Peer group, also known as peer group, is an informal primary group composed of people with similar age, interests, hobbies, attitudes, values and social status. Peer groups are common among teenagers. They are in frequent contact and often get together, which has a great influence on each other. Peer group is an important environmental factor for a person's growth and development, especially in adolescence, the influence of peer group is becoming more and more important, and may even exceed that of parents and teachers. When teenagers gradually move from family to society, the first thing they face is how to enter peer groups and realize some social needs in group life.
brief introduction
Equality and spontaneity of peer groups
Peer groups are equal and spontaneous. The subculture of peer groups has an important influence on the socialization of students. The positive influence is mainly to provide initial and more formal opportunities for role-playing and interpersonal communication. The negative influence is a departure from the mainstream culture.
Generation of peer groups
Many parents find that the relationship between children and parents has also changed because of the increase of peer interaction. This is the discovery of many parents when their children grow up, and it is the beginning that the grown-up children begin to gradually leave their families and enter peer groups.
The function of peer groups
Its main function is to socialize group members as the main body of socialization.
Characteristics of peer groups
As a ubiquitous interpersonal environment among teenagers, peer groups generally have the following main characteristics:
Strong cohesion
Because it is the result of individuals' free choice and combination, it is easy for members of peer groups to have a high sense of psychological identity. Communication is carried out in a natural and random process, and communication is often realized in interdependence and random conflict, and finally psychological belonging and value recognition are obtained. Although there are some differences in the value orientation of group members, young peer groups based on close feelings and the same views often have a unified group will and strong cohesion.
It is basically an equal relationship.
Even if there is leadership and obedience, it is the result of mutual natural consultation and is acceptable to individuals. Therefore, peer groups enable individuals to practice the skills of equal communication and prepare for becoming full members of society.
The content of communication is very extensive.
Peer groups provide a platform for individuals to exchange various social information and opinions. Its members can discuss their views on society, exchange some topics that adults are not allowed to talk about, and expand their personal social experience and social thinking. ?
Have your own subculture
This subculture provides new values and behavior patterns, from idolatry and hero role models, to communication language, communication mode, consumption mode, and even clothes and hairstyles, which all reflect the unique subculture characteristics of this group, and this subculture has an important influence on the development of individual ideological values and moral values.
Generally, there are strong authoritative core figures.
As a peer group of informal organizations, its core figures are neither appointed or dispatched, nor elected. It is naturally generated by the internalization of knowledge, talent, experience, morality and other factors in group activities. His influence on group members depends on authority rather than power, and he has strong cohesion and appeal.
Characteristics of adolescent peer groups
At present, with the rapid development of society and the change of social living environment, the youth peer group has some new characteristics compared with the past:
The objects of communication are basically partners outside the family.
In the era of many children, brothers and sisters in the family are the peer groups that children have the most contact with each other in the past, and children in the family can play with each other. In modern families, this kind of partnership has been lacking. Today, with more and more only children, children have to look outside and find peers among classmates and neighbors.
Weakening of emotional factors in communication between group members
Due to the decrease of family partnership, the factors such as mutual care, tolerance, sympathy, concern and the sense of responsibility of brothers and sisters contained in the past family partnership are difficult to obtain in today's peer group communication.
The communication time between peer groups is relatively less than before.
On the one hand, due to the lack of family partners, on the other hand, due to the increasing expectations of parents and teachers and the various academic burdens brought about by them, as well as the changes in family living environment, living conditions, lifestyle and pace brought about by social development, young partners have less and less time to communicate freely.
The way of communication between group members turns to diversification.
In the past, young people's group communication was mostly in the form of face-to-face direct communication, and the communication objects were relatively stable. However, due to the development of modern communication tools, modern young people can communicate in various ways. For example, telephone communication has become an important form of mutual communication (for which more and more people are on the phone), and making friends through the Internet (this is not only a change in communication methods, but also greatly broadens the communication scope of today's teenagers, making the content of communication more casual and entering the adult world).
Positive influence of peer group environment on adolescent growth and development
Peer groups are of special significance to the growth and development of teenagers. American social psychologist M Meade even thinks: "In modern society, the influence of peer groups is even so great that it changes the traditional way of cultural communication." Peer groups have both positive and negative effects on the growth and development of teenagers. The positive aspects are as follows:
Meet the needs of emotional communication
Meet the needs of teenagers' emotional communication and promote the development and maturity of emotions.
Mutual understanding, support, care and respect among peer groups can meet the needs of teenagers for communication, belonging and respect, thus avoiding the negative and unhealthy emotions caused by these normal needs not being met, thus promoting the healthy development of teenagers' body and mind. In addition, peer group is a special form of emotional contact. Realizing which group you are a member of and experiencing team spirit and mutual help among peers will not only help teenagers to be independent from adults, but also make them feel extremely stable. Whether teenagers can be respected and loved by their peers and classmates is of decisive significance to the development of their self-esteem.
Promote the development of teenagers' learning and hobbies.
Members of peer groups not only support each other in life and feelings, but also help and encourage each other in study, and sometimes hold competitions with each other, which is conducive to the improvement of academic performance; In terms of hobbies, having hobbies not only makes them have more languages, but also further promotes the development of their hobbies by discussing and discussing together. ?
It is the main source of life experience and social information.
Compared with the communication between teachers and students, the communication between peer group members is more direct, frequent and cordial. They talk about everything, and get a lot of life knowledge, experience and social information from each other, which is more direct, casual and impressive than what they get from books. Therefore, the information obtained from peer groups has become an important supplement to school education and book knowledge.
Influence on life goals and values
Life goal refers to the goal that can be achieved through personal efforts and struggles. If someone wants to be an engineer, someone wants to be a professor, someone wants to be a doctor and so on. The core of these goals is a person's values. Therefore, choosing life goals and cultivating values are inseparable. Generally speaking, a person's initial choice of life goals is largely influenced by his family, but with the growth of age, more and more people come into contact with him and the society he contacts is wider and wider, and the influence of his family gradually weakens. In adolescence, due to frequent communication and mutual trust between peer group members, they can freely discuss some issues and exchange views and opinions on these issues, and because of their psychological and emotional compatibility, they are more likely to accept each other's influence. Therefore, in adolescence, the opinions of peer groups gradually replaced the attitude of parents to establish life goals and values. In addition, members of the peer group agree with and imitate their peers in many other aspects, such as behavior, hobbies, recreation, and even hair style, clothing, language and so on. In many cases, teenagers' values are different from those of adults. Teenagers who listen to their teachers are often rejected by their peers. Therefore, in order to adapt themselves to the environment of their peers, they have to actively find ways to gain peer recognition. If they are accepted by the group, they will feel great satisfaction and live happily. For teenagers, they often get more value recognition in peer groups, and their getting along with the group represents their future, because future cooperation and competition will happen more among them, so many times, between peer groups and adults, teenagers often pay more attention to peer group evaluation.
Cultivate social roles and learn behavior norms.
The final result of individual socialization is to cultivate a social member who meets the social requirements and make him play a certain role in social life, and each role should act according to the norms formulated or established for him in the social system. Although the peer group is spontaneously formed, each member has his own specific role and position in the group, and even has a spontaneously formed core figure, and other members voluntarily accept his leadership. Peer groups also have their own unwritten code of conduct, such as not telling teachers about things in the group and uniting when encountering external conflicts. Anyone who violates these rules will be under pressure and will not be allowed to participate in future group activities. Because members have a high sense of identity with the group, they can consciously abide by these norms in order to avoid being excluded by the group. This laid a foundation for them to enter the society in the future, correctly understand their social roles and consciously abide by social morality, legal norms and various rules and regulations.
Environmental adaptability and cooperation and competitiveness.
The relationship between peer groups is based on equality, and everyone gains his due position by virtue of his adaptability to the environment. It enables children to form the necessary skills for social communication, the ability to obey the same interests, and the ability to safeguard their rights and link personal interests with the same interests. If there is no communication with peer groups, individuals cannot cultivate the necessary communication quality for adults. Through the communication between peers, group members gradually learn how to communicate and cooperate with others, learn to tolerate and understand others, learn to sympathize with and help others, and learn to accept their guidance and suggestions. This is very important for them to establish good interpersonal relationships, unity and cooperation in their future work.
Negative influence of peer group environment on adolescent growth and development
Of course, the influence of peer groups on the development of young people is not always positive, but it may also have a negative impact on young people, causing destructive effects, which will promote the reverse growth and development of young people, mainly in the following aspects:
Contrary to the mainstream culture of society.
Different groups of teenagers convey different cultural characteristics. Active groups often carry the mainstream culture of society; The middle group mainly carries the subculture of peer groups, not the mainstream culture representing social expectations; Moreover, groups often provide anti-authority support and guide unusual behaviors, even anti-social behaviors, such as drinking, smoking and fighting in groups. They turn the essence of the group into negative, so the culture they convey runs counter to the mainstream culture of society and has a negative impact on the growth of teenagers. Relevant scholars also pointed out the phenomenon of cultural alienation of modern teenagers. In terms of values, they pay too much attention to themselves, lack a clear view of right and wrong, and show a tendency of cultural idealism. This will easily lead to personality distortion and can't adapt to society. ?
Certain self-defense and exclusion
Once the group forms its own small circle, "insiders" will build an invisible barrier to isolate themselves from "outsiders". A strong sense of group belonging is easy to produce a sense of isolation and self-esteem, which will affect the emotional expression in the future and may also lead to various anti-social behaviors driven by "revenge". At the same time, it is not conducive to