“Come on, just go with us to this party. Tell your parents you’ll be at my house!” You feel something it is wrong and you shouldn’t be doing it, but you go along anyway because you don’t want to be left out. Or your friends say you aren’t cool because you won’t do it.

Peer pressure is the influence you feel from a person or group of people to do something you might not otherwise consider doing. It’s not uncommon to want to be part of a group and feel like you belong in a community, especially if you are new or less experienced than the people around you.

Peer pressure might influence you in a number of ways, including fashion choices, alcohol and drug use, decision to have a boyfriend or girlfriend, choice of who your friends are, and Academic performance. Either way, you should never succumb to something you don’t agree with.

The saying goes, “Watch the company you keep” but a majority of youth don’t know how to decipher who they should be friends with and who they shouldn’t; that is, until they get themselves in a troublesome situation because they listened to someone they shouldn’t have.

As we age, not only are we faced with challenging decisions but we also often have people in our ear telling us what we should do. Many kids get sucked into this because they want to be liked or accepted by their peers, but this can lead detrimental decisions and risky actions.

However, not all peer pressure is negative. It can also be used as positive reinforcement and incline adolescents to do well. So if you are or know someone struggling with negative peer pressure talk to someone and accept help because things can end up going terribly wrong.