Teens want to be with people their own age — their peers.  During the teen years, teens spend more time with their peers and without parental supervision.  With peers, teens can be both connected and independent, as they break away from their parents' images of them and develop identities of their own.  

While many families help teens in feeling proud and confident of their unique traits, backgrounds, and abilities, peers are often more accepting of the feelings, thoughts, and actions associated with the teen's search for self-identity.  

The influence of peers — whether positive or negative — is of critical importance in your teen's life.  Whether you like it or not, the opinions of your child's peers often carry more weight than yours.

Positive Peer Pressure  

The ability to develop healthy friendships and peer relationships depends on a teen's self-identity, self-esteem, and self-reliance.  

At its best, peer pressure can mobilize your teen's energy, motivate for success, and encourage your teen to conform to healthy behavior.  Peers can and do act as positive role models.  Peers can and do demonstrate appropriate social behaviors.  Peers often listen to, accept, and understand the frustrations, challenges, and concerns associated with being a teenager.  

Negative Peer Pressure  

The need for acceptance, approval, and belonging is vital during the teen years. Teens who feel isolated or rejected by their peers  — or in their family — are more likely to engage in risky behaviors in order to fit in with a group.  In such situations, peer pressure can impair good judgment and fuel risk-taking behavior, drawing a teen away from the family and positive influences and luring into dangerous activities.

Resisting Negative Peer Pressure

No influence in your teenager’s life is as powerful as peer pressure. At its best, it can mobilize his energy, motivate him/her to strive for success, and encourage him to conform to a healthy group norm.

Peer pressure usually depends on the kind of peer group your child hangs out with—or the one she aspires to. Some teens run with the popular crowd. They may worry that not going along with their friends will make them outcasts or at least less popular. Then there are kids who are not in the popular group but would like to be. These teens are likely to go along with things in the hopes that it will buy them the acceptance and elevated social status they crave. There are other groups where one strong personality dominates and that person uses his or her influence over the others to lead the group into trouble. And there are kids who are not popular per se but have their own cliques. They are usually known by stereotypical labels: punks, geeks, deadheads, burnouts, and so on. Kids who are a part of these groups do not worry about what the mainstream kids think, but they worry intensely what members of their own group do. While they may think (or look like) they are bucking trends, they may be succumbing to a different set of pressures.

The Effects of Peer Pressure

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