Today’s society is filled with very controlling people. In politics, people try to control others with their words so that they get as many people as possible to join their cause. But how do they do that? While many think that being a persuasive and argumentative person has a lot to do with it, peer pressure also plays a crucial role.
Peer pressure can come in many different forms. It can be little, such as pressuring someone to go somewhere they’ve never gone before, or it can be huge, such as forcing someone to make an important life decision. Everyone has been in a position before where they have either pressured someone or have been pressured to do something. Whichever way one may look at it, however, no one should pressure anyone into making decisions for them.
In a lot of cases, peer pressure can be used as a method of control. If someone has a friend who easily caves in, that person can easily control their friend’s life. Bad decisions can happen and the friend will end up doing irresponsible actions that they didn’t originally intend on doing.
Guilt-tripping also plays a huge role when it comes to using peer pressure as a method of control. It uses someone’s weaknesses as an advantage to the person who wants to manipulate the other. For example, suppose that a man really wants a woman to go to the movies with him. If the woman doesn’t want to go with him, the man might end up acting sad around the woman. She now feels very guilty that she doesn’t want to go to the movies with him. In the end, she may fall under pressure and end up going just to make him happy, even if she didn’t want to in the first place.
Even though the example above has no extreme consequences, there are other situations that have very different outcomes and are far more important. For example, people can be pressured into doing drugs, which may lead to them becoming drug users. The person being pressured is constantly put in a state of discomfort, and it may lead to that person having anxiety when around that person, being depressed and more.
Especially now more than ever, people need to learn to not fall for these traps and to not cave into peer pressure as hard as that may be. With technology rising and with society growing, it is becoming more and more easy to control others. This is where putting a foot down to another person is a must. If someone feels uncomfortable doing something at all, they need to stand up and show the other person that they are not going to be controlled by them. When they make their decision, that decision is final. Don’t try to convince them otherwise. If one doesn’t stand up, their future could be drastically changed forever and it could take a turn for the worst. Society can grow and everyone will reach their full potentials when peer pressure is a thing of the past.