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As the examples indicate, peer pressure can be both negative and positive. Peer pressure can range from subtle to overt, which means that some forms of peer pressure can be easier to spot than others. Being able to identify signs that your child is dealing with peer pressure may help you start a supportive conversation. Peer pressure can have both a positive or negative influence. Choosing Therapy’s Directory – Find an experienced therapist who is an expert at working with families.
If your boundaries are shared, others may be able to offer you the social support of respecting those boundaries even if others continue to persist. This gives you clear validation and a network that you can rely on for future situations. If the peer pressure is still too much to handle, let your teens know they don’t have to deal with it on their own. If they seemingly feel unable to come to you, for now, let them know it’s also okay to seek guidance from a trusted adult other than yourself. Extended family, teachers, counselors, clergy, and coaches are also good resources. They can provide advice and help deal with pressure-filled situations. If your teens don’t have quite enough confidence to walk away on their own, encourage them to look for a like-minded peer or friend who feels the same way they do in a particular situation.
Psychology of Peer Pressure
Negative peer pressure can instill bad habits such as bunking school, bullying, cheating, and using drugs or other illicit substances. This type of peer pressure is direct, spoken, unspoken and negative. There are only ill feelings that come from being pressured to drink, whether that is emotional or physical. Drinking when you are not ready nor want to can make you physically sick and leave you feeling bad about yourself days after.
The more comfortable they can become, however, the less enticing it will be for them to succumb to peer pressure in order to fit in. Peer pressure of another kind occurs with teens suffering from low self esteem or a higher than usual level of passivity. In these cases the teen needs help developing a strong enough internal compass and sense of self to confidently make independent choices. While it’s important to surround yourself with like-minded folks, there will be times you have to interact with people who have different values, of course. “Instead of viewing these people as evil or bad, remind yourself of your own values and goals and plan how you’re going to stick to them,” Dr. Lanzisera says. To effectively escape peer pressure, it’s important to have a clear view of your goals and values.
Teach Teens to Stay Away
This can help establish a dialogue and comfort level that can make the role playing less awkward for both parties. If they pressure you to do shots with them at the bar when you aren’t drinking, for example, you might suggest that you both hit the dance floor instead. Or maybe, you make a plan to go on a hike or to the movies the next time you hang out. That way, you’re fulfilling both of your needs in a mutually beneficial way.
We’re all social creatures; we want to fit in, have friends, avoid loneliness and gain approval from others. The fear of not having those things is enough to propel some people to extreme or inappropriate responses. It may decrease their self-confidence, affect their performance in the classroom, distance them from family and well-wishers, and increase their chances of developing anxiety and depression. Untreated anxiety and depression may also lead to thoughts of self-harm or even suicide .
Weigh your emotions in the decisions you make
However, if you find any incongruencies, feel free to write to us. Verywell Family uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. However, it’s https://ecosoberhouse.com/ important to remember that peer pressure can have both negative and positive impacts. Most kids have a strong desire to fit in and are especially sensitive to being picked on, made fun of, or ostracized.
- Your friends can also influence you in good ways, so it’s essential to surround yourself with people who support your goals and encourage you to make healthy decisions.
- One-time use of such drugs may cascade into addiction more quickly.
- Our admissions department will schedule a campus tour where you can meet our staff and students, and see one or all of our campuses.
- Thinking about it ahead of time helps you be ready to do what’s right.
- Peer pressure can take on forms that have a little or nothing to do with drugs or alcohol.
- Peers play a large role in the social and emotional development of children and adolescents.
In these cases, parents do well to engage in parenting that fosters personal agency, responsibility and accountability. Drugs and alcohol Drugs and alcohol are easy to find on both college and high school campuses, and teens might feel the pressure to be “cool” by experimenting with something exotic and daring. When teens were surveyed about drug use, 55% said they started using drugs after being pressured by their friends.
Prepare a Plan
Our focus at BlueCrest is on solutions to addiction and mental health challenges, not living in the problem. You can also provide some examples from your own life, which can serve to enlighten them a bit more than a strictly objective education system can. One opportunity is to have a back up plan in which your child can contact you without alerting their peers. Perhaps how to deal with peer pressure if they send you a text message with this code included, you can call them and tell them that something happened at home. By letting them know about your feelings, worries, and desires, they will begin to accept their own. Thus, when faced with peer pressure, they will be less likely to fold. Passive peer pressure is a form of peer pressure that is indirect.
Indirect peer pressure occurs when somebody feels influenced to act in a certain way based on the decisions and actions of others. This is one of the reasons that fads are such a regular occurrence. When large groups of people become interested in the same thing, it’s natural to want to feel included in this group. Encouraging your child to develop prepared responses in the case of direct peer pressure can help. For example, if they are pressured to skip school, they might respond by saying that they’ve already missed enough classes and that they can’t risk losing any more. If someone asks you to do something like drink a beer or try a drug, don’t respond to the request immediately.
Peer pressure is a part of life, but that doesn’t mean you need to be negatively influenced by it. If you’re feeling pressured to do things that may make you feel bad about yourself, consider talking to a trusted person for support. If you have made poor choices in the past due to peer pressure, forgive yourself with the intention to do better next time. Not all kids are wired to be the “life of the party” or “Mr./Ms. Popularity,” but any teen can become at least somewhat more comfortable and confident in social situations. Many parents mistake poor but independent decision making for peer pressure in order to preserve an illusion of their own child’s innocence.
One of the difficulties of identifying cultural pressure is acknowledging that most members of your culture will be following the same rules. There are many things that we do for no other reason than the fact that our society engages in the same behaviors. On the other hand, spoken peer pressure can be incredibly effective if an individual is having a one on one conversation with someone that they respect and admire.