The Causes of Social Pressure and Its Effects on Young Adults

Social pressures are now greater on young adults today than in the past. Nowadays, most of the young adults are experiencing the feeling of stress brought by the social. Social pressure has a big impact on young adults from late teens or early twenties to thirties. In this era of information and technology, social pressure is getting more and more common in their life. This is because that social pressure is hard to avoid in their life and they do not think about it while it is happening. Some pressure come from family, friends, environment and others and all those factors will cause social pressure. The word “social” is relating to society or can be define as a needing companionship for the best suited to live in communities. In the other way, social pressure can also define as the stress given by the society. Therefore, social pressure is needed to be concern so that young adults will facing less social pressure and problems. In this paper, three reasons of social pressure in form of parental pressure, misuse of social media such as cyberbully and peer pressure will be discussed.

Firstly, parental pressure is one of the reasons of social pressure. Almost all of the parents in this world want the best for their children. They always put high expectations on their children either asking for a good result in children’s academy or equip their children with skills needed as they want their children to be the best in the class. Nowadays, most of the parents tend to send their children to attend all kinds of extra classes such as piano class, swimming class, taekwondo class and others. When young adults were burdened with those high expectations, they will start to feel stress and tiring. This is because that they do not want to disappoint their parents who puts hope on them. In fact, parents have good intentions but sometimes they need to understand the emotional effect on developing of a young adults. When children have no confident in themselves, they have a high risk of depression issues. It is healthy to want to bring out the best in your child. But sometimes, parents put children under so much pressure to perform well that their children suffer serious consequences (Amy,2019). Young adults may suffer insomnia and depression as they might struggle to get sufficient sleep while thinking too many problems. It is clearly to be see that parental pressure is one of the causes of social pressure among the young adults.

Secondly, misuse or overuse of social media will also cause social pressure among the young adults. Young adults are relying on all kinds of social media such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and others which have powerful influence on people’s lives. It is easy to find that some content may not be appropriate like violent or hate speech which are not suitable to be seen by young adults. The mindset of young adults will the affected and polluted by negative issues. Moreover, cyberbullying will occur among young adults. They will feel stress if they felt disturbed by others by having their privacy and share to the public. As defined by the Cyberbullying Research Centre, cyberbullying is “…willful and repeated harm inflicted through the use of computers, cell phones, and other electronic devices.” This type of pressure can leave your teen anxious, depressed, or disinterested in social events or school, and the effects of bullying don’t stop there.”(Netsanity,2018) Young adults will become sensitive and stress all the time if they were one of the victim. In more serious case, they will even commit suicide if they were overwhelmed with pressure. Therefore, misuse of social media such as cyberbully is also one of the factors of social pressure among young adults.

Futhermore, psychological pressure from young adults themselves is also one of the causes of social pressure. Psychological pressure is because of something that has been said or expected which overwhelmed their mind and causes them difficult to think. For instance, young adults were uncertain about their future. They felt lost and scrambled sense of direction as they think that their future is an unknown. Moreover, they have no one to guide them and they do not dare to ask. They scared that when they have made their own decisions but others or the society tell them that they are young to know what is correct. Young adults do not dare to face the cruel reality too. According to Alice (2016) stated that “One of the hardest things in life is not to know what’s coming down the pike. Unpredictability can be enjoyable at times, of course, and it is sort of a given in life, but it’s different when you don't know if something bad out there will befall you. That situation usually just leads to stress.” Obviously, when young adults were unthinkable and unpredictable towards their future, they will feel stress and this is also one of the reason that caused social pressure. The reason why they felt scared and unknown to their future is they might afraid that they will be jobless or they have no enough money to survive in this world. Hence, social pressure can be caused by the psychological pressure from young adults.

As conclusion, this essay has examined the relationship between parental pressure, misuse of social media such as cyberbully, and peer pressure are the cause of social pressure and getting serious on young adults nowadays. This research has clearly stated that social pressure are really occurs among young adults due to the reason of the stressful lifestyle in their life. However, this research may not be representative of all of the young adults in Singapore or even in this world as everyone’s situation is totally different. All words in one, social pressure is caused by a lot of reasons other than the reasons that are stated above. Therefore, it could be better if young adult’s social pressure were reduced and live in happier way.