Peers

Synonyms

Other children

Definition

Peers are defined as individuals of the same age and status.

Introduction

Peers play a prominent role in adolescence, the time between the onset of puberty and achieving independence from one’s family of origin, roughly mapping into the second decade of life. Compared to children and adults, adolescents spend more time with peers, enjoy peers’ company more, and consider peer norms as more important. This heightened importance of peers is highly conserved across species. For example, adolescent rats spend more time investigating and interacting with peers, and peer behavior is instrumental in learning and practice of adaptive and adult-like behaviors. Although peer influences can be positive (e.g., academically successful friends can motivate youth to work harder at school), more prevalent are concerns about peers’ role in adolescents’ problem behaviors. Indeed, peer influence is a key contributor to a variety of risky behaviors occurring in...