9781422272329

Unfortunately, many teens may not have the patience or personal strength to resist indirect peer pressure. The desire to fit in with your friends can be so strong that it is hard not to pressure yourself to conform to their actions. But you don’t have to give into that kind of personal pressure if you believe in yourself and have the confidence to avoid that kind of behavior. Sometimes, Just Saying No Doesn’t Work You’ve probably heard the phrase a thousand times in your life: “Just say no!” Anti-drug campaigns have used that idea to help make sobriety easier to handle. All you have to do is say no, and you won’t have to worry about peer pressure. This message has a good spirit and is generally a good idea, but isn’t quite complex enough. Unfortunately, sometimes saying no just isn’t enough. For example, let’s say that you tell your best friend that you don’t want to smoke the first time she offers you a cigarette. The next time you hang out, she offers again. You say no, and she teases you. Suppose this cycle becomes worse and worse until the two of you have a little fistfight. To apologize for the fight, you agree to smoke a cigarette—and you thus normalize that behavior. “Normalizing” refers to the process of accepting something that was not normal and making it normal. For example, many people have normalized school shootings and have accepted them as inevitable or as things that happen from time to time. Less than fifteen years ago, that attitude was impossible to imagine. Though less extreme, smoking your first cigarette is a way of normalizing bad behavior. Even if you don’t start smoking after that first cigarette, you’ve had a taste of nicotine. You’ve coughed on the smoke and realized that you’re still the same person you were before you smoked. That perception is accurate—you don’t suddenly become an unhealthy

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The Nature of Peer Pressure