What is Peer Pressure & How is It Affecting Your Teenager?

Peer pressure has been a buzzword for years now. What is peer pressure and what are its different types? Does peer pressure have only negative effects on someone, or does it have positive effects as well? Are there ways to reduce the effects of peer pressure on your teenager? There are many such questions that pervade a parent’s mind. However, this is a whole topic in itself, and it takes both time and effort on the part of both parents and children to mitigate any untoward circumstances.

What is Peer Pressure?

Peer pressure is a term given to the direct or indirect influence of a peer or a group of peers over someone such that the person feels they must do a certain thing to be liked or respected by them.

Now, how to deal with peer pressure depends on the type of peer pressure one is facing.

Different Types of Peer Pressure

There are two major types of peer pressure: Direct and Indirect. Both these types have a significant impact on the behaviour of the recipient.

Direct peer pressure would include if someone forces your teen to have a cigarette or asks your teen to consume alcohol in order to be liked and in order to be one of the group.

Indirect peer pressure would include if someone does not outwardly force your child to do a certain thing, but there are non-verbal cues that convey the same message. 

Positive and Negative Effects of Peer Pressure

After the question of what is peer pressure comes another very important sub-topic. Are there only negative effects of peer pressure, or are there positive effects of peer pressure also? Both.

Positive effects of peer pressure include your child studying on time, doing homework, indulging in regular exercise, and other such activities which have a positive effect on behaviour. When peers motivate each other to do tasks that ultimately benefit your child in the long run, that’s perhaps the best kind of peer pressure.

Negative effects of peer pressure include your child getting into negative habits such as alcohol consumption and aggressive behaviour. When peers incite each other to do tasks such as these which impede your child’s progress and affect them in the long run, that’s where peer pressure assumes its negative form.

This is not all. Sometimes, the positive effects of peer pressure tend to incline towards the negative effects. For example, if your child starts to prioritise exercise or studying over all other things so much so that your child sees nothing else, that becomes a point of concern.

How to Deal With Peer Pressure

What is peer pressure if there are no ways to reduce its effects? Parents play a key role in all of this. In the end, adolescence is just a phase when children wish to assert their independence and have not yet formed their own values, making it a confusing stage of rapid development. That is why helping children get a strong foothold over their values and sense of self is one of the best ways to make them immune to negative peer pressure.

(Also, Read: Why Do Teenagers Lie & What to Do So As to Deal With Them?)