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Is it true that “Birds of a feather flock together”?

Can you define a person by his/her friends and family?

Although it is quite difficult to measure exactly how family and friends could affect on a person because of their complex and changeable structure, many studies have been carried out with a great effort to decode this mechanism.

Surprisingly, it is possible to recognize the impact ò family and friend on teenager’s behaviors and achievements.

One of the first criteria to judge a person is his/her behavior, which is noticeably formed from the interaction with family and friends.

A study from the National Longitudinal Study of adolescents health (AddHealth) shows that home place plays an important role in the behavior-shaping process of an adolescent.

The findings pointed out four main factors that lead to the acts of teenager: parental high expectation, parental presence, home environment and parental communication.

While the high expectation from parents can decrease teenagers’ commitment to violence, it was parents’ presence at the important moments that could prevent teenager from substance use.

In addition, kids who early engage in guns, tobacco and illicit substance use are highly prone to suicide, violent involvement and substance use.

Therefore, communication between parents and children is greatly recommended.

Compared to family’s impact, friends have no clear evidence in positive effect on teenagers.

According to Berndt and Keefe’s findings in 1995, friends influenced teens’ disruptive behavior at school.

However, the findings could be easily misconstrued to mean that friends had an entirely negative influence.

Under those circumstances, the duo prudentially specified 2 kinds of changes in which teens tend to increase or decrease their disruptive behaviors depending on their friends.

Another influence of friends and family that is significantly presented is teenagers’ achievement.

First of all, a family’s background has an impact on the adolescents achievement in the sense that, teens whose family’s backgrounds are defined by great achievements are likely to be low achievers.

On the contrary, if a teen is from a poor background he/she tends to achieve more than the one from the wealthy family.

However, parental bond in one way or another influences the achievement of teens from such backgrounds.

The situation could be reverse in the first scenario if the family bond is strong and the direction given to the teen is towards high achievement.

Second, educational methods also affect teens performance, a punitive method seems to have a negative influence on the teens performance while an appreciative method conversely encourages better achievements.

In terms of friend’s impact, the findings from Epstein (1983) delved on the friends’ group/collective influence which is the case that children adjust their level of achievement to have the same one with their friends.

Besides, the group plays a crucial role in the long run of the adolescents’ level of competitiveness.

The more competitive they are, the more likely they change themselves to fit in their friends.

Adolescents’ behaviors and achievements are influenced differently by both family and friends.

Family’s influence works effective if the closeness is strong enough.

However, the mechanism of friends’ impact is based on the group effect.

The influence from either family or friends results in which is either negative or positive depending on the influence itself.