FULL RESEARCH PAPER

HO CHI MINH UNIVERSITY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGE AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY DEPARTMENT OF FOREIGH LANGUAGE RESEARCH PAPER THE FRIVOLOUS THINGS COLLEGE STUDENTS DO WHEN THEY ARE UNDER PEER

HO CHI MINH UNIVERSITY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGE AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

DEPARTMENT OF FOREIGH LANGUAGE

RESEARCH PAPER

THE FRIVOLOUS THINGS COLLEGE STUDENTS DO

WHEN THEY ARE UNDER PEER PRESSURE

Student ID: 18DH710605

Class: BA1802

ABSTRACT

Peer pressure is a current problem that most students have to suffer one way or another The impacts of peer pressure are various and unpredictable, so it leads students to run for some frivolous things in daily things that they don't even think about before This study aims to determine things that students tend to do when they are affected by their peers and how they are changing their mind when they are under peer pressure It investigates whether the relationship between peer pressure and frivolity has affected students' life In this context, peer pressure is as obesity, people could do everything to lose weight, but most of those things are often toxic

To emphasize the hypothesis that peer pressure is the catalyst that leads students to do something frivolous, an online survey was posted on Facebook and Zalo Respondents were Huflit students from the first year to the fourth year, they had to answer 10 questions about something related to their feelings about peer pressure and frivolous things The results showed that most students accepted they sometimes tend to do something to follow their peers, and those who feel peer pressure are envious of their peers for everything they have

Base on the results, peer pressure contributes partly the behavior and attitude’s students, from something basic to something important In college years, friends are whom students spend the most time with, so they cannot avoid doing things that they wouldn’t normally do before

to fit with their friends It seems that they become another people and they gradually lose their true value Choosing clothes or buying stuff is not to satify students’ demands anymore, they will think how their friends or peers react when they do something new Therefore, it is unavoidable for students to follow their peers one way or another Doing things unnecessary will be good if students realize they are better when they shape themselves like their friends Everything depends on students’ perception On this basic, the relationship between peer pressure and motivation should be conducted to get a better perspective about “positive peer pressure”

INTRODUCTION

Nowadays, the term of peer pressure is not unfamiliar to many people, especially youngsters

On the daily routine, no students can refuse that they haven’t ever heard the complaints or the comparisons from their parents about “the other children” This stuff is an objective factor, but

we cannot ignore the subjective factors Therefore, in this research, we will dip into how students feel peer pressure and things they did when they feel peer pressure Although various studies have been conducted to point out problems of peer pressure, insufficient attention has been focused on frivolous things students tend to do when they feel peer pressure In this study, the relationship between peer pressure and frivolity will be explored further The main objects

of this research are Huflit students who are in vulnerable and sensitive times Because of their unstable psychology, they tend to do something unusual or imitate someone whom they usually meet as their peers It first shows the frivolous things that students sometimes do, then this study will point out the misunderstanding about peer pressure, and finally addresses the shortages in the research that need to be done soon

LITERATURE REVIEW

Peer pressure is like a disease and no one gets immune to it Everyone has to accept that they have already experienced this kind of pressure at least once in life Most exceptionally, college students are those who easily get into peer pressure because they are vulnerable and in the period of transition into adulthood At this time, friends play an important role in their life, students sometimes feel kind of turmoil when they and their friends have nothing in common That is a symptom of peer pressure which is defined in many ways According to the Cambridge Dictionary, peer pressure is defined as "the pressure that you feel to behave in a certain way because your friends or people in your groups expect it." Among parental pressure, teacher pressure, peer pressure which can make students do something ill-conceived, peer pressure is unavoidable for many kind of ages, but students are the most vulnerable ones That

is the reason why peer pressure leads students to do some frivolous things The following reasons will attempt to support this hypothesis

According to a research of website Addiction Center which was published in 2011, there were 310,000 students using marijuana and 636,000 of them using heroin That led to several accidental deaths up to 1,717 in 2001 College life means no more parents' control, no more privacy interference, no more curfew, so students can be in their control But they will start the series of party lifestyle days with their friends whom they will spend the most time in this period Accompanying with the independent life is the fear feeling of loneliness Because of the fearfulness of being isolated, students tend to try to do something they wouldn’t normally

do before The study of Pham Bich Diep, Ronald A Knibee, and two other co-authors who used multi-level to analyze the factors of alcohol consumption of Vietnamese students This study was published in 2016 had conclusions that the drinking contexts (aspects of timing, social aspects, or locational aspects) take a larger proportion in alcohol using than the drinking motives, but the drinking motives still account for a large percentage And drinking motives followed by enhancement, coping, and conformity motives And drinking is unavoidable when students are in a group of drinking people

Additionally, peers also have influences on products purchase decisions According to Bachman in 1993, there was too little research on the topic of peer pressure and its influences

on product purchase decisions in the consumer attitude In order to fill this gap, a study was made by Makgosa and Mohube which focus in Botswana to acknowledge the rule peer pressure shape college students consumers’ products purchase decisions (2007) The products are divided into four kinds including publicly consumed luxuries (sunglasses), privately consumed luxuries (cell phone), publicly consumed necessities (shoes), privately consumed necessities (toothpaste), and the findings demonstrated that public products such as shoes and sunglasses are more attractive for more peer influences than private products because it is consumed by the eyes of their peers (Makgosa and Mohube, 2007) No one can please

everyone and no one certainly does not want to be underestimated by people who take our true value for granted (Nicole Albion, 2021) And buying stuff to please peers or friends involves money managing of students, these problems are too complicated to solve (Nicole Albion, 2021)

Nowadays, social media has paved a broader pressure for peers to influence the students’ life There are three main essential parts which are mentioned by Richard Santiago including appearances and preferences, mindset and behavior, beliefs and aspirations (Richard Santiago, 2017) An article in the journal Body Image explained that female college students often compare their body images negatively with other girls on Facebook and the article showed that

227 of them spend more time on Facebook and concern about their appearance This will make profound psychological consequences for college students Richard stated because this is considered to be the time that students start to cultivate themselves and their habits will set them for the rest of their Abdulkadir Jeilani Mohamoud researched in 2014 on how social networking sites (SNS) have pervasion in Mogadishu youth societies The research was conducted on the young adults between 17-22 in the level of awareness on the social issues and how far SNS has awakened today’s youth in expressing their views on burning issues like political and education etc And he reported that youths are at some risks when they access social media because they have limited ability for self-regulation and susceptibility to peer pressure And in his study, he also quoted from Lenheart in 2009 that there are many regular online expressions of offline behaviors such as clique-forming, bullying, and sexual experimentation In the environment of digital and social media, there are more chances for students to engage with a variety of perspectives, most of these come from their peers who connect with students most on Facebook, so it is indispensable to appreciate and comprehend many viewpoints of many kinds of people Hence, student’s belief can be shaped by their peers’ beliefs in social media (Valenzuela, 2013)

In order to avoid unnecessary mistakes which stem from peer pressure, there is a lot of research

to show that the negativity of peer pressure brings over positivity Students should have the judicious perception of these problems to overcome this trouble

METHODOLOGY Topic: The frivolous things college students do when under peer pressure

I Objects of the research

- Participants: College students

- Age: 18-22

- Duration: 1 week

- Reasons for choosing college students are the main participants: most of them are susceptible and easily get tempted by something new

II Data collection method

A survey is posted on Facebook by Google Form with a list of questions Most of my Facebook friends list are college students who are the main objects of this research, so it is easier to collect information There are ten questions, nine of them are obligatory questions, and only one is optional

Questionnaire

1 Your educational status

2 Are you being led by frivolous things?

3 Have you ever been fasted the food to have a perfect body like your friends?

4 Have you ever used up all your pocket money to buy an item and skipped the meals to make

up for it?

5 Why do youngsters often choose luxurious places to eat, even if they are not financially suitable?

6 Is it necessary to go to a bar or pub to keep up with your friends?

7 When choosing clothes, which factor is the most influential to you?

8 Although you don’t like alcohol, all of your friends drink that, do you think you should give

it a try?

9 Suppose you are struggling with things you don’t like to please other people, you think is it worth it?

10 According to your opinion, are peer influences your pressure or your motivation? Why? (optional)

III Method of analysis

After getting the answers from respondents, I will transcribe these answers into the percentage which involved identifying and reviewing some key themes Each theme will be analyzed in-depth to clarify the problems

RESULTS

1 General information about research subject

For quantitative research: The total number of people who did the survey is 35, reaching 100% the number of participants as expected There are ten questions that were launched

on Facebook and Zalo for 4 days from May 25th to May 29th Most of people who do the survey are undergraduates at Huflit in the Foreign Langue department The following table will describe some general information about the study subjects:

General information Frequency Ratio %

School

Year

Table 1: The general information of participants in this study

Most of the objects in this study are mainly female who account for 77,14% and males account for 22,86% The proportion of junior is 82,9% while the ratios of freshman, sophomore, and senior are 1%,2%, and 3%, consecutively

2 The current perception of students in doing the frivolity when they are affected by their peers

To simplify the real status of most of the youngsters about running for something frivolous and superfluous while they are under peer pressure, the writer will reduce ten questions in the survey and turn them into four main groups:

Group 1: Things that affect to body image

Group 2: Things that related to finance

Group 3: Things that related to alcohol

Group 4: The feelings of students in the pros and cons of peer pressure

3 Results of the survey

The first question is "How often do you fast the food to have a perfect body like your friends? There are 62,9% of students ( 22 students) said that they sometimes skip meals and follow an unscientific diet to get thinner, 22,9% of students ( 8 students) said that they never fast the food, and finally there are only 4% of them ( 5 students) said that they usually follow this negative thing We can see that most of the students are wanting

to lose weight quickly and there are no ways that can help them except for fasting the meals or using the weight-loss drugs which are popular in the quick result For this reason, it also points out that students can do something that affect their health with expectations to have a good look like their friends

Figure 1: The percentage of students who fast the meals for perfect body

With the second question about "How often do you use up all your pocket money to buy an item and skip the meals to make up for it?"

The answer of students who said usually took 17,1% ( 6 students), and approximately 20% of them (7 students) said that they never use all of their pocket money to buy their items Surprisingly, the number of students who said that they sometimes spend their money and have to skip the meal to make up for it accounted for 62,9% It is provided that students tend to enjoy and follow the trends on social media or like their peers so that they will buy stuff like them no matter how they will be hungry or lack money for the next few days This situation is no more unfamiliar to most of the students now and they even don't know which purposes for buying this stuff as well Clearly, when students are under peer pressure, they will think that their peers are always right and they feel that they should imitate their peers in many ways

Figure 2: The percentage of students who buy things with all their money

Another figure that relates to student's finance is "Why do youngsters often choose luxurious places to eat, even if they are not financially suitable?" Most of the students said that they want to show up their luxurious lifestyle on social media This choice accounted for 54,3%, it can prove partly about the unreal life that students are chasing and dreaming of Meanwhile, there are 17,2% of students ( 6 students) reported that sometimes they choose to eat at a luxurious restaurant to treat themselves after they have achieved or attempted something Finally, the proportion of people who said that they want to prove their level to their friends took 28,6% (10 students), and this is not a small number Therefore, the more money students spend on frivolous things, the more disappointed they get because they will never feel satisfied with what they have, they think that they should get what their friends have to fit in with them

Figure 3: Reasons for students choosing luxurious restaurants despite lack of money