BitoBain
Career
- Joined
- Jun 21, 2013
- Messages
- 375
- Reaction score
- 840
I've seen peer pressure in many ways. It is a very interesting phenomenon. It is most dominant in teenagers and preteenagers, and is visible across all animals. When an animal reaches the equivalent of the human ten years old, it begins to heed less to its parents and conform more to those its own age. This is not necessarily a bad thing, it's just part of growing up. I have seen peer pressure do a lot more good than ill in my life; it's an important part of our lives.
The classic example of peer pressure-the drinking teenagers at a party-is used so often that we forget what peer pressure really is. We think of a cool kid offering a straightforward kid a beer, and then seeing some sort of great battle within the mind of the receiving one. In reality, I think peer pressure has a lot more to do with how we change our thoughts and philosophies over time. Peers fundamentally alter the way we see the world. It's fun to extract information from the way others live, and it's part of growing up. Peers typically do not pressure us into doing something we never thought we would do. Instead, they change the way we behave every time we spend time with them and eventually we are something that we never thought we would be.
Going back to the classic beer-at-the-party example, if the kid chooses to accept the beer, it's probably because he thinks like his friends, not because he felt especially threatened or obligated.
So be careful who you hang out with! Every bit of interaction you have with someone will slightly alter the way you see the world, which is what really counts. I have had the pleasure of getting to know some really exceptional people in my life, and without them, I would be nothing of what I am today. You don't need to have some all-knowing, benevolent, saving, perfect hero (though I did) in your life to become a better person. You just have to hang out with good people who are somewhat like what you want to become.
I feel we miss out on stuff like this in early child education. We constantly tell children not to do drugs, not to join gangs, not to give into peer pressure, not to skip school, not to get into trouble, not to break rules, and many more things not to do. So many more children would turn out better if we only told them what they should do to be happy in life. Telling people what not to do is like putting an ape in a blank white room with a big red button and then telling him not to press the button.
Children and teenagers are inevitably very curious. You can't expect them to not want to explore, so we have to give them positive things to explore. Once again, this is not how society currently works, which is very visible in the famous marshmallow test, which tests children's abilities' to not do something stupid, and accurately portrays a child's test scores later in life.
The classic example of peer pressure-the drinking teenagers at a party-is used so often that we forget what peer pressure really is. We think of a cool kid offering a straightforward kid a beer, and then seeing some sort of great battle within the mind of the receiving one. In reality, I think peer pressure has a lot more to do with how we change our thoughts and philosophies over time. Peers fundamentally alter the way we see the world. It's fun to extract information from the way others live, and it's part of growing up. Peers typically do not pressure us into doing something we never thought we would do. Instead, they change the way we behave every time we spend time with them and eventually we are something that we never thought we would be.
Going back to the classic beer-at-the-party example, if the kid chooses to accept the beer, it's probably because he thinks like his friends, not because he felt especially threatened or obligated.
So be careful who you hang out with! Every bit of interaction you have with someone will slightly alter the way you see the world, which is what really counts. I have had the pleasure of getting to know some really exceptional people in my life, and without them, I would be nothing of what I am today. You don't need to have some all-knowing, benevolent, saving, perfect hero (though I did) in your life to become a better person. You just have to hang out with good people who are somewhat like what you want to become.
I feel we miss out on stuff like this in early child education. We constantly tell children not to do drugs, not to join gangs, not to give into peer pressure, not to skip school, not to get into trouble, not to break rules, and many more things not to do. So many more children would turn out better if we only told them what they should do to be happy in life. Telling people what not to do is like putting an ape in a blank white room with a big red button and then telling him not to press the button.
Children and teenagers are inevitably very curious. You can't expect them to not want to explore, so we have to give them positive things to explore. Once again, this is not how society currently works, which is very visible in the famous marshmallow test, which tests children's abilities' to not do something stupid, and accurately portrays a child's test scores later in life.
