I started this blog with no clue as to what I was doing, I'm still just taking shots in the dark occasionally. But, I think I have gotten the main point across, which is this.
From the moment a child starts making conscious decisions for him or herself, there will always be someone pressuring that child to do something; whether it be endorsing or against, for good or for bad. Over time, that child will hopefully learn how to handle this pressuring and not do the things that negative peer pressure tells him or her to do, and recognizes and accepts positive peer pressure. This will not always be the case, but it will hopefully become less of a problem if the child is surrounded by positive influences as he ages to adult-hood, and then continues to stay around people who won't pressure him or her to make the wrong choices.
It has been a good semester, and I hope that you have left this blog more aware of how peer pressure affects us all.
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
Friday, May 6, 2011
Bullying
So apparently I miscounted and have one less post than I thought I did, so I'm going to do this post now and figure out what I'm doing early next week later. So, as the title says, I'm going to touch on one of the biggest (in my opinion, at least) aspects of Peer Pressure there is. Could I give links to articles? Yes. However, I have two stories to tell about the effects of bullying on two people whom I have known at some point in my life. All of these facts have been gathered by me or by other people directly involved in these cases.
All names, times and locations and then some (Basically everything I can think of) have been changed and/or omitted without destroying accuracy to give the subjects of these stories their privacy.
Homosexuality: Why Public Enemy #1?
To begin, I'll start with the less-tragic story. Chris has grown up in a small town with a small school. He's nice enough and decently smart, but there's a problem. He is openly gay, but that isn't the problem. The problem is how a certain group of bullies at his school feel about his gender-orientation.
To show that being gay at their school "wasn't acceptable", Art and his friends would hunt Chris down, wait for him outside of doors, etc. to beat him up. This went on for some time, and Chris had to struggle through it alone. All the other kids in the school avoided him and pressured their friends to avoid Chris as well. Eventually, Art and his friends moved away, and Chris no longer had anyone hurting him anymore. The rest of his school, without the pressure from the bullies, started opening up to him. Without the main source of the pressure, the rest of the pressuring melted away.
Why So Nerdy?
This is a shorter story, as I know less about this, but it does not have the happy ending the other one had. Like with the other story, Jim had no friends at school. His appearance was mocked, as well as other features about him. To befriend Jim would have been "uncool", thus no attempts were made. Eventually, Jim got sick of it. During a break from school, he took his own life.
One life hurt, another lost, all because of negative peer pressure and nobody breaking through it. Negative peer pressure and bullying are two major problems, and I hope that I have helped you, as a reader, to see this. Stand up against Peer Pressure, when it is negative, and do not let it rule you. Until my next and final post~
All names, times and locations and then some (Basically everything I can think of) have been changed and/or omitted without destroying accuracy to give the subjects of these stories their privacy.
Homosexuality: Why Public Enemy #1?
To begin, I'll start with the less-tragic story. Chris has grown up in a small town with a small school. He's nice enough and decently smart, but there's a problem. He is openly gay, but that isn't the problem. The problem is how a certain group of bullies at his school feel about his gender-orientation.
To show that being gay at their school "wasn't acceptable", Art and his friends would hunt Chris down, wait for him outside of doors, etc. to beat him up. This went on for some time, and Chris had to struggle through it alone. All the other kids in the school avoided him and pressured their friends to avoid Chris as well. Eventually, Art and his friends moved away, and Chris no longer had anyone hurting him anymore. The rest of his school, without the pressure from the bullies, started opening up to him. Without the main source of the pressure, the rest of the pressuring melted away.
Why So Nerdy?
This is a shorter story, as I know less about this, but it does not have the happy ending the other one had. Like with the other story, Jim had no friends at school. His appearance was mocked, as well as other features about him. To befriend Jim would have been "uncool", thus no attempts were made. Eventually, Jim got sick of it. During a break from school, he took his own life.
One life hurt, another lost, all because of negative peer pressure and nobody breaking through it. Negative peer pressure and bullying are two major problems, and I hope that I have helped you, as a reader, to see this. Stand up against Peer Pressure, when it is negative, and do not let it rule you. Until my next and final post~
Thursday, May 5, 2011
Peer Pressure Statistics
So while searching for my next blog post topic, I found it in the form of a survey at Survelum.com. As it is only online and open to anyone, there is no guaranteeing the accuracy of the results, but they seem to be consistent with the points I have made and that others have made. While most of the really negative questions have "No" as the dominant answer (Illegal activities, etc), the questions like this one,
"Have you lied about liking something just because you thought your friends would make fun of you if they knew?"
have "Yes" as the highest answer. Other questions, like pressuring someone else into doing something, are almost equal in Yes and No answers. While only 436 people have taken the survey, it still should get the point across. Peer Pressure does affect decisions negatively, even for illegal acts. It's not exaggerated, and I hope that I have proved this to you throughout the course of this blog. Survey results found in the link below.
http://www.survelum.com/survey-results/PeerPressure/filter-2-0/
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