Positive Aspects Of Peer Influence In The Age Of Adolescence

Adolescence is popularly known to be a very tumultuous stage in a person’s life. In the adolescent stage (also coined the identity vs. role confusion stage by theorist Erik Erikson) bodies are changing rapidly, emotions are unfamiliar and unexplainable, and refraining from succumbing to peer pressure is more challenging than ever.

Peers have a major role in shaping a person's identity. Children tend to have a similar identity as their peers. “Similarity among friends. Strong correlations were found.” If a friend is doing something it makes the child feel pressured into doing it to. Adolescents tend to “rebel” against their parents in their teen years and that’s when peers become a huge influence on shaping the teen’s identity. For example if a persons friends are doing drugs he or she may feel peer pressured. Peer pressure is influence from members of one's peer group. If his or her friends do good things, for example, pick up trash or treat others with respect it helps the adolescent to not liter and pick up after themselves and treat people with respect. A lot of adolescents feel peer pressure every day if they are not fitting in with the right peer group. Peers could shape the teens identity into a good one or a bad one depending on their friends personalities and

As children reach the age of adolescence in school, they are expose to myriads of peer relations. School is where children start to form their social connections and explore their adolescence stage. As they move through grade levels connecting with their peers by making lifelong friends, and camaraderie with classmates, their social circle begins to increase. However, adolescence is a critical developmental stage in a child’s life, and peer relations can negatively impact the development. Peer relationship is a strong influencer among adolescents. Adolescents is the target of peer influence, and they are the most vulnerable throughout their adolescence years. As children reach their adolescence age, they are influenced by assorted detrimental aspects of peer relations.

They are going through transitions in intellectual development and the process and transition of primary to secondary education.’ There are various intellectual skills that an adolescent will learn within this life stage. When in the adolescent life stage, the emotional development norms for an individual is to learn their personal identity and they must leant about who they are about how to control their emotions within the change of puberty. Low self-esteem and confidence issue is often something most teenagers struggle with. With adolescence secondary learning occurs, a person’s self-worth can change within this life-stage due to the social situations that an individual had to be within, also their use of clothing, language and religion etc. The introduction of hormones can often change how teenagers see themselves. Adolescent’s independence that they go through can affect their social and emotional development.

They have a hard time finding who they are as a person. Adolescence is a period of time where kids are putting into circumstance that are hard to understand until they go through them hardship themselves. In “Saplings in the Storm” girls were analyzed to give better understanding of girl’s emotion when they are going through adolescence. Stated in the article, “In early adolescence, studies show that girls’ IQ scores drop and their resiliency and optimism and become less curious and inclined to take risks. They lose their assertive, energetic and “tomboyish” personalities and come more deferential, self- critical and depressed” (19). Girls try to fit the social stands of being a “girl” and in the end they bring themselves down mentally. Adults don’t understand the social stand because they aren’t completely the same anymore. In today’s society girls have to grow up so fast. Girls start wearing makeup at a young age, start wearing scandalize clothes, and have sexual encounters early. Having to go through all these mild stones may make it hard to be themselves and have

Next to the parents, a child’s friends can be the biggest influence in a child’s life, and the need to fit in can be very hard for a child. The idea of being cool or giving into peer pressure can cause a child’s idea of what’s right and what’s wrong to become misconstrued. Causing a child to fall into a bad crowd of delinquent peers causing them to get into trouble with the law.

This is a time where there will be an urge to become closer to peers and become more social with people outside of the usual. This is also a time when notable changes in attitude may be seen. Burnett and Blakemore found that teenagers will are more susceptible to peer pressure, but they also become more resilient to it, especially between the ages of 14 and 18. Teens become more self aware of their ability to refuse peer pressure and make decisions for themselves. Through learning to reject certain people and behaviors, there is also a period of learning who enhances one’s personality. This learning stage brings attention to self-identity and group identity. People usually find a difference in the actions that they would do alone when compared to when peers are involved; this is also called Social Psychology, which is the understanding of individuals behavior in social situations (McLeod). Attitudes and emotions may become impacted by who is interacting with a person and there may be a willingness to do things that originally wouldn’t happen. The difference in personality and interactions is to prepare people for when they leave the stage of adolescence- Hopefully, humans emerge capable of socializing with others and communicating emotions- Even as the human brain continues to socially develop (Blakemore

To better understand the role of peer groups on adolescent behavior, we must first examine its origin in contemporary society. Industrialization in the

More than ever in this society as children find the need to belong or fit in to the popular crowd in school for acceptance they often tend to mimic their friends behaviors. This is often a result of the individual child trying to find him or herself. The results however, are not always negative. In fact, there are some positive results that may occur as a result of copying their peers. Simply stated, “When teens surround themselves with people who make good decisions and who are involved with positive activities and choices, it makes the adolescent child want to be better” (Stock, 2010 pg.2). Positive peers influence adolescents and can drive the child toward improved confidence, and improved grades in school. Inversely, the same can be said for the adolescent child who decides that he or she wants to be like his or her friends who have a negative influence. Children who fall into this category are those that are of the bandwagon philosophy. Those negatively impacted by peers often show signs of lower grades in school, increased distance from family. In fact, “peer pressure can lead to experimentation with drugs and alcohol, and various high risks behaviors” (Fact Sheets, 2009 pg.1). The changes in the adolescent child can have lasting effects depending on which type of peer influences that child may be surrounded by. The negative impact of peer pressure can be strong; however there are also positive influences.

Adolescence most important task is to develop an identity separate from one’s parents, a social and sexual role that supports their life. As an adolescence, peers are one factor that shapes you into who you are. However, it is easy to get caught up in the wrong crowd, experience insecurity, anxiety, depression, and have an increasingly high expectations of others. Biologically the changes during

As children enter adolescence, cultural, biological and cognitive changes cause variation in their daily lives. Adolescents spend far less time with their parents and begin participating in both structured and unstructured peer activities.Without the direct presence of their parents or other adults, their peer network begins to become the primary context for most socialization and activity. These social "cliques" fundamentally influence adolescent life and development.Perhaps because they are perceived as an external threat to parental authority, undesired changes in adolescent behavior are often attributed to cliques.In these situations, cliques are described as "social grouping[s] of persons that exhibit a great deal of peer pressure on its members and is exclusive, based on superficial differences".Researchers, however, question these assumptions: based on empiric data from both experiments and ethnographies they suggest that clique structure characterizes many friendship networks within any given school, not all of which negatively affect adolescents.A more neutral and scientific definition of clique is "a grouping of persons who interact with each other more regularly and intensely than others in the same setting."

Peer relationships are some of the most important interactions we have in our childhood. According to lecture (5/7/2015), these relationships help to build our social skills as well our social competence, creating a social acceptance amongst our peers. Our textbook (pg. 321) explains that peer relationships promote both physical and cognitive development. Once the child enters the preschool age they begin to differentiate friends from peers. A peer is simply an acquaintance, the child plays with them due to accessibility and similar background or social standing; however, a friend is someone with shared interests and associated with positive experiences. During this study into peer relationships in early and middle childhood, I interviewed two young girls. Kayla is 11 years old and Adison is 4 years old. While some of their views on friendship and peer interactions are similar, most of their views are worlds apart.

One must be able to look at situations through the mind and perspectives of an adolescents. Each situation can’t be judged the same because, unknown to the adolescent they may have barriers that might hamper their behavior.

If a school counselor is to execute the most effective curriculum, each intervention should be tailored to the needs of the specific age-range. This may vary from school to school depending upon the school culture and population. The Hill Center counseling department has used research in conjunction with on-site observations to conclude that friendship and peer relations are most relevant to the elementary aged students. A sizeable number of elementary students world-wide experience difficulties in friendship-making. They may experience poor relationships, have few friends, and find it difficult to handle sometimes complicated interactions involving adult figures in the school and at home (Oden & Asher, 1977; Omizo & Omizo, 1988; Shechtman,

Moreover, if one measures the significance of influences based on quality of exposure, in addition to quantity of exposure, celebrities clearly are the most noteworthy factor in an adolescent’s formation of their individual identity. An in-depth study published in The Journal of Psychology measured an individual's tendency to partake in a practice called celebrity worship. While the words “celebrity worship” may seem extreme, the four professors who compiled the findings of the study defined it as “becom[ing] virtually obsessed with one or more celebrities,” (McCutcheon, 309-10). The study discovered that those who are susceptible to becoming celebrity worshippers typically had three identifying characteristics: underdeveloped critical thinking skills, a lower education level, and a compromised or weak identity (310, 316). Scientifically, the adolescent brain fits all of these criteria. A documentary entitled Teens: What Makes Them Tick?, written by award winning analyst and screenwriter Patricia Dauer, reports that adolescents use the amygdala, or the instinctual part of the brain, to make decisions, whereas adults use the prefrontal cortex, which is the critical thinking portion of the brain (00:04:34-00:04:50). During the teenage years, the brain lacks full development in certain areas, such as the prefrontal cortex. Since the prefrontal cortex is the area of the brain most responsible for critical thinking, and is not fully developed in a young adult, adolescents lack