Example of Topic Outline with Essay

Peer Pressure

Thesis Sentence: Dealing with peer pressure in adolescent years has negative and positive effects to a teenager’s life.

I. Positive Effects of Peer Pressure A. Influence attitude in school’s activities 1. Better performance 2. Work hard for good grades 3. Time management B. Enhance your social aspects 1. Having a lot of friends 2. Develop personalities through sharing with friends 3. Knowing the importance of friendships

II. Negative Effects of Peer Pressure A. Lose their interest in school 1. Adopt negative behavior 2. Stop participating in class 3. Not joining in school’s activities B. Give up private pleasures and hobbies 1. Drop certain pastimes 2. Ridicule others 3. Lose interest in hobbies C. Give up the love ones 1. Old friends 2. Potential boyfriends and girlfriends 3. Families
Peer Pressure

We tend to get influenced by the lifestyle of our peers. Their thinking, their choices and their behavior influences us. We feel compelled to follow them. That's peer pressure. It is beneficial to a certain extent. But its negative effects are more apparent. Peer pressure can be of two types, negative and positive. The section of society which is most vulnerable to the effects of peer pressure is of teenagers.
One of the positive effects of peer pressure is the influence in one’s school status. Peer can influence you to better your performance in school’s activities like extra curricular. They can also push you to work hard, always do your assignments, and improve your projects for you to have higher grades. Your time can also be manage and do everything at once.
Positive peer pressure can also help you to enhance your social aspects. You will have a lot of friends and get acquainted with a variety of personalities, behavior and relationships. Friends can at times help them give an altogether new perspective and attitude towards life, through sharing of opinions and thoughts. They learn to accept the point of view of other people and become more sociable
Peer pressure also has negative effects to a teenager. Teenagers may, first of all, lose or hide their interest in school in order to be like their friends. They adopt a negative attitude in which school is seen as a battlefield, with teachers and other officials regarded as the enemy. In addition, teenagers may stop participating in class. It is no longer cool to raise a hand or seem anxious to learn. It is cool to show up without the assigned homework. Conforming also means not joining many after-school activities. A teenager might be curious about the band, the Spanish club, the student council, or the computer club but does not dare join if the gang feels such activities are for squares.
Teenagers also give up private pleasures and hobbies to be one of the crowds. Certain pastimes, such as writing poems, practicing piano, reading books, or fooling around with a chemistry set may be off-limits because the crowd laughs at them. So, teens often drop these interests or exchange them for riding around in cars and hanging out at the mall. Even worse, teens have to give up their own values and mock the people who stay interested in such hobbies. Against their better instincts, they label as "creeps" the girl who is always reading books or the boy who spends after-school time in the biology lab. Most important, giving up private pleasure during these years can mean that the teenager loses these interests forever. It may only be as an adult that the person wish he or she had kept up with piano, ballet, or astronomy—and feels it is now too late to start again.
Finally, teenagers sometimes give up the people they love in order to be accepted. If necessary, they sacrifice the old friend who no longer dresses well enough, listens to the right kind of music, or refuses to drink or take drugs. Potential boyfriends and girlfriends may be rejected, too, if the crowd doesn't like their looks or values. Sadly, teenagers can even cut their families out of their lives. They may be ashamed of the parents who are too poor, too conventional, and too different from friends' parents. Even if the teens are not completely ashamed of their parents, they may still refuse to participate in family get-togethers or spend time with younger brothers or sisters.
It is true that many teenagers face the pressures of being forced to take drugs, to perform dangerous stunts, to do risky things. But a more common and perhaps more painful pressure is to conform to the crowd by giving up part of oneself. Attachments to learning, to special interests, and to special people are often thrown away must to "be one of the guys."