"Peer Pressure" is a word which you might have not listened but one thing is for sure that all of us get affected by this at some point in our life. Especially in the teen age and college life. Let me explain this to you with an example. Suppose you are a young kid who just passed his class 12th exams and entered college. You found a new friends group with which you are exploring your college life. Now you are living in hostel far away from your home. At one night your friends are doing party and drinking. One of your friend insisted you to join. You said to him that you haven't touched alcohol in your life and you are a teetotaler. But your friend still insisted and all of your other friends joined him in convincing you. Finally you took the drink since you don't want to upset all your friends. Now this one drink will result into occasional drinking with friends which eventually leads to regular drinking habit which ultimately leads to dinking addiction. Now this what we call Peer pressure.
So Peer Pressure by simple definition is anything which we do under the influence of our friends or peer group. Now a simple question must be arises in your mind that why do we feel peer pressure in the first place. Now there are many reasons which I explained below.
We want to mix up with the group
We human are social creatures. We love to live in a group. Since the dawn of civilization we used to live in small packs even when we were hunter gatherers. So its clear that we are more comfortable in a group than being alone. Now when we are associated with a group, we want to mix up with that group in every way. We adopt habits and interests of our peers subconsciously.
We wanna avoid feeling of left behind
Sometime if we are not trying the things which our friends doing, we feel like lift behind. This especially happens in teenage. The life and world is new to us and we are inexperienced. So, if our friends are doing something which we have not done before, we want to try the same. For example drinking alcohol and smoking cigarette or weed, most of the people start these habits in their teen or college years. In short if something new tried by our friends then we must also try it otherwise we will miss something or feel left out.
Weak personality or low self esteem
Some people have inherently weak personality and they suffered from lower self confidence and low self esteem. These kind of people got influenced from others easily. These people do not trust their thought process and instead trust on other people's opinions.
We want to look cool
When we are in our teenage years or growing years we want to look cool in front of friends. And to get this cool status sometime teenagers try to do everything whether its wrong or right. Sometimes they even take stupid risks which ends up in harming themselves or others.
Fear of Bullying
Sometimes our friends are too arrogant and if we don't follow what the whole group is following, we became their target. They will try everything to shame and bully you. They will make you feel like you have done something wrong by not following the group.
Final Thoughts
Peer pressure is mostly toxic which force our youth to do bad things which they really don't want to do. In order to protect our youths from this we have to take actions to increase their self esteem. We have to make them realise that their gut feeling is their most trusted friend. Do not do anything if its not feel right to you.
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