Peer Groups Influence On Adolescents

During adolescence and childhood peer groups have a great influence on who we become. When peer groups are being developed it is one of the few times that is not under regulation of adults. Peer groups can be something that helps adolescents establish relationships that can be beneficial and productive. They can also provide adolescents with the opportunity to form relationships with out the supervision of adults and encourage self-exploration. Adolescents are able to express who they are through participation in activities and begin to exercise making decisions on their own. Peer groups allow adolescents to work through any conflict they may experience, compete and cooperate with one another. An adolescence free time is an extremely important time for socialization and not …show more content…
Adolescents spend a lot of their time watching television and listening to music. “Adolescence is a time when important aspects of socialization are taking place, especially with regard to identity-related issues such as occupational preparation, gender role learning, and the development of a set of values and beliefs.” (Arnett) Adolescents use media for various reasons such as identity formation, coping and youth culture identification. Identity formation is the greatest developmental challenge presented to adolescents. When media is provided or available in a culture it can be used by adolescents as a source of materials to form an identity. “An important aspect of identity formation, and one for which adolescents may especially make use of media, is gender role identity (Steele and Brown, this issue; Brown and Hendee, 1989; Greenberg, et al., 1992; Larson, this issue). Adolescents take ideals of what it means to be a man or a woman partly from the media, which present physical and behavioral gender ideals in images through music, movies (Greenberg et al., 1986), television