Friends and peers influence each other's safety in different ways and our task is to understand this before designing a response. Sometimes the influence can be overt 'peer pressure' and in other cases influence is built up over time through shared experience. Sometimes friends have more influence than family members and other times it's the family members who hold more sway. If you're working with the parents of a group of young people, it can be helpful to ask if the parents have similar or different experiences and expectations of the influence of friendships in adolescence. This can help you learn if the parents could benefit from support to understand their children's experiences, to build empathy and understanding.
Below we explore how friends can influence others' behaviour in contexts:
Sometimes influence isn’t obvious, it builds over time. Young people develop shared beliefs and behaviours through what they experience together. If a group regularly faces the same situations, they often come to see the world in similar ways. For example, if a group experiences repeated harassment on the way to school, it is likely they will all see that journey as unsafe. Likewise, shared negative experiences with people in authority can shape group mistrust. This isn’t about pressure, it’s about shared reality. Over time, these experiences shape what feels normal.
Young people are often strongly influenced by what they think is normal in their group but that 'normal' isn’t always accurate. There are two possibilities:
- Shaped by what’s actually happening Some behaviours are visible and carry status, such as 'Don’t snitch'. When young people see others rewarded or punished, it shapes what they do.
- Shaped by what they think is happening Sometimes it’s about perception. A young person might believe 'everyone carries a knife', even when that’s not true. That belief alone can drive behaviour.
Spotting the difference matters. Does your response need to challenge a real norm or a misperception?
It's not always what friends or peers say; at times it’s just that they’re there. Being watched (or thinking you are being watched) can change behaviour. This is especially true in environments where certain behaviours feel expected or 'just how things are done'. In some contexts, harmful behaviours can become so normalised that noone is able to outwardly challenge them. Rather than taking a behaviour-based approach to changing behaviour by working on young people’s motivation and thinking, a Contextual Safeguarding response asks: what about this context is narrowing the choices available to young people? How do we change the context so that young people can act differently?
This is the most obvious form of influence, when young people are directly persuaded to do something through encouragement, pressure, force or shame. For example, being told to drink, take risks, or 'prove yourself'. But not all pressure is loud or explicit. Sometimes it’s quieter and implicit, such as the pressure to fit in, gain status or not stand out. A young person might change how they act, dress or behave just to feel part of a group. No one may be saying anything, but the pressure is still there.
Fitting in with our peers is a normal part of adolescence but only becomes a safeguarding concern when it is causing harm. In Contextual Safeguarding we do not ask who are the 'bad individuals' but look at how contextual dynamics can limit the choices available to young people and what they feel they need to do to get by. Our focus is on what young people pressuring others need, just as much as it is on the young people being pressured. This is particularly important because there is a complex relationship between experiencing pressure and being pressured in extra-familial harm, meaning it does not make sense to think of or treat people as 'good' or 'bad'.