Peer Pressure : The Effect on Teens

She woke up that day. Dread in her eyes. It was Monday, which meant school again. Another day of her listening to them, whether she liked it or not. Another day of her plastering a fake smile on her face, whether she liked it or not. If she told somebody about them, then she’d have to go to a counselor, and eventually they would find out and look at her the way they looked at the others.

Her alarm rang loudly. Slipping out from her covers, Palaksi looks around. Her mom had not yet come to check whether she was up or not, so she could fake being sick, but she’d done that last week. Her mom might suspect something was up, then her mom would question her, and she’d have to confess. She went to get ready before her mom came in, sighing unhappily.

As she sat in her school bus watching buildings fly past her, she thought of the different ways she could stand up for herself and tell her “friends” she didn’t like how they always forced her to do stuff and never let her have her own opinion. But as she got off her bus, she knew that would never happen. Without them, she was practically friendless, plus they were the most popular girls in her class, hanging out with them had made her more popular.

She walked into her school building, and people said hi to her, they smiled, and asked her how she was doing. She simply smiled back, said she was good, and asked them how they were.

“In the mornings, when I entered school, and people asked me how I was, I used to say, ' I’m good, could never be better - it was like my iconic line, like my trademark thing. But deep down, I always knew that the moment I left my friend group, this all would stop. I would just become another person studying in this school,” she says.

Fifth grade ended quickly. In school, everybody loved her; they wanted to hang out with her, but nobody knew how much she hated her friends. The same friends who her school adored. Her home life was much better. Her friends at home were nice to her, and in fifth grade, she loved spending time with them, but for Palaksi, things were changing fast. Her parents were moving to a new compound in the city.

“I used to ask them,” she tells us, "with hope in my eyes, whether I was changing schools, but my parents always said no.”

By the middle of sixth grade, she had no opinion. It was always what her friends wanted to do, never about her. When she tried standing up for herself, her friends used to ask her why she was so moody and different today. Why she didn't want to go to their usual hangout zone and gossip there? That always put her down. She hated being called moody by her friends. “They knew I hated it, yet they still called me it,” she says.

But one day she made up her mind to go and stand up for herself. This decision came after she moved houses. The new place where she stayed had many people for her to befriend, and among those people, she had found some kind, not drama-loving girls.

“They were so open-minded in having me in their friend group,” she says, “When we decided what to do or where to hang out, we would take everyone’s opinion - it was so different from school.”

She told those friends her school life problems, and they helped her build more confidence. "Every day when I met them in the garden to hang out, they asked me how my school day went,” she says, “And tell me - encourage me to stand up for myself.”

She says they taught her the difference between real friends and fake friends.

“And with their support and encouragement, I started standing up for myself in school. It started with simple things like where we were to hang out, and then, once when they asked me why I had changed so much, I called quits with them. It was over so fast - one girl was crying when she heard how I felt, but I did not stay. When I walked home that day, I felt as though a weight had been lifted from my heart.”

“And that is my experience with peer pressure,” she says in the interview.

Peer pressure is a day-to-day life problem for many teens, and it is often overlooked. Very few people realize the effect it can have on a person's health. On average, about 47% of teens feel the pressure to look good, 41% to fit in socially, 31% to be good at sports, and 68% to get good grades. This happens because people have the innate human desire to fit in, belong, and be accepted. If more people knew the effects of peer pressure on a person’s health, perhaps then they would take more interest in it and how to avoid it.

This is one girl's story. There are thousand other girls who face peer pressure, and their story is yet to be told, their problem is yet to be fixed.

Written by Aaradhya Korti, Grade 7, Bombay International School

Aaradhya wrote this article as a participant of the Media-Makers Fellowship's Nov'25 cohort.