Peers/Friends as an Agent of Socialization

Friends/Peer Groups

Peer influence starts especially because of school and cohort groups, and becomes significant by adolescence, possibly more intense and more influential than family.  Adolescents spend more time with each other than with parents or anyone else. This leads to adolescent subculture.  Studies have shown that the most important factor in statistically predicting whether a teen will take up a particular deviant behavior is the presence or absence of peers who also engage in that behavior.

Here is some evidence for the importance of peers as agents of socialization:

This article from Contexts called "Friends with Academic Benefits" is about how the social network structure that you have can affect your academic achievement.

• Can you identify your own social network structure based on the models in the article?

This article from the Journal of Health and Behavior examines whether college roommates will influence each other to be more aggressive, smoke, or be sexually active.

• Read the abstract and discussion/conclusion.  How did the researchers conduct their research?  What did the researchers conclude?

This article from the journal Sociology of Education shows that your friends will influence the likelihood of you being in STEM classes or not.

• Read the abstract and discussion/conclusion.  How did the researchers conduct their research?  What did the researchers conclude?  
• Are you in STEM?  Are your friends? Is this article's conclusion true for you?

Patricia and Peter Adler are very well-published in the area of adolescent peer socialization.   

Their book called Peer Power is an extensive exploration into the world of adolescents and their affect on each other.  From Google books, 

 Based on eight years of intensive insider participant observation in their own children's community, Peter and Patti Adler discuss the vital components of the lives of preadolescents, popularity, friendships, cliques, social status, social isolation, loyalty, bullying, boy-girl relationships, and afterschool activities. They describe how friendships shift and change, how people are drawn into groups and excluded from them, how clique leaders maintain their power and popularity, and how individuals' social experiences and feelings about themselves differ from the top of the pecking order to the bottom. In so doing, the Adlers focus their attention on the peer culture of the children themselves and the way this culture extracts and modifies elements from adult culture. Children's peer culture, as it is nourished in those spaces where grown ups cannot penetrate, stands between individual children and the larger adult society.  As such, it is a mediator and shaper, influencing the way children collectively interpret their surroundings and deal with the common problems they face.


Friend Sources
Where do Americans find their friends?