Are Young People Prone to Negative Influence? Sample Essay

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Young People Prone to Negative Influence

The attempts to understand what appears to be a widespread meltdown in disciplinary measures over teenagers point to a number of global influences that appear to be harming the moral backbone of youths which may be to blame for the particularly heinous character of some juvenile misdeeds. "Teenagers tend to pull towards making awful decisions” (Abrahamson et al. 53). Raising teenagers is usually never easy. Parents may do all they can to make sure their children follow the right path, but this is not usually the case. "Many people think that some children it’s their nature to be rebellious, no matter what anyone does they are going to be like that, but this is not usually the case” (Pickhardt 13). Teenagers end up being rebellious for many reasons. A lot of vices are out here to make teenagers be rebellious. The tendency of shifting to this direction is affected or can be influenced by a lot of factors. Some of these factors include adolescents, peer pressure, media content, drug influences, and issues with the parents.

"Adolescence is when a person progresses from being a child to an adult” (Dusek 12). In this period teenagers are always faced with a lot of decisions. Through the phase of adolescence, youths’ decisions have been seen to be always revolving around risks and detrimental. "Adolescence is the stage where young adults develop a sense of being independent” (Ausubel 15), through this state of wanting to be independent, youths always question a lot of things, challenge some of the things they know, and mostly end up breaking rules. Caught up in this trans, they end up having frequent fights, and being absent without any permission are just but a few examples. The need for independence and isolation, which is usually out of their control, their behavior is usually dependent on their morals. In this situation, guardians should guide instead of directly controlling their children. "Through providing warmth and support to their children helps in making them less likely to engage in harmful behavior” (Adams, 6).

"Peer pressure is a feeling that doing things that people of one’s social group are doing just to be like them so that you could be liked or respected "(Brown 125). Peers affect a gradual fraction of any teenager’s life. There is a lot of pressure in life when it comes to hanging out with peers, this pressure may come in the form of pressuring one to do something that one is uncomfortable with. The pressure they enact on someone is usually very hard to resist and also very easy to accept because one wants to be in the same league as their peers. So, most people go along with this pressure and do whatever they are told, or sometimes people just do it without being told in order to be like them. Responding to such pressure is normal to human nature, but other teenagers are more likely to give in than others. "Teenagers with low confidence and those who follow rather than stand their ground are most likely to give in to the pressure” (Reed and Pamela 150). Nearly every teenager goes through this step once in their life. It does take courage to stand on one ground and resist the pressure, this is the only way to go through it.

Media content also affects the behavioral change of teenagers. Media content, some have a negative influence on the behavior of teenagers which then affects their decisions and attitudes in various areas. For example, celebrities are always cast in this media outlet. Teenagers are always attracted to and want to follow some public figures' doings. "The content the celebrities portray is always consumed by the teenagers” (Parkes et al. 1123). The media influences decisions made by the youth. Another example is how most movies showcase that guns, drugs, and gang-related stuff make you feel cool. This is a challenge as most teenagers usually lean on that kind of life, they think being bad makes you look good, which is absolutely incorrect. Media has a lot of content ranging from drug use, pornography, violence, etc. "Parents can always help monitor what their teenagers consume in terms of the media content” (Prabandari and Lilik 40). In the state, they are, giving them direction rather than control usually works.

Parenting is also another factor that affects the behavior of teenagers. Parents abusing their children causes them to be aggressive and violent, which later progresses to the use of drugs and alcohol. This abusive nature of parents destroys the inside of the child, and the child grows up not understanding what love and care is. Teenagers’ behavioral characteristics are influenced by the way they are treated by their parents. Some examples of bad parenting include; a lack of support towards their children, giving a lot of advice to the children with no encouragement at all, withholding affection towards their children, and comparing their children to other children.   "Parents’ divorce is also another cause of a child becoming rebellious” (Ma and Dale 45). Teenagers always act out when they want attention, this is when they feel like they are not getting it. This is like a cry for help; they want to be noticed and helped out emotionally. Learning what they are going through it can help turn things around. Parents always have an impact on their children’s behavior. Children tend to model everything their parents do. This is why it is important for parents to showcase the right example to their kids.

Work Cited

Dusek, Jerome B. Adolescent development and behavior. Prentice-Hall, Inc, 1987.

Ausubel, Gloria. Theory and problems of adolescent development. iUniverse, 1954.

Adams, Gerald R. "Adolescent development." Handbook of adolescent behavioral problems. Springer, Boston, MA, 2005. 3-16.

Brown, B. Bradford. "The extent and effects of peer pressure among high school students: A retrospective analysis." Journal of Youth and Adolescence 11.2 (1982): 121-133.

Reed, Mark D., and Pamela Wilcox Rountree. "Peer pressure and adolescent substance use." Journal of Quantitative Criminology 13.2 (1997): 143-180.

Parkes, Alison, et al. "Are sexual media exposure, parental restrictions on media use and co-viewing TV and DVDs with parents and friends associated with teenagers' early sexual behavior?." Journal of Adolescence 36.6 (2013): 1121-1133.

Prabandari, Kinanti, and Lilik Noor Yuliati. "The influence of social media use and parenting style on teenagers’ academic motivation and academic achievement." Journal of Child Development Studies 1.1 (2016): 39-53.

Ma, Zexin, and Dale Hample. "Modeling parental influence on teenagers’ food consumption: An analysis using the Family Life, Activity, Sun, Health, and Eating (FLASHE) survey." Journal of nutrition education and Behavior 50.10 (2018): 1005-1014.

Pickhardt, Carl E. "Rebel with a Cause: Rebellion in Adolescence." Psychology Today.

Abrahamson, Amy C., Laura A. Baker, and Avshalom Caspi. "Rebellious teens? Genetic and environmental influences on the social attitudes of adolescents." Journal of Personality and social psychology 83.6 (2002): 1392.