Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México

Escuela Nacional de Lenguas, Lingüística y Traducción (ENALLT)

Subject: English
Teacher: Alejandra Plaza Sierra
Student’s name: Oscar Xavier Canseco Zamora

The desire to be accepted by their peers is perhaps the strongest motivating force during
adolescence.
One of the strongest and most difficult stages young people have to face in their development is
adolescence, where the changes they experience are not only organic but also psychological and even social.
I think that due to the progressive weakening of the relationship between parents and adolescent children,
the friendship of others at this point takes a lot of strength. Young people seek to rely on people of their age
who share their situations, feelings, behaviors, interests, dreams, hopes, doubts and tastes. he needs
identity and to find it he resorts to his equals. The acceptance on the part of other young people of his age
makes him feel of the group, otherwise, it would lower his self-esteem.
When young people are lonely, like many today. The stage then becomes a difficult time, in which they suffer
cruelty and indifference on the part of other children of the same age who feel safe and accepted by their
group and make the lonely do things that often they would not do.
As many of you already know, group pressure is when one person or group decides pressure into doing
something they don’t want to do. Most of the time people who are trying to peer pressure the other people
make fun of the other people for not doing something they don’t want to do like drink alcohol, drugs or robs
for example. There are also other factors such as intelligence, physical appearance and athletic status that
the applicant has, which are taken into account at the time of group approval.
The group may exert negative pressure and influence as mentioned above, but it may also have positive
effects on the adolescent. As positive influences we could list many, since the pressure of the group should
not be stigmatized, not everything is negative. Some of them: improving academic performance, improving
social relationships by sharing interests with a group, establishing new social relationships, beginning
interests and new sports activities by belonging to new groups with such interests, improving the ability to
speak in public and communicative capacity in general, improving the effect of social support to diseases or
traumatic events by having a support group, etc.
I believe that in this conflictive and decisive stage in the life of any young person, it requires all the affection,
understanding and support of all those who consider themselves mature, to achieve that all their emotional
conflicts can be overcome and the adolescent achieves a high self-esteem and can enter harmoniously in
contact with the adult environment that surrounds him.

Bibliography: Beatriz Delgado Domenech; Silvia Gion Méndez. (2013.). Psicología del desarrollo en la infancia y la
adolescencia : manual de prácticas y casos para docentes. Alicante, España: Universidad de Alicante.