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Influence Of Peer Group Pressure On Adolescents Smoking Habits
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Adolescents
choose friends who have characteristics or talents that they admire,
which motivate them to achieve and act as their friends acts. Friends
encourage adolescents to study hard at school and can also help them
think more creatively.
High-achieving peers have positive effects on
adolescents’ satisfaction with school, educational expectations, report
card grades, and standardised achievement test scores.
Students with
friends who like school, get good grades, and are interested in school.
Also they are more likely to finish secondary school. Hence, having
friends who believe that academic achievement is important is beneficial
for adolescents.
Peer influences can also be very negative.
Unhealthy, destructive peer groups can cause much pain and suffering for
both parents and teenagers. Teens whose friends are involved in risky
behaviours, illegal activities or experimenting with drugs, may easily
be persuaded to join in.
Parents may dislike their teenagers’
friends, and possibly for good reasons, but it is impossible to force
teens to choose healthy friends. Most often, when teens are forced to
choose between their parents or their peer group, they choose their
friends.
The successful formation and navigation of interpersonal
relationships with peers is a process central to adolescent
development in all cultures.
In European – American cultural context
and ever including amount of each day is spent under of peer pressure,
from 10 percent as early as two years of age to forty percent between
the ages of seven and eleven.
By secondary school, teens are spending
more than half of their time in the company of their peers (Updegraff,
Mchale, Crouter and Kupanof, 2001).
Because adolescents spend a large
amount of their time with peers, it is not surprising that they play a
highly influential role in adolescents’ lives. The credibility,
authority, power, and influence of peers are greater during adolescence
than at any other time in life (Cooper, 1994).
Although the process
of socialization and individuation occurs in all cultures, the
developmental time frame, goals, and practices are often unique.
In
the United States, the adolescents’ developmental path is characterized
by a transfer in closeness from parents to peers. In comparison with the
emphasis placed by European – American cultures on individualism, other
cultures, Asian and African cultures in particular, accentuate the
socialization of ‘’interdependence, self-control, social inhibition, and
compliance’’. For example, the peer like mutuality with which
adolescents negotiate with their parents during their high school years
is a uniquely European – American construct (Chen, Greenberger, Lester,
Dong, and Guo, 1998).
Adolescence is a time when peers play an
increasingly important role in the lives of youth. Teens begin to
develop friendships that are more intimate, exclusive, and more constant
than in earlier years. In many ways, these friendships are an essential
component of development.
They provide safe venues where youths can
explore their identities where they can feel accepted and where they can
develop a sense of belongingness. Friendship also allow youth to
practice and foster social skills necessary for future success.
Nonetheless, parents and other adults can become concerned when they see their teens becoming preoccupied with their friends.
Many
parents worry that their teens will fall under peer influence or reject
their families’ values and beliefs as well as are pressured to engage
in high-risks and other negative behaviours.
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ABSRACT - [ Total Page(s): 1 ]The study examines the influence of peer group pressure on adolescent smoking habits in some selected secondary schools in Ifako Ijaiye, Local Government area of Lagos State. Influence of peer group pressure on adolescent smoking habits has more than ever before being posing serious threat to adolescent health. As such, government, parents and the society have seen the need to find a lasting solution to curbing the menace of smoking among adolescents. The study has the followin ... Continue reading---
