Cheese

Peer Pressure is a Positive Influence in teenage society, because “Uh, my friends told me it was”. Does this sound like the sort of thing that you would hear regularly in drafting? (This is a rhetorical question, don’t answer it, as I am about to do that for you.). No, of course it doesn’t, for the simple reason that it is near impossible to write a 400-500 word essay on the positive aspects of peer pressure. As such, I’m going to take the year 9 (Read: Easy) way out of it, and just write a summary of how peer Pressure is a bad influence on teenagers.

Peer pressure on a teenage audience has many problems. Firstly, the somewhat obtrusive fact that the teenage years are a time where a person is likely to come into contact with alcohol for the first time, and the insistence that “All the cool kids are drinking it” does certainly not help the somewhat assignment-weakened teenage mind resist the temptation of alcohol.
The revelation that “all the cool kids” usually end up in the gutter usually only occurs to said teenager when he/she is, ironically enough, lounging in the gutter. Smoking is a hard one to place, as the only way that someone is going to start smoking is if their pals convince them into it, or they live under a rock, thus avoiding the incredible amount of anti-smoking propaganda. This leaves those whose friends have convinced them into it. These people are probably A) In the possession of very persuasive friends, So no matter what one says to them, they’re going to be convinced that they were trying to be suppressed, and start smoking again, B) Very Weak Will powered C) thinking it is cool.

On this frame of mind, it is worth noting that during the teenage years, some unfortunate people become addicted to drugs. Now, whilst most of these people will go away, overdose themselves on sleeping tablets and die quietly, some insist on hanging around, bleeding and looking sorry for themselves, thus making themselves a problem that schools and the government must deal with. Peer Pressure is as much a problem for out and out drugs as it is with alcohol and smoking. By the time someone has used drugs to an extent to which it is a problem, they’re usually incapable of convince their peers that the foliage they’re cramming into their bong really is “The Real Thing, Man.”

This, unfortunately leads us back to our final conclusion. Despite schools, parents and the government’s attempts to get rid of Peer Pressure, its negative influence is here to stay.