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Peer Pressure
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Jared Wilkes Mrs. McCammon Research Paper 20 December 2002 Pressure too Hard to Handle Adolescents are faced daily with pressures that can indefinitely effect their adult lives. They have pressure from their lives at home, school, and especially their peers. These pressures can lead to stress created by negative and positive peer pressure, affecting the growth of adolescents in certain areas before reaching adulthood. Adolescents have many life altering changes that they encounter. One of the first changes they go through is puberty. Puberty is characterized by the attainment of biological sexual maturity (“Dvp Psy Tdy” 328). In other word they reach sexual maturity. This includes their physical development. Every adolescent goes through bodily changes. Growth occurs, body composition begins to change, and sexual characteristics develop during their physical development. This change introduces the adolescent to a whole new world. Adolescents in today’s world are challenged with many tasks. One important developmental task that adolescents take on is getting socially involved with others. Adolescents must make friends. This act involves choosing the right peer group to fit in. When choosing a group an adolescent checks for two things. The first thing decided when choosing what group to be apart of is whether or not they have similar interests. This is the most noticeable change in an adolescents’ life. They will rely a lot on their peer groups for support, security, and guidance. The second thing that adolescents look for is whether or not a particular peer group understands them. The reason for this is that fellow peers go through the same kinds of changes and problems. For this reason it is very important for adolescents to choose the right peer group, because it will play a major factor throughout their adolescence. Adolescents need to decide whom to put themselves around. In order to choose their friends wisely, they should look for friends in peer groups that will exploit positive peer pressure. This type of peer group discourages negative activities in favor of school achievements and involvement in sports and other extra-curricular activities (Lingren 4). The time adolescents spend with each other increases compared to the time spent with adults. “Peers start to function more and more without adult supervision” (4). They also begin to develop greater wants to have more contact with peers of the opposite sex. Drugs also play a huge role in adolescents’ lives. One important way they are directly pressured to do drugs is through advertising. Most countries put restrictions on what advertisers are allowed to say. Advertising for cigarettes and alcohol, though restricted greatly, has some pretext to advertise in the United States. Cigarette and alcohol companies try to lure particular groups of people.
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