Peer Pressure

Peer pressure- a word, an action, which has a very crucial effect on a person’s life, particularly that of a teenager. In today’s world peer pressure rules the life of the modern youth! This can be described as a situation where a person is so greatly influenced by his or her social circle that he or she is forced to do things which they really don’t want to do. Peer pressure, where harmful, can be healthy too but in most of the scenarios it affects the person badly.
As a child enters his teenage, he is full of enthusiasm and has a high spirit. He thinks that he is mature enough to take the challenges of the dangerous world and he feels that he has the brains to tackle any problem that comes ahead of him. Discovering the world is one of the first thing that a teenager wants and a company to hangout with- peers who would understand his needs, his attitude and his likes and dislikes, comes as the second basic priority. He joins the group which he thinks he is compatible with and tries to blend in with their lifestyle. This is the point where peer pressure starts to play its role. The ones already in the group pressurize the new-comer to do whatever they does without caring for anything. Here the moral values given to a child by his parents are degraded by him. Most of the time, the peers provoke new friends to smoke with them saying that it is the trend and that they should move on with the world. These people regard their parents with disrespect saying that the later are conservative and “un cool”, that they do not want their child to progress with the world and only trapping him inside a cocoon is what they really want.
The world has been devastated by an ever-increasing crime rate and peer pressure is to be blamed for it to a great extent! The youth is encouraged by their peers to lie, cheat, steal, take advantage of their supposedly limitless freedom and enjoy their lives to its fullest at the cost of others. Under the pressure of being accepted by their social circle, teenagers involve themselves in every sort of wrong act which their peers demand. They lie to their parents fearlessly; steal with pride and cheat, thinking that it is the most fun thing they can do to have a great reputation among their friends. What they don’t understand is that it will only lead them to a worse life where turning back would be impossible.
The youth think of their parents as their enemies, who are constantly trying to limit their freedom and apparently cannot see them enjoying their lives. This generation gap is further widened when the teenagers are being provoked by their peers to misbehave with their parents and are constantly being brain washed that whatever their parents say is wrong and never for their benefit. This pressure causes many teenagers to leave their parents at an early age and they later suffer with a lack of parental guidance when it is most wanted and the love and attention that they desire at the time when the same peers who once pressurized them leave them all alone.
Hence, peer pressure has been the cause of failure, depression, crime and suicide at an early age in the youth. It won’t be wrong to term it as a menace, when it destroys the youth and in turn takes the whole society down with it. Teenage is a very delicate age, what goes around in a person’s life at this phase of life can either give him a marvelous future, but if trapped in a wrong company it can be the most unbearable to live, lonely journey leading to a sad ending.

By. Farwa Abbas