SteemAlive Presents: ProWritersHub - Learn with steem; Peer Pressure - What is it? How can one handle it?

THEY SAY SHOW ME YOUR FRIENDS AND I WILL TELL YOU WHO YOU ARE

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Hello fellow steemians, it is an amazing day that we find ourselves on the Steemit Platform. The @steemalive community has so far been an interesting community with amazing contest. Today I am here to do my first contest on the Steem alive community. Today, I will be talking about peer pressure.

PEER PRESSURE - WHAT IS IT? HOW CAN ONE HANDLE IT?

There are many definitions to peer pressure. In my own words I think peer pressure can be defined as the undue influence that a person's environment has on his or her behavior. Environment in this instance may refer to a geographical location. To fully understand peer pressure, I will love to separate these two words and define individually.

• Peer. When we talk of peer we are talking of someone that is of equal standing with another. I like to point out at this juncture that there are alot of things that come into play when I talk about equal standing like age, location, wealth etc. So you can be peer with someone or by being of an equal with the person in terms of age, income, location. Therefore peer refers to a group of people that share something in common.
• Pressure. While pressure can therefore be looked upon as the use of persuasion or intimidation to make someone to do something.

So when put together, peer pressure is when a person does something under the influence of his peers. Sometimes these pressure can be physical or emotional and it is because of the urge to be belong to a group of persons.

Fallacy of Peer pressure

When we talk about Peer there have been alot of misconception about it. I will like to clear the air in this section.

1. Peer pressure is negative. The first fallacy of Peer pressure is that most people think it us negative. When we sat peer pressure, we talk about only what people don't want to do. Peer pressure does not necessarily mean it is a bad thing or might have a negative impact. I will explain further in the example below where I will look at both positive and negative peer pressure.

2. Peer pressure is mostly experience by children. This is another misconception about peer pressure. Every age group is prone to peer pressure. The only difference is that negative peer pressure is most common amongst children and as we know, negative things turn to be very pronounce in our society. But it's important to note that peer pressure is affects all age group.

WHY IT IS COMMON

In the section above, I have taken the time to define peer pressure, now let me use this section to talk about why peer pressure us very common in our society. Remember I earlier mentioned that peer pressure might be positive or negative solely dependent on the peers you are keeping. Now the reason why peer pressure is very common is mainly because of

1- The desire to belong

When people act turn to act in a certain way, it's because they want to fit it, to feel like the belong to a group of people or friends. The desire to belong is one of the strongest force on earth. Almost everything we do in life is because we want to belong, we want to be looked in a certain way. And so this force is very powerful.

EXAMPLES OF PEER PRESSURE

1- Pressured into Alcohol and drugs
For my first example of peer pressure, I will love to quote a personal experience back in 2009, the year I got my GCE ordinary levels.

^Source"

I attended a boarding school in Cameroon. If you have gone to boarding school you will know first hand what we refer to as peer pressure especially in children. In my class most of my friends became addicted to smoking cigarettes because of the pressure that was mounted on them by friends. In a boarding school the desire to belong to a group of persons is high and it is very easy to get pressured into doing something but fortunately for me I wasn't pressured into drugs or alcohol in school

However, the story changed when I passed my GCE examination. We got together with other friends to celebrate and because of the joy, I was introduced into alcohol and cigarettes. All my friends were smoking and drinking that day and I had a stick of cigarettes. Fortunate enough for me my system didn't go with the cigarettes and I stopped immediately with even finishing the stick that was in my hands. That was an instance because of peer pressure I succumbed to doing something negative.

2- Being pressured to make a better life

As I did mention before, peer pressure is both negative and positive and for my second example I will still continue on a personal experience.

It was back in 2019 after I graduated from my Masters and I was home doing nothing. I had to change my town and lived in Douala. I was at my lowest back then. I met these two friends and my cousin in Douala, we were always together, chatting, drinking and stuffs. I remember these two friends started attending seminars and because I was their friend, they had to influence me to attend with them.

The seminars was organized by a network marketing company called aim global. By attending these seminars I noticed my desire for life changed. My zeal to be successful became high. Sitting and discussing with other people in the seminars who wanted to achieve more in life increase my desire to become more in life. I presently have a goal of being a public speaker which came from these Seminars and so this is a positive peer pressure that I experience in my life.

There are many other examples of peer pressure like

• Being pressured to get married at an early age especially for girls.
• Being pressured into stealing.
• Being pressured into Scamming or 419 which is the main thing in our generation now.

HOW CAN ONE HANDLE PEER PRESSURE

First of all, I will like to say that peer pressure being good or bad solely depends on the person and partly on the Society. Like influencing someone to take be a teacher when the person wants to be a doctor. So these are some of the ways to handling peer pressure be it good or bad.

1. Advice children at an early age. One of the reasons I couldn't be pressured into smoking cigarettes was because of ab advice my mother gave to me. You see when I was still as little as 7 years I can remember my mom saying that I should not smoke no matter what. Unconsciously, this advice stuck with me through my entire teenage life. Another thing happened just a few months ago when my nephew of age 5 years started asking me if cigarettes nice. My mind immediately went to the time my mother gave me such and advice. I took the time to advice him never to smoke and how it was not good.
   The thing is, we think it is not possible for children to think like that but the do. It is important as parents to advice your children early on.

2. Be careful with the friends you keep. I started this post with a popular quote that says Show me your friend and I will tell you who you are. Your friends have a huge impact on your life decisions. Whether we know it or not, we are influence by our friends either directly or indirectly. So It is important to keep a good friendship.

3. Be decisive and learn how to say No. I read a book and in that book, I came through a phrase which said, Saying No to people is a skill. Knowing how to make decisions in your life is a skill. It is important to learn how to make decisions and most importantly say No to people.

4. Be advisable, seek for advice. There is a Common saying that there is nothing in this life that you are going through that another person has not gone through. So before you do anything or take any decision seek for the council of elders, people who have done what you want to do. They might give you advice on how to maneuver the situations. Be advisable, be learnable and you won't be easily pressured by peer to do things you don't want or you will be pressured by peer to do the things you want.

CONCLUSION

As I have tried explaining in the paragraph above peer pressure can be a good or a bad thing all depending on the persons and the society. Due to peer pressure alot of futures have been destroyed because of wrong decisions and still because of peer pressure a lot of futures have been mended.

It is important to know the role of peer pressure in a society and it plays an important role in the development of children. Handling peer pressure rightly can make all the difference in our society. To finish, let me leave you with this quote which shows the impact of peer pressure on a person

If you make with Five Rich and Successful people, you will become the Sixth Rich and Successful person

If you make friends with Five Poor and Unsuccessful persons, you will become the Sixth Poor and Unsuccessful person

CC
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