eating, and as we learn more about our bodies, and what is healthiest for us, this trend can only continue to expand.

Of course, there will always be stories of the horrors of peer pressure. Looking back at the aforementioned paragraph, peer pressure’s effects on food choice can also be detrimental. While these rates may be lower than those of the positive effects, the negatives still exist, and must be accounted for. In the same article by Cait Rohan that was previously cited, she writes about the influence one person can have over a group of friends, and how that one person’s unhealthy eating habits and eating disorders can negatively impact his/her friends. Something that is perhaps even more worrying is the fact that many teenagers are peer pressured into trying drugs. The rate, at thirty percent is rather high, in fact (Family First Aid, “Teen Peer Pressure: Statistics and Facts”) . The negatives of drugs are obvious; however they do end up leading to worse eventualities, particularly jail. In Canada, for example, the number of serious offences linked to illegal drugs was at 87,945 in the year 2000 (Casavant and Collin, “Illegal Drug Use and Crime: A Complex Relationship.”) . While these statistics are worrying, and for good reason; there are ways to counteract these influences. Parents can especially help in keeping teenagers away from negative influences, and away from the clutches of harmful peer pressure. And the best way to do that is through constant communication (“Teen Peer Pressure: Statistics and Facts”) .

Ultimately, peer pressure will always exist as long as teenagers exert greater influence over their peers. This fact is unavoidable. What is avoidable, though, are the harmful effects of peer pressure. Through constant communication between parents and their children, and through awareness campaigns and programs led by students, the effects of negative peer pressure can be counteracted. This allows the positive effects of peer pressure to take hold. Using positive peer will help teenagers adopt a healthier lifestyle with better food habits, as well as increase
awareness on issues like safe-sex and sexually transmitted diseases like HIV which will in turn enable teenagers to be more knowledgeable and not give in to the effects of negative peer pressure. Positive Peer pressure will also help teenagers to achieve more in school, contribute more to the community and participate in extracurricular activities. Peer pressure is an invaluable tool for communities, and it should be one that should not be overlooked because of the negative connotations it envelopes.