Positive or Negative ?
By: Melanie Vasquez
One-fifths of teenagers say their friends pretend to take drugs to "cool". The teenagers said their friends pressured them into taking drugs in order to fit in with there peers. Negative peer pressure affects everyone but it has a bigger impact on teens than adult or children. Negative peer pressure can motivate teens to do drugs, drop out of school, or can cause an alienation from his or her family and so many more dangerous things.
Many teenagers said their friends were pressured into faking drugs in order to fit in with their friends. " One fifth of teenagers say their friends pretended to take drugs to look cool." I personally have never gone through something like that but I have heard stories about this topic. My friend had told me that in her school there was a new girl and she wanted to fit in and she wanted to be popular so she decided to start smoking to act "cool". The more she kept doing that the more she become addicted to the drugs. " A confidential drug helpline showed that almost half of the teenagers questioned said that they needed to fit in with their peers." Negative peer pressure has a bigger impact on teens than a positive peer pressure.
Teenagers could get involved with the wrong crowd and get pressured into doing other thing that are dangerous for example drugs, smoking, and alcohol. The teen doing these types things could forget about focusing in their school work. "Negative peer pressure encourages the teen to ignore his or her academic responsibilities. This may result in poor grades and distress in school".This could lead into bad consequences especially for teens. This could also interfere with their decisions for collage. Peer pressure can lead teens into ignoring academic responsibilities. "Computer usage at home and school may focus negative peer pressure." In some schools these days students have to do homework online, this can affect teens because of social media. Teens can get pressured through social media due to how many likes you get on a picture or how many followers you have. Teens may be obsessed over that and won't complete homework, this can affect their academic responsibilities.
The direct effect of negative peer pressure is alienation from the family. "Negative peer pressure is always antagonistic to the values that are promoted by family." Negative peer pressure can cause teens to start hiding things from parents and they won't be as close to there parents. This could cause alienation from family. "Teenagers in negative peer groups will be at odds with his or her parents values." The parents won't be close to the teen and that can be complicated because the parent wouldn't be able to help the teen get through his or her problems.
However peer pressure can have a positive influence in teens. For example joining a sport, or making healthy decisions. Even though positive peer pressure can motivate kids and teens to join sports eat healthy, and be respectful, negative peer pressure has a huge impact on teens. For example peer groups could motivate teens to do drugs, cut school, and many other dangerous things.
Negative peer pressure has a bigger impact on teens than positive peer pressure. Peer pressure has a positive and negative side to it but these days negative peer pressure has a bigger impact on teens. Negative peer pressure brings dangerous things or habits into a teens life, and it's not only teens it could also happen to anyone.