Abstract
Background: A peer is a person of the same age, status, or ability as another specified person. Peer pressure is the influence of peers on people resulting in change in behaviour which could be positive or negative. As adolescent start exploring their identity towards functional independence, the teen peer relationship plays an important role. This could result in the adolescent giving more importance to the opinions and lifestyle of peer and chances of the adolescent going astray.
 Materials and Methods: A cross sectional study was conducted among school going adolescents of 15-18 years age group. The children were administered a pre-designed, semi-structured questionnaire on peer, parents, friends and their influence in studies, self-esteem, negative habits like smoking and alcoholism. The data collected was analysed using descriptive analytic method.
 Results: 242 students participated in the study. Adolescents preferred long term friendships (84.3%) and friendship with same gender (82.6%) while making friends. Majority of adolescents admitted to have good quality time spent with parents (96.7%) and considered parents as the most influential persons in their lives (88.2%). Teen peer relationship resulted in improvement of academic performance in 61.2% of the respondents. Negative peer influences were seen in few like alcohol intake (5%) and cigarette smoking (2.5%).
 Conclusion: Parents are the people who wield the most influence on Adolescents of school going age group in Southern India. Peer group by and large have a positive impact on the school going adolescent.
Highlights
Adolescence is a period of transition from childhood to adulthood
Study Participants and Sampling: The questionnaire was distributed as Google form through email/Whatsapp to 400 school going adolescents between the age group of 15-18 years of which total of 242 of them participated in this study .Electronic informed consent was obtained from the study participants after explaining the purpose of the study
The reason for friendship was moral support in 27.7% of adolescents, need for companionship was present in 48.3% and academic interest as cause for forming friendship was seen in 23.9%
Summary
According to World Health Organization (WHO) the period of adolescence is from 10 years to 19 years This is a stage when lots of changes occur in the subject both physically and mentally. Logical thinking and abstract thinking thought process happens This change in cognition happens due to developmental changes occurring in various areas of brain involved in a person’s emotion, judgment and self-control. It is because of these evolving changes that we find that adolescents tend to have recklessness in their decision making and have frequent emotional outburst [1]. As adolescent start exploring their identity towards functional independence, the teen peer relationship plays an important role. Majority of adolescents admitted to have good quality time spent with parents (96.7%) and considered parents as the most
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