“The Connection Between Peer Pressure and Self-Esteem” is the tenth of fifteen teen articles received in spring 2024 from Piute High School students. Three of them were published in The Byway‘s most recent May paper. The rest will be featured online.
Peer pressure has a really big effect on teens. Teens struggle a lot with this, and it can be because of the people that they hang out with or the people around them. From the article “Peer Pressure (for Teens)” in the Kids Health website this scenario was given:
“Now!” whispered Suki. “Quick, while the clerk’s not looking.”
Heart pounding, Leah leaned against the store’s unattended makeup display and slid two tubes of lipstick into her purse. She looked bored and detached as she followed her friends Suki and Jill out of the store, but inside she felt panicked.
“I can’t believe you made me do that,” Leah wailed.
“Relax,” said Jill. “Everybody does it sometimes. And we didn’t make you do it.”
That was an example of peer pressure.
Peer pressure can seriously mess with your head and make you do things you never thought you would. Some examples of stopping peer pressure is educating kids. Educating them teaches them the consequences of their choices from what peer pressure does, how their choices that they made affects them, etc. This will show them to make good right decisions and the strategies to resist bad choices.
Another option is the ability to make wise decisions and build self-esteem. Building teens self-esteem increases their mentality and their decisions and their choices. It helps them be independent and have a sense of self confidence too! Self-esteem helps adolescents to make educated choices, and are able to encourage themselves. This also relates to setting a clear expectation. Setting high expectations establishes good boundaries and good decisions. This provides more guidance with their lives and they are able to focus more on a good decision than those through peer pressure.
Teens should be taught to think critically and use long-term perspectives. This boosts everything about their decisions. It is good to think ahead before doing anything at all. It helps to not only decide ahead, but analyze why that particular choice is correct.
Clearly, reviewing all of these ideas and examples, it is really good to get some help especially with peer pressure. This is something that everyone struggles with and it mainly will struggle the most with teens. It is okay for everyone to get help with what they are struggling with or just even someone to talk to.
– by Carlos Mar (10th) Circleville
Feature image courtesy of Abbie Call, The Byway.
Read more from Piute teens in LGB, Not LGBTQ+ by Gracelyn Barnson.