If the internet is like high school all over again... how do friend, clique, and popularity dynamics re-invigorate peer pressure and contribute to ever-more-extreme personalities? Let's dive further into the details of our research and rag on some losers.
summary
This conversation delves into the complexities of peer influence in the digital age, particularly how the internet has transformed identity formation and social dynamics. It explores the emotional immaturity of previous generations, the impact of social media on adolescent behavior, and the challenges of maintaining authentic friendships in a world dominated by online interactions. The discussion highlights the maturity gap, the role of popularity, and the pressures of conformity that shape modern relationships.
takeaways
- The internet has created a new form of peer pressure.
- Boomers + internet may have contributed to emotional immaturity in society.
- Identity formation is heavily influenced by peer relationships online.
- The maturity gap affects how adolescents navigate social pressures.
- Individuals often conform to group norms to maintain social acceptance.
- Friendships today are often superficial and influenced by social media.
- Group relationships are the standard, even in one-on-one interactions.
- Popularity plays a significant role in shaping behaviors and identities.
- Authenticity in relationships is increasingly difficult to achieve online.
- Peer influence and egos can lead to extreme behaviors, even within the constraints of conformity.
- Popularity, cliques, and personal identities have created a spiral of bullying.
keywords
peer influence, internet, identity formation, social media, adolescence, maturity gap, friendship dynamics, popularity, authenticity, emotional maturity
We’re here! To revisit
Toward understanding the functions of peer influence: A summary and synthesis of recent empirical research
Brett Laursen, Rene Veenstra
JOURNAL OF RESEARCH ON ADOLESCENCE, 2021
And dig into the details that I didn’t give you last time.
Seeking connections between the internet, void of authentic self understanding… and façades of conformity that have sprung forth, presented as unique personal identities via the previously-adolescence-based phenomenon of peer pressure, now contained at our fingertips every moment of the day.
In other words... we’re asking: is the internet our new high school that we don’t get to leave at 3pm? How did the most emotionally immature among us (cough, boomers, for example) take it as their opportunity to “try again” at a phase of life they passed through long ago? Is this what’s created the extreme personality options seen in 2025? And the spiral of silence that has made the rest of us afraid to speak up?
THE THEORY
Boomers (and plenty of others, but, collectively speaking, Boomers are ruining our world and also the easiest to point to for this discussion on emotional immaturity) were born in extremely traumatized times, following World War II. This was passed on in their blood and by the harrowed people who raised them.
People who were deeply traumatized and had zero tools other than “just forging ahead” to deal with it.
Thus, Boomers were not permitted to talk about their feelings, to have their own uniqueness, to stray from what society wanted from them. The silent generation didn’t allow it.
So, generally speaking, they didn’t develop their own personal identities. They did what they were told. And it worked.
The economy largely panned out for them, working a 9-5 was the key to doing just fine, and traditional values meant “follow what’s traditional, don’t reflect - just do what you’ve been instructed.”
Meanwhile, because of a combination of everything I just said, they didn’t go “figure their shit out” in therapy. Or through forging their own paths in life. Or through challenging the values they were raised with. And continued to have little in the way of authentic identity, relational or emotional maturity.
But. All that said, they landed themselves in “bored and blessed” life statuses thanks to that aforementioned, rather predictable, economical growth of not-yet-late-stage-capitalism.
Then the internet exploded, and suddenly they (Boomers and all the other unhealed traumatized humans in the world) were given access to… everyone. Every other mind on the planet.
Which, socially speaking, was like re-entering high school. Peers on peers, with very little oversight, and the opportunity to change self image.
They suddenly had the opportunity to re-do their adolescence. To re-figure out who they were. To re-try at popularity. To re-make an identity for themselves. In a big way, to re-try at life.
And we wound up with a big, bullying, group identity, because of it. Under the confines of ever-increasing peer pressure whilst not working out abusive daddy issues, the group identity grew ever-more extreme, built on the backs of individuals becoming more extreme, thanks to the prompting of the crowd.
And this phenomenon has been choking out the voices of all the other classmen, ever since.
Or, so it my assertion.
Let’s look at this paper for more uncanny details to see if it seems valid.
Getting back to Laursen and Veenstra, they ALSO said:
Building on the observation that adolescents are preoccupied with an “imaginary audience” (Elkind & Bowen, 1979), scholars have hypothesized a developmental period marked by hypersensitivity to peer social judgments (Somerville, 2013). A consequence may be that perspective taking cues activate regions of the brain that are especially attuned to peer input (van Hoorn et al., 2016). Self-conscious emotions elicited by peer attention, and brain activity linked to social responsiveness, peak in midadolescence (Somerville et al., 2013).
So let’s think about that. The internet is a REAL imaginary audience. You actually CAN be monitored by everyone, all the time, including people you do and don’t know who want an anonymous punching bag. Has this re-sparked self-consciousness? I think most of us would say yes. Has this caused our brains to be re-self-conscious, at adolescent levels? Perhaps.
And it doesn’t help that we were all thrown into this pool together, without training.
Adolescence as a Period of Heightened Susceptibility to Peer Influence
Structural changes in school and free time settings.
Children move from a predictable world where most of their time is spent in relatively small, familiar groups that are closely monitored by the same teacher, to a larger, impersonal, uncertain world populated by unfamiliar peers, with diffuse adult supervision (Eccles et al., 1996). Susceptibility to peer influence is an adaptive consequence of the structural changes that characterize adolescence.
Adolescents quickly learn to rely on close peers for companionship, protection, and guidance as they navigate novel contexts where norms are established and enforced by peers. Afraid of the social consequences of nonconformity, most conclude that the best way to get along is to go along.
One might say “same” about the doors tech has opened. Mom and dad aren’t here, there’s no oversight committee, just every individual suddenly exposed to every other individual without a solid structure. Which means a mind has to start basing its behaviors off of social cues from those peers, just like hitting “rewind” and returning to middle and high school.
That means:
Identity development and deidentification.
Deidentification describes a process whereby adolescents seek to establish unique identities through behaviors and attitudes that set them apart from parents (Koepke & Denissen, 2012).
Read: the internet provided a way to re-examine or entirely ditch the assumed values and identities that were inauthentically acquired through upbringing.
Peer relationships provide a safe space for experimentation, including trying and discarding different identities. New identities can be forged by befriending someone known for the characteristics to which one aspires and adopting these attributes. For most young adolescents, friends are the obvious choice.
Traumatized individuals may be forced to maintain a particular personality or role in their real life, but the web sets them free. So, in striving to create a new identity, freed from the shackles of how one’s family, old friends, work associates, and neighbors assess them, people seek clues from friends and peers. And keep in mind that Facebook made “friends” a very loosey goosey term a long time ago, as it created a whole new landscape to comprehend.
Findings from experimental studies indicate that peer influence is greatest when adolescents are confronted with unfamiliar tasks that have uncertain outcomes (van Hoorn et al., 2017). As adolescents grow more secure in their identities and more settled in their tastes, peer influence should decline.
Again, the unexplored territory of the internet serves as an unfamiliar place with unfamiliar rules. Imagine living 50 years, unable to have your own unique identity… and then stumbling into the internet, where options are limitless. It’s a wild west.
And it sounds related, to me, to this next point:
Autonomy and the maturity gap.
The disconnect between biological and social maturity, known as the maturity gap, creates a specific form of adolescence-limited conformity pressure (Moffitt, 1993). Deviant peers signal their autonomy by displaying behaviors reserved for adults and by acting in ways that are contrary to adult authority. Doing so boosts their status with peers. Fearing a loss of prestige, high-status individuals respond by mimicking behaviors that signal maturity. Lower status individuals follow suit. Adolescents who fail to conform risk exclusion by affiliates who do not wish to be perceived as immature by association.
Given the tools to engage with everyone, but not necessarily the social skills to do it healthily… the internet has created an environment of trying to prove oneself, to stand out, and yet also to fit in.
Acting “in ways contrary to adult supervision” that “signal maturity,” as understood by children… sure sounds like this presidency and its fanboys to me. A parade of assholes, mimicking those behaviors, like troublemakers on the back of the bus, trying to show everyone else how to be cool, based on what wisdoms alchie dad has passed along.
But no one realizes what they’re REALLY being influenced by; generations of unhealed individuals, pretending to be adults while their fingers fly faster than their brains ever could.
And they don’t have much choice in the matter, either. Because human brains are wired to flock together:
THE INFLUENCE-COMPATIBILITY MODEL
The Primacy of Peers in Adolescent Culture
The consequences of rejection and exclusion from the peer group are severe. Experiments and self-reports agree that peer rejection increases depressed mood (Platt et al., 2013). Isolation from the peer group anticipates loneliness and diminished self-esteem (Witvliet et al., 2010), which also fosters anxiety and depression (Bosacki et al., 2007).
Most adolescents recognize that friends are required to successfully navigate peer culture. Friends are particularly important to those whose undesirable characteristics.. place them at risk for victimization (Fox & Boulton, 2006; Kochel et al., 2017).
Our minds don’t let us “not worry about what other are doing.” We innately adopt their behaviors when we see those behaviors work well.
And also. Is it possible that seeing people get attacked in comments sections may reiterate the point “don’t explore this place alone”? Stay likable, stay within a chosen “pack,” and be protected - or else HERE is the consequence; internet humiliation across the planet? So stay in line with the overarching narrative, even adopting the suggested beliefs within, and you’re automatically aligned with “friends” as a method of self-defense?
This next section also suggests: yes.
Similarity and Compatibility Reduce the Threat of Friendship Dissolution and Peer Group Exclusion
Differences are a primary source of disagreement between friends, because they threaten to undermine compatibility. Whenever there is conflict, there is the potential for negative affect, which is highly disruptive to ongoing social interactions (Laursen et al., 2001). For this reason, adolescents take great pains to avoid coercive conflict interchanges.
Winning an argument may mean risking a friendship. For that reason, it is often better to concede or negotiate and minimize differences than prevail and lose a friend. To mitigate relationship dissatisfaction, friends may agree to jointly address threats to compatibility.
Dissatisfied friends become former friends, replaced by companions who are more compatible. To avoid this eventuality, adolescents strive to minimize differences, encourage compatibility, and strengthen investments in the relationship.
When a new identity has been forged through peer suggestion and creating fake internet friends, it has to be maintained. As the group think gets more extreme or takes an unexpected turn, for the individual there has to be direct compromise of values, or purposeful ignorance of the values that one is passively aligning with, to maintain similarity.
SO, even if one encounters information that they don’t agree with on the internet, provided by their chosen community… they might choose to either ignore that information OR to change their opinion so that the new data isn’t a problem…. All in the name of maintaining cohesion within the friendships.
Which could help to explain how seemingly decent folks simply overlook the atrocious things their friends and leaders say online and realign themselves with those statements.
And similarity is a big deal when contact with those peers is constant – or maybe even more important and consistent than other, previously life-defining, relationships. Something that’s brand new to our century. They say:
CONCEPTUAL COUNTERPARTS
Identity Maintenance Models
Compared to other age periods, adolescents have more incentive and greater opportunity to maximize compatibility by enhancing similarity (Laursen, 2018). Adult friendships are often subordinate to romantic, family, and employment obligations; friend influence may be ineffectual in the face of countervailing relationship pressures (DeLay et al., 2016). Once settled, adults may become more tolerant of differences between friends, because options for friends decline with age, and because adult contact with friends is limited to and structured around areas where similarities are maintained. In contrast, adolescents prioritize friendships and enjoy considerable latitude in their selection and maintenance.
… Until the internet changed so much and put adults in adolescent shoes again.
Opening up relational horizons, making online relationships important-as and inextricable-from romantic, family, and employment obligations, decreasing likelihood of “settling” into an environment to increase tolerance for differences, creating never ending options for friends, and contact with them.
“Friends” (in quotes) aren’t just casual anymore. They’re life-defining. Because the internet has become the new life.
Appearing “the same,” then, continues to be a priority.
Except…. for the human conundrum they describe next:
However, no one wants to be perceived as unoriginal. Optimal distinctiveness theory (Brewer, 1991) holds that individuals seek balanced self-views, integrated into a cohesive group of like-minded others but different in ways that highlight a unique individual identity. Thus, optimal distinctiveness theory proffers insight into domains where conformity is expected. Conformity pressures should be strong in areas that touch upon the group identity. Distinctiveness is tolerated when it does not conflict with the priorities of the group and the image it seeks to project.
Meaning. Now, online, we can belong to SO MANY groups, perhaps each under the umbrella of some shared values. In each, there’s pressure to be the same. And yet egos also insist that we feel special.
But not too special, which could upset said groups.
So we end up with a conform-but take it to the next level-strategy.
You can imagine entering into a new clique, learning what the rules are, adopting them… and then altering them slightly to be unique. Then, finding another group that’s mostly-similar or recognizing that the existing group has changed, and starting again. Each time, becoming a little more conformist…. and also a little more extreme IN that conformity – being the MOST conformist of the conformers, to demonstrate individuality - pushing the limits of interrelated social networks, over and over again.
It all makes sense, especially when considering this next point:
Understanding Voluntary Affiliations
Interactions between friends often take place in private settings. Secrets and opinions are shared, and the behaviors observed are not intended for public consumption. For friends, influence enhances compatibility and intimacy, facilitating shared affect and the smooth resolution of differences, which boosts felt security and confidence in the continuity of the relationship.
For group members, influence enhances compatibility and uniformity, creating a hierarchy with mechanisms of enforcement that facilitate order, smooth functioning, and effective mobilization and organization.
Cliques are interconnected friend dyads. Also voluntary, they may contain associations that require an individual to affiliate with a third party in order to maintain a shared friendship.
Thus, friends seek inner-state, attitude, and value similarity because it fosters closeness, whereas groups pursue observable behavior similarity because it promotes cohesion.
Now applied to modern living, when almost nothing is private anymore and almost every interaction is up for scrutiny from a clique… there are few truly one-on-one friendships. Even private conversations are one screenshot away from being shuttled into a crowd.
So these days it’s all about presenting cohesive behaviors, to satiate the group, whether those actions and values are authentic or not.
And… as they said… that might require affiliation with a third party to maintain a friendship. To maintain positive standing in the group.
A third party like… a political party. Or a religion. Or a particular public figure. Or, all three, when they become one and the same.
To stay friends AND stay within a group, it might be necessary to align with an impersonal third and SHOW IT, demonstrably. In a similar yet “unique, aren’t I so special,” way.
Sounds like the internet to me. And speaks to this final point of the paper.
Who do we choose as third party affiliations to be influenced by? How does a mind decide what identity to conform with?
Understanding the Need for Status
All things being equal, popular peers are more influential than average peers (Dijkstra et al., 2008). Popular adolescents have access to rewards that are not available to others, such as admiration, inclusion in exclusive social events, and favorable resource allocation (Hawley, 2014).
The power of status attracts others. Lower status adolescents who gain the favor of a popular individual see their own popularity increase, a process referred to as “basking in reflected glory” (Dijkstra et al., 2010). In this way, popular adolescents attract peers who are willing to emulate their behavior in order to receive the rewards of enhanced status.
Popular adolescents utilize an array of strategies to attract and influence peers. Some bully to maintain popularity, identifying new victims across the school year to increase visibility (van der Ploeg et al., 2020). Others take a positive route.
In classrooms where popular peers are aggressive, classmates increase their aggression; in classrooms where popular peers are prosocial, classmates increase their prosociality (Laninga-Wijnen et al., 2020).
… Do I need to say anything?
Some popular people are bullies, encouraging others to be aggressive and predatory, through demonstrating that it reaps rewards. This sets up the conforming template to follow for the individual.
In copying those behaviors, the less popular person, now affiliating with the third party clique-influencer, innately receives reward. Through direct reinforcement? Maybe. But more unquestionably, if done correctly, through being accepted by the group united under the umbrella of that popular figure. Through peer-pressure.
So, the popular figure is popular due to the way a group treats them. This, then, encourages the group to behave similarly, so they all approve of each other. This enhances the sense of popularity for everyone involved. Which also feeds back and strengthens the influence of the leading figure, once more.
And I think that’s a good place to:
Wrap.
From everything we discussed…
The internet has sent peer influence on a path of continual increase – untethered from biological age.
Exposed to a brand new world of socializing, with no rules or oversight, peer pressure has blossomed and exploded – for adults as much as adolescents. And because so much online activity is public or made public, because humans flock towards charismatic movers and shakers, because we all want to be similar AND ALSO a bit spicy – but that goal post keeps moving due to the prevailing and expanding cliques, creating more ever-more extreme behaviors that are “acceptable enough” for the group while also giving them new examples of how to achieve a popular identity, as every human on the planet vies for “a unique personal brand” among billions of others, with no oversight or idea how to do it authentically….
We get a clusterfuck of peer influence that makes everyone inside the clique feel rather big in the britches, driving continually more extreme behavior within, that both conforms and ups the ante of the prevailing values and actions. With very little authenticity, intimacy, or empathy required, because there’s less and less demand to prioritize the difficulties of maintaining one-on-one interactions, as these like-minded groups continue to rise up, advertising themselves as safe harbors for all the individuals who were thrown into this mass-group dynamic unequipped for the workings of it.
We align with bullies, and in a way, THEY are our new friends, in the absence of real friends. Through false, parasocial relationship with them, we become similar… which makes us similar to the group that follows them… which becomes our new friend group. We then look for signs about what’s acceptable and then what’s a step further towards establishing a unique identity within the clique. Tightening and exacerbating the values and behaviors that have been modelled through nudging the dial inch by inch in the direction our popular figures and peers have pointed to.
Talk about a spiral of silence… here we have a spiral of inauthenticity, spurred by the positive regard of other fakers, following after whoever manages to get attention on the internet in a way that others can crudely mimic.
So are you convinced?
Perhaps the whole thing has created a pipeline of deepening, peer-influenced, assholery.
And helps to explain the childlike, disconcerting, embarrassing personalities that have been taking over the country and the international net.
Or, perhaps that’s just the hypothesis of an outlier, looking in.
You tell me.
And we’ll meet again here next time to talk about the piece that I left out today…
Where algorithms come into all of this.