Peer Influence on Violent Content Effects

The Role of Peers in Adolescence

Scholars often refer to adolescence as a transitional stage from childhood to adulthood, with developmental challenges such as identity formation, need for independence, and sensation seeking. As teens work their way through this transitional time, sources of socialization such as peers, media, family, and school provide them with different contexts in which to work out these challenges. According to Jeffrey Jensen Arnett (1995, 2007), of all the socialization agents on teens, media and peers share the most in common. Both provide teens with the freedom to make choices concerning their own socialization. Teens have control over with whom they associate and what media they consume. Arnett has argued that although parents (or other adult socializers) might have rules for their teenagers’ choices of peers and media, these restrictions are difficult to implement. Because teens spend more time alone or with friends than with their parents, parents can be faced with challenges when attempting to exert their influence on teens. Furthermore, according to James Youniss, peers provide the opportunity for teens to exchange values and ideas on an equal footing. Social reality is constructed together with teens’ peers rather than taught or handed down by adults. As a result, peers are crucial in shaping teens’ lives.

Peer relationships can lead to positive or negative influences, although most studies have focused [Page 285]on the undesirable effects. Examples of this include peers initiating behaviors that involve substance use, cheating, risky driving, and youth violence. Studies also found that peer norms are very influential on teens’ sexuality. Some studies have even measured peer delinquency as a predictor of risky behaviors.

The word influence tends to suggest an adolescent’s vulnerability to his or her peers’ manipulation, but the most recent view among researchers in peer relationships has shifted the passive perspective to an active one. That is, in the context of a healthy adolescent’s development, they argue that the adolescent is actively selecting friends according to his or her interests and preferences rather than passively accepting them. An adolescent associates with peers who will provide validation and approval of his or her values and lifestyle in an effort to test and form an identity. It is when problematic peer socialization arises that passivity happens. This can include a lack of peer interactions because of exclusion, or undesirable peer interaction because of teasing or bullying. This form of peer influence through isolation and victimization can lead to emotional stress and behavioral problems.

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