Definition Essay Example - Peer Pressure

In life there are stages that make people react differently to the social environment. Adolescent stage, a stage that every person undergoes at the teen ages exposes youths to various social challenges like indulging in drugs, premature sex and even school dropout in some areas. Peer pressure is the foundation of all the above mentioned factors that challenges the youth in todays existence. Peer pressure is the strive that forces someone to look relevant and the urge of a person to do what his or her age mates do. The main aim of this study is to vividly look at what peer pressure is the kind of people who are vulnerable to peer pressure and the negative impacts of peer pressure to the youths today.

Just as briefly described earlier, pear pressure can simply be defined as the in drive of a person persuading him or her to indulge into a certain activity, mostly a wrong activity, because his or her friends or age mates always or normally do the activity. The person initially might not have been interested in the activity bus since his or her friends are interested in the activity, he or she will definitely develop an interest. Peer pressure thus forces one to do something for the purpose of fitting in a certain social group and remain relevant to the group. Adolescent stage is normally the period with which peer pressure is common and affects a lot of individuals. During this stage of growth and development, individuals usually try to identify themselves with a certain social group, make friends as well as inter mingle with those of opposite sex. This thus gives peer pressure a chance to influence someone in decision making since the person will be striving to mingle up or please the peers by looking relevant. Most youths at this stage are thus the most vulnerable individuals to be majorly influenced by peer pressure.

Peer pressure can and has caused many negative impacts on the livelihood of young boys and girls today and still in the future. The struggle of fitting in, in social groups makes youths end up in very poor situations which have been witnessed and experienced to date. Most of the times individuals of this age groups are normally being pressured by his or her age mates or peers to indulge in uncouth activities like drug abuse, truancy, premature sex which leads to complications like HIV/AIDS as well as other sexually transmitted diseases. The entire above mentioned are the negative impacts of peer pressure among the youths usually in schools, at home in the hoods and in the streets.

Whatever that is a problem must have a solution. In order to reduce the rampant cases of peer pressure in the society, i.e., schools and at home, there are some steps and remedies that can be employed to counter this. Peer pressure is as a result of idleness, bad friends and poor religious foundation among the youth. The youth should thus be involved in the community development activities like cleaning the environment and planting trees which will keep them busy hence avoiding bad behaviors. At schools, youths should be involved in co-curriculum activities which help in keeping their minds focused and affiliate them according to their abilities rather than the peers and certain social behaviors. When applied, these remedies can assist in making a difference and controlling peer pressure.