Did you know peers influence most of the choices you make when you’re with them? Yours peers influence everything from, what you eat for lunch to how you dress. Peers are your friends and the people that are around you. People look at their peers for how they think they should be and what they want to accomplish. Peers play important roles in your life as friendship, who set examples, give advice, socialize, give encouragement, and new experiences. Your peers can influence you by saying everyone does something or by making something available to you.



The amount of peer pressure on teens is so high that teens are making bad choices.
Peer pressure can be good and bad. Peer pressure is when your peers influence or pressure you. Good types of peer pressure, when friends encourage you to do good things, are like studying. There is also a lot of bad peer pressure. Bad peer pressure is like pressure to drink alcohol or do drugs. There can be many bad effects of bad peer pressure. For this reason, it can ruin someone’s whole life.



You can be pressured to do something because other people around you are doing it or say they are. When people don’t know what to do in a social situation they look to others on what to do. I have had a few experiences with peer pressure. The most recent experience I’ve had was the pressure to wear makeup, and makeup pressured a lot of the girls in our grade. It isn’t necessarily bad peer pressure or good peer pressure.



It all started when a few of the girls came back from summer break wearing makeup. Some girls had been wearing makeup the year before, but only one or two. At first it wasn’t a big deal. Then more and more girls started to wear makeup. Some girls told others to start wearing makeup. Girls pressured me to wear makeup. They said guys would like you more and you would get a boyfriend.




When all the kids in our grade wanted a boyfriend or girlfriend, the girls who got pressured started to wear makeup. Now most of the girls in my grade do wear makeup and the thing they didn’t know was the guys don’t like it when we wear a lot of makeup after all. I almost did wear makeup, but I decided not to. After that I realized no one really cared if I wore makeup or not. I learned you don’t have to do anything you pressured to do.




With this in mind, I gave a survey to ten people in the seventh grade. Although the survey showed that 100% had been pressured before, it also showed 50% of them had been pressured to do bad things. It also showed that 70% had done the thing they were pressured to do. I asked them if they were pressured right now and 40% of them said they were. A few things they were pressured to do where smoke, wear makeup, and say bad words. I couldn’t believe that in the seventh grade someone was pressured to smoke. If people are pressured to smoke now what’s next?




Most people don’t know that all teens want is to feel good about themselves and feel and act like an adult. Wanting to belong, most teens will do anything to fit in. I think this is true. I feel this way and I know some of my friends do, too.



Therefore when it comes to peer pressure you don’t have to do anything you are pressured to do. You control what you do, not your friends. Even though we are all human and we care what everyone thinks you should try to just be you.