Q.In what ways can peer groups shape the attitudes, choices and behaviour of young people?

A peer group is a distinctive kind of primary group, formed among people who share a similar age or belong to a common professional category. Because its members occupy broadly equal positions — same age, same stage of life, or same kind of work — a peer group lacks the built-in authority imbalance found in relationships with parents, teachers or employers, and this makes its influence work differently from theirs.

Peer influence operates chiefly through what sociologists call peer pressure: the social pressure exerted by one's peers on what one ought, or ought not, to do. This pressure is rarely formal or explicit — it works through approval and disapproval of how someone dresses, behaves, or what music, films or activities they favour, gradually shaping a person's choices toward whatever the peer group treats as acceptable. Precisely because peer groups do not command authority the way parents or institutions do, their influence tends to work through the desire for acceptance and the discomfort of standing out, rather than through direct instruction or punishment. …