PEER PRESSURE

-Normal part of adolescence -Positive and Negative

NORMAL PEER PRESSURE Most teenagers want to have friends

and fit in with a certain group of students. It’s the reason you see cliques at school and why certain fads come and go. People jump on the bandwagon with certain clothes, hairstyles or activities because somebody deemed them temporarily cool.

What is the latest fad in school right now?

POSITIVE Friends can pull you up, just as easy as drag you

down. · Three kids grew up in inner-city Newark, New

Jersey, riddled with crime, drugs and death in the 1980’s. They had no role models and had every excuse to become drug-dealers, criminals or hustlers. Two of the three spent time in juvenile-detention centers in their teens. However, the other had a dream of becoming a dentist and persuaded his two best friends to enter a college program for minority students interested in becoming doctors. They knew they wouldn’t make it on their own, so they made a pact “to become doctors and to help each other out, no matter what.” Today, they are all doctors. They credit this pact and their positive peer pressure as the reasons for their success.

NEGATIVE Teenagers have inflated perceptions

that “everyone is doing it.” This puts unnecessary pressure on them to fit in