Welham Girls' School

Peer pressure is always considered a negative term. Simply because ‘pressure’ is always considered a negative term. Our tendency to think in regard to peer pressure has always been subjected or limited to the negative side of this force. Why I call it ‘force’, will be answered through this very composition.

Before we move on, I find it crucial to understand the most probable incentive of the coining of this term. ‘Pressure’ is what makes all the difference in this term because peer just means a friend. Pressure can be simply defined as the force exerted by something on something. This pressure often acts as a burden and causes something to crush or shrink. A common usage of this term in this context is someone committing suicide due to mental pressure. So, pressure is a metaphor over here, and ‘peer pressure’ is often taken to be the negative vibes passed from one friend to another which causes a downfall in the friend's life who gets affected.

Friends affect the lives of friends. This is the most non-negotiable method of describing peer pressure. However, the brain of a human is programmed in such a way that it sees this ‘effect’ from the eyes of an optimist only. Is it because of today’s generation, that words like effect and pressure are classified as negatives? In the growing world and the time where youth is considered to be ‘spoiled’, the imagery created after listening to ‘Peer pressure’ is always the one where the kids are into wrong acts or heading towards the wrong destination. In today's world, where the younger generation is always exploring, meeting new people, and making new friends; I guess that it is understood that this segment of society is more affected by friends than parents.  This pattern can be even stronger in teens who are overly aware of social characteristics, if people generally aim to remember each other's details. Her enthusiasm for social drama is not a way to distract her from her school or offend an adult. It is actually a neurological sensitivity caused by hormonal changes.

When we talk about peer pressure affecting students, we always ignore the possibility of some good deeds transferred from one student to another. Peer pressure can also fall under the category of learning for it is nothing but a child observing their colleagues and learning different things through the same.

Here comes the point of divergence. This point of divergence separates the adversely affected students from the good ones. Every teenager is quite familiar with the basic etiquette and is mature enough to differentiate between the good and bad. The bright students would endure and not resist the temptation to do wrong stuff if they are put under pressure by their friends. This temptation and the mental endurance strength is what separates the successful people from the average ones. Everyone went through the same stage but some endured while some were crushed under this pressure.