Virtual Peer Pressure

An age old problem that has assumed a universal form.

- Anshika Sharma

Peer pressure among teenagers is nothing new. The new is the way it is affecting our digital generation. Technology is always evolving and creating new inventive ways for people to connect. The most common use of new technologies, especially by teenagers, is social media.

Research on social media and teens has shown that technology can increase peer pressure and bullying, while also resulting in increased substance abuse and mental health concerns. Social media has given peer pressure the power to ruin the lives of children who feel pressured to work mainly because all their friends are doing them.

Today’s teens – known as Generation Z – as a group, are more consistently connected through technology than previous generations. Social media has given rise to a new term “virtual peer pressure”. Nowadays, kids spend hours and hours on different social media platforms, which can enhance their social standing but, at the same time, force them to do things they shouldn’t or are not very eager to do.

According to several recent studies, seeing posts, pictures, and status of friends who indulge in inappropriate activities encourages teens to imitate them. This pressure, to become cool, forces kids to engage in sexting, drug abuse, alcoholism, consumption, and more because all their friends are doing it and they want to fit into that specific group of friends or old school.

They simply don’t want to look like an old-school person in front of their friends.

In one study, 75 per cent of the kids accepted the fact that the pressure to blend in after seeing posts of their friends openly drinking alcohol and sniffing drugs forced them to copy this behaviour.