When Does Peer Pressure Become a Good Thing?

Hello everyone!

There are a lot of broad questions/topics in my mind that I want to address on this blog, so I’m going to be starting a little series where I pick a question and explain how I would answer the question based on my thoughts and opinions. As you can tell from the title of this post, today I’m going to be discussing when I think peer pressure becomes a positive force rather than a negative force. As a teenager in high school, I experience a fair amount of peer pressure as anyone would expect; however, I feel like it’s actually usually in a positive direction rather than negative, which is a different perception than the normal description of peer pressure. If you want to know my complete opinion on this, keep on reading.

When people say “peer pressure” in relation to teenagers, they’re usually referencing the pressure to drink, do drugs, or participate in some other illegal/possibly dangerous behavior. However, I feel like most of the peer pressure I experience is actually pushing me to do better. I go to a fairly competitive public high school and my friends and I are in difficult classes, so we all push each other to do better. This competitive atmosphere can have its own downsides, but I feel like even though it’s still pressure, it’s pushing me to be my best self.

I’m actually thankful for some of the things my friends pressure me into doing. I’m kind of introverted and will easily spend the entire weekend at home doing schoolwork and other things, but my friends will force me to hang out with them- obviously only when I actually can- and make sure I give myself a break from all the work I’m doing. They’ll convince me to go to school events that I actually wanted to go to but needed a little push, and they encourage me to go out of my comfort zone and try new things.

Also, I’ve experienced peer pressure in a good way at Youth and Government. I’ve talked about Youth and Government a few times on this blog before, but it’s basically a model legislature and court program through the YMCA, and it involves lots of public speaking and debating. As a quiet person who’s interested in this type of stuff, the other kids in my delegation and in the program in general at conferences were so supportive and encouraged me to speak my mind even when it was scary for me. Seeing other kids do it convinced me I could too.

I definitely understand why peer pressure is usually perceived negatively, because you shouldn’t necessarily do things that you don’t want to and you shouldn’t let people push you around, but I think people should recognize it can give the little push to some people that they need in order to do something they actually want to. I’m indecisive and often question my decisions a lot, so I’m thankful when people can influence me a little bit and give a tiny bit of pressure so I actually make a choice.

I hope you guys found hearing my perspective on this issue interesting. I’ll definitely have more of these coming soon, and I challenge you to write about or at least think about your opinions/your personal answer to this question 🙂

Brooke