In today’s world, children are heavily impacted by their peers and older siblings, much
more than past years and generations. Whether it’s sisters or brother, friends or foes, good or
bad influence, they all affect the people of the millennial generation.
A type of influence is peer-pressure. Peer-pressure can show who people really are. Many people will argue that peer pressures at the highest point that it has ever been at. In this millennium people are peer pressured to make bad choices. Everyday children
are pressured into doing drugs or drinking alcohol. The simple answer when asked why they did
it was, “ if I didn’t do it everyone would think I am a loser.”
Now day’s children just want to be viewed by their peers as “cool” no matter what the
risk is. I think kids are peer pressured a lot more then past decades. Children don’t care what
they have to do as long as they are perceived as “cool” or “popular” the outcome of how they
do it doesn’t really matter.
Most of this is an outcome because of social media. Social media and the Internet in
general give kids and idea that drugs and alcohol aren’t bad. They might see a friend or even a
video of someone doing something stupid and they think that they could do it also. TV shows
are also a great example of this, showing kids videos of people doing stupid things and basically
telling these kids to do stupid things while on film just for the pleasure of an audience. Shows
like Jackass, Rob Dyrdeks show Ridiculousness, and even T0sh.0 show kids that its ok to do
these stupid acts and get it on film.
Its not only friends or relatives influencing kids, but famous athletes, actors, musicans,
etc. Pretty much everyone can agree that they wouldn’t want their child looking up to people
like Miley Cyrus or Ray Rice I know I wouldn’t. When a child sees a famous person doing
something (good or bad) they immediately want to do, say, act as the person and I am pretty
sure my parents don’t want to see me twerking like Miley Cyrus did in her music video.
When a child plays a sport the coach and parents play a huge role in the development of
the child. Commonly parents and/or coaches tend to push the child a little to far while training
and practicing for a sport. At first it may start off as being what the child loves but then after
pushing the kid past his limits and forcing him to play the athlete might feel as if he is being
forced to play the sport and not even want to play anymore.
The biggest influence for a child is an older brother/sister. When I was a very young
child I knew I wanted to be just like my brother. I would wear the same clothes as him, act the
same as him and even go as far to do the same things as him. That being said as I got older I
realized that I wasn’t like my brother, nothing like him at all. He was an artistic kid that wasn’t
very good at sports and I was the opposite. This might have changed me but I know people
who were like their brother or sister and they continued to be influenced by him or her.
A study conducted by Jessica Craine in the 2009 edition of the Merrill Palmer Quarterly found
that girls who looked up to their older, delinquent brothers were more prone to delinquent
behaviors.
I believe that having an older sibling to follow is vital in the stages of childhood. As people
might disagree and say that all that does is put bad influences on the child I completely
disagree. I think even if the older sibling is bad influence it gets the child to realize what their
siblings mistakes were which gets the child to make choose the right choices from the bad. I
feel the only culprit in this is the media, who puts bad images in the child’s mind leading them
to believe they could be just like this famous person if they do this. And with a quote I always
say to myself, Bob Marley said“ Open your eyes, look within. Are you satisfied with the life
you are living?”