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Scientific Representation of Social Networks When I was in the 6th grade, D.A.R.E. Officer Don talked about peer pressure so much that I honestly believed that when I hit junior high, teenagers would punch my mouth if I didn't want to drink, smoke, or do drugs. The D.A.R.E. workbook had all sorts of suggestions to combat peer pressure, including the broken record technique ("No thanks, I'm cool for now. No thanks, I'm cool for now. No thanks, I'm cool for now."), using humor (?), and avoiding the situation, among others. Officer Don also framed all "users" as being one, consolidated "bad crowd" of youth. But recent research shows that different teens partake in different risks at different levels, and that direct peer pressure is just a myth conjured by the D.A.R.E. officers and Nancy Reagan's "Just Say No" soldiers of yesteryear. And a study published earlier this year in the Journal of Early Adolescence contributed to the debunking of direct peer pressure.
The researchers focused on the perceptions 163 urban 6th, 7th, and 8th graders had concerning their peers and cigarette, alcohol, and marijuana use. Basically, this question asks, "How many of your close friends [smoke, drink, use marijauna]?" and correlates that ranking with the direct question of "How often do you [smoke, drink, use marijuana]?" The results were quite interesting and are worthy of mailing back to Officer Don. For alcohol, perceptions of peer group use actually predicted individual use. So, if a youth simply perceives that their friends are drinking, then that youth is likely to drink themselves. The same was true of pot. For this particular study, because of another research method used called Social Network Analysis, correlation with smoking cigarettes was slightly different, however, other studies have found strength in that correlation. So, this tells us that a youth who has friends that smoke, drink, and/or use marijuana may increase the risk of that particular youth. Few youth, however, report that they have been subject to direct peer pressure to join the behavior. No need to use the broken record technique, humor, or the cold shoulder. Instead, the pressure is internal, as a youth may feel that because their friends are smoking, drinking, etc., that such behavior is normal, cool, or a tool to fit into a desired identity. I believe that we'll see a swell in the research and a sharpened focus on the latter, which portrays youth not as weaklings buckling under the heavy hand of direct pressure to accept a beer at a party, but as strong minded people who are using a beer or a smoke in order to proactively build their identity of who they want to be in that moment to their peers.
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