A Face to the World

One of the most common ways to get an initial understanding of who someone may be is by seeing who their friends are. We often hear about how negative this is but it continues to be a natural part of social interaction. Students often select friends who will describe themselves to an outside audience in order to gain acceptance. This is extremely common among high school aged students but it still continues throughout one’s life.

The audience that students are often trying to impress is other students. The social pressure felt to hang out with certain people can be extremely frustrating. However, students do not often take into consideration what image others outside of their school might be gaining from their selection. The audience includes parents, family, employers, and academic leaders. These groups will often base their views on a person simply based on who they know and what that group represents.

There are different goals when selecting a certain group of friends. The images we chose to portray through friends consist of being caring, rebellious, trendy, open-minded, grounded, religious, and the list continues. We often only focus on two groups and those are the “popular” and the “goth or emo” groups. Certain thoughts can be associated with any group these are certainly two extremes.

Students can select certain groups for many different reasons. Some might be left to certain groups that will accept them but may not necessarily describe who they are. I for example started the eighth grade in a new middle school. I went through many different groups of friends. I was stuck in a certain group for a period of time that would be considered the “druggie” group by most other students. I was nothing like this group but they took me in and for a time being represented me as being someone who might be involved with drugs also.

This is often shown in teenage movies. These movies include Mean Girls, The Breakfast Club, Sydney White, Crazy/Beautiful, She’s All That, 10 Things I Hate About You, Grease, Never Been Kissed, Thirteen, and so on. These types of movies do so well because everyone has been put through at least a little bit of difficulty trying to be seen a certain way. I know that not everyone flows into groups like these movies might show but regardless we are always put into a category. There is always a “middle” group, which many of us are in. However even in this group we might be seen by strangers with only one type of person. That can surprisingly determine how much respect that individual might give you.

Overall, we are judged by a large group of people depending on the group we select and this is also being shown through media. Throughout time students have tried to gain acceptance by others through the friends they select. Regardless of how this may affect children, I doubt it will ever be something that will change.