Are You Influenced By Your Peers?
lebjournal.com- Have you ever been influenced by others? Have you given in to such influences? When people around you try to manipulate you to get you to do something, you might need to define this as “peer pressure”. Peer pressure is always common in schools, universities and communities. Your classmates, friends and people your age are your peers, and they might impose a great deal of pressure on how you think, act, behave and react to situations around you. If you think that taking your own decisions may be something stressful enough, think when other people get involved and try to force you to do something in a way or another. A look into today’s teenagers’ and youths’ lives and how they are dealing with pressure gives us a closer view on this issue.
Christine Mousally, a psychologist, says peer pressure is a totally normal fixation. “Peers influence our lives, simply because we spend most our times with them. Whether at school, university or work, it is something completely normal for human beings to adapt to the same type of environment around him.” There are two types of peer pressure, as Mousally describes, “peers can have a positive influence on each other, or they can have a negative persuasion on each other, which is more dominant. “Studying continuously, teaching friends a new trick or an easy way to remember how to memorize history or solve a mathematical problem is the good type. Also, influencing friends by treating others in a good way or trying to focus on studying more than playing around is a good kind.” Furthermore, Mousally stresses that sometimes peers influence each other in negative ways. “For example, a few kids in school might try to get others play around with school norms and regulations, try to get others to skip class, bully other students or try drugs or alcohol. When asked about the reasons that drive people to give in to peer pressure Mousally replies, “some children have an inclination to give in to peer pressure because they want to adapt or be liked by others, because they have a weak personality or they worry that other kids might make fun of them if they don’t go along with the group. Trying something new is what drives some other teenagers and youngsters along with the road.”
Rebecca Mousa, 15, a student says her experience with peer pressure goes back to when she was about eight years old. “It was a very tough situation” as Mousa describes! There was a very important decision for her to make. She states that “peer pressure is usually lead by the popular students who happen to have a very strong personality and powerful backgrounds. Yet in reality we all exercise peer pressure on each other.” Rebecca says that school supervisors never notice the affect of peer pressure on students and they have no influence whatsoever in stopping it, but the school can play a positive role by teaching students to appreciate others for whom they are and by encouraging cooperation rather than competition.
Bad peer pressure is more present in her school, as Mousa stresses. “Students mainly exercise negative pressures on each other whether psychologically or physically.”
Turkey thinks that the media plays a very important role in distributing, influencing and leading pressures. “The problem is that the media usually portrays a materialistic world in the eyes of students and this is what drives them to exercise negative pressures on each other.” Mousa points out that she always tried to reject bad peer pressure, “I always tried my best to say no although I had to make sacrifices. In one of my experiences, I was under pressure to lose one friend for another. Yet I refused this pressure and I kept both!”
Roula Hajjar,17, a former student at C.T.I (Christian Teaching Institute) and a current student at the American University of Beirut (A.U.B), says the first time she felt exposed to peer pressure was when she was about 13 years old. “I have sometimes allowed my actions to be influenced by my peers. Nevertheless, I have definitely been one to generally refuse peer pressure and what it dictates. As a by-product, I was often shunned in lower grades (8th, 9th). Although I adamantly stuck to my own convictions and definitions all throughout high school, I was more accepted and even respected as time passed and as I reached higher grades (11th, 12th).”
Hajjar thinks that Peer pressure is definitely less prevalent in Lebanese schools. “However, it does depend on the location of the school. Public schools are less likely to provide a haven for adolescents and a shield for protecting them from peer pressure.” Although there is “bad” peer pressure in Lebanese schools, clichéd views of “bad” peer pressure is not as common in Lebanese schools as compared to those of other countries, as Hajjar says. “The nature of peer pressure in Lebanese schools is open for interpretation. It is also acceptable to say that it is neither good nor bad. In my high school, peer pressure used to be in the form of imposing certain ideologies that were consistent with conservative conformist attitudes. Popular girls set the standard for how Lebanese girls should act and the same went for boys. In high schools nowadays, the most significant type of peer pressure is in the form of a struggle between conservative and avant-garde ideas. Mentioning if this peer pressure is “constructive” is hard to say and is relative on one’s definition of the aforementioned terms.”
Hajjar also states that in her point of view, it is perhaps generally safe to say that peer pressure, in all its forms, is more destructive than constructive since it impedes critical and free thought.
Hajjar thinks that peer pressure is usually led by those who are the most controlling, adamant and popular. “Adolescents who try to impose certain actions and demeanors unto others are usually those who are well-liked and listened to. Other adolescents who are more docile and preoccupied with conforming to popularly set standards fuel those who lead peer pressure. By succumbing to and accepting imposed standards, passive adolescents provide the “follower” role that peer pressure must have to maintain existence in the average high school or university.
On the other side of the spectrum, teenagers who are more convinced of their own standings, convictions and decisions seem to provide an obstacle for peer pressure. Adolescents who challenge popular opinion and chose to rather live by their own definition often “throw a wrench in the peer pressure machine“.
The media often facilitates the role of peer pressure and intensifies its effect. The media promotes conformity and advertises commonly accepted ideas; it is a world of mainstream interests and popular culture. Magazines, books, advertisements and commercials often provide a certain criteria for how things “ought to be”. What the media promotes is often the archetype for what peer pressure dictates. It all starts from somewhere. Adolescents get their ideas of what is acceptable and popular from the media and then bring it into their own life, often imposing in on others in the process.
By: Rana Hage© 2008
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lebjournal.com-Megan Fox surpassed the sexy likes of Jessica Biel, Katharine Heigl and Scarlett Johansson on FHM’s annual 100 Sexiest Women in the World poll among FHM readers, who anticipated her to be “poised to take Hollywood by storm for many years to come.” Megan Fox, the 21-year-old model/actress who had her big break with Michael Bay’s box office smash “Transformers,” as the love interest of Shia LaBeouf’s character, was voted Sexiest Woman in the World for 2008 by FHM readers – nearly 9 million votes were cast for the 14th edition of the annual poll, the magazine said. Fox debuted on the annual list in 2006 at No. 68 and ranked at No. 65 in 2007. This year however she managed to oust 2007’s Sexiest, “Fantastic Four” star Jessica Alba, who fell two places to No. 3. Jessica Biel was voted No. 2. Also in the top ten are, in descending order, Elisha Cuthbert, Scarlett Johansson, Emmanuelle Chriqui, Hilary Duff, Tricia Helfer, Blake Lively and Kate Beckinsale. Angelina Jolie came twelfth, Rihanna fourteenth, Natalie Portman twenty-fifth and Adriana Lima thirty-sixth. “Juno” star and Academy Award nominee Ellen Page entered the list at No. 61, well appreciated for making pregnancy “funnier and more attractive” while at the same time boasting an “all-action ability in her locker, notably as Kitty Pride in X Men: The Last Stand.” The Queen of Pop entered the poll at No. 87, for proving, says the magazine, “to be an ageless wonder.” The readers enjoyed Madonna’s latest video with Justin Timberlake, “4 Minutes,” where she “proves she can still fill out a skin-tight body suit.” In other places, Lindsay Lohan ranked sixteenth, Heidi Klum came in at No. 22, Latin superstar Shakira at No. 55 and Playboy star Pamela Anderson, without whom it is “unfathomable” to concoct the FHM 100 Sexiest, at No. 75, as she is “still every bit the slice of busty perfection we fell in love with in that red swimsuit.” Britney Spears came in last place at No. 100. The magazine acknowledges it has been “a rough year for the world’s most Googled woman” and muses that the glory days when she topped this poll seem “but a distant sexy memory.”
