Aspies and peer pressure

[Farouche]

All Aspies on this site: Do you ever feel that you were immune to peer pressure? When I was a teenager, I had no interest in doing drugs, drinking, having sex, breaking curfew. My peers would tell me to do these things, but I didn't care. People with Asperger's syndrome seem to be the anti-rebels!

[Soap]

I was socially isolated until my middle teen years because I was in special education and interacted more with adults than with other students. Therefore I didnt have to deal with peer pressure because I didnt have many peers, and those I did have were in the same situation as I was. In elementary school I had had some friends, but most were younger than me and didn't seem to notice, or care, that I was weird, and the few other friends I had were classmates from the same school and therefore were also weird ... in different ways than I was, but we could still relate to each other.

In high school I entered mainstream education and was bullied a lot, but I wouldnt call that peer pressure either. I had one close friend who had started out as a bully but quickly switched sides when (i think) we both realized that he was only beating up on me to gain popularity and protect himself from being bullied himself, and that it didnt work, since the school bullies saw him as just as pathetic as I was and just laughed at the both of us instead of picking a side in the fight.

I really didnt have to deal with peer pressure at all until adulthood, when I finally realized how bad I was at social skills and that I couldnt change that, so I became very shy, and have been so ever since outside the rare situations such as therapy groups where I am with others who are in delicate situations as well. Right now this type of therapy group accounts for almost all of my in-person socialization and although I hope to make friends eventually that I can see in outside situations, Im still too shy to have contacted anybody outside the various groups so far.

[malloc]

All Aspies on this site: Do you ever feel that you were immune to peer pressure? When I was a teenager, I had no interest in doing drugs, drinking, having sex, breaking curfew. My peers would tell me to do these things, but I didn't care. People with Asperger's syndrome seem to be the anti-rebels!

That actually describes me pretty well in my teen years. While everyone else my age was smoking underage, watching porn, and so forth, I was very rule-abiding. Which is ironic, since I ended up staunchly left wing despite living in one of the most conservative parts of the country.

[Uruwi]

I can't even remember experiencing peer pressure for those things. When I saw peer pressure, it was usually to excel in school

[Vijay]

I'm not an Aspie, but the only one of the things that have been mentioned so far where I remember experiencing any peer pressure was having sex.

[Frislander]

Well I have a slightly different experience since I was definitely immune to peer pressure till sometime round 16, when I went into 6th form and actually started socialising with my peers, where I did experience the odd bit of pressure with regards to one or two events and the consumption of alcohol, but even then I was able to resist. I generally didn't experience much pressure to begin with though because people generally kind of accepted me as I am and didn't usually engage in that sort of thing bar one or two occasions. That and I get a kind of pleasure out of being stubborn, rebelling against the "rebellion" as it were (which in my case was pretty tame, the drug culture at my school being pretty much non-existant).

[Salmoneus]

I generally didn't experience much pressure to begin with though because people generally kind of accepted me as I am and didn't usually engage in that sort of thing bar one or two occasions.

Pity; although people tut-tut about youth drinking, it's actually the best time for it - it becomes less and less acceptable (and enjoyable) as you get older.

That and I get a kind of pleasure out of being stubborn, rebelling against the "rebellion" as it were

I presume you're aware of the Chesterton quote?



Anyway, "peer pressure" doesn't really happen anywhere near as often as stereotypes suggest, in the sense discussed here (peers overtly pressuring people into things). What does happen to an enormous extent (and what the term, iirc, was invented to describe) is the passive and implicit way social groups influence their individuals into conforming to their norms, whatever those might be, which nobody but the most institutionalised unable-to-cope-in-society people escapes from. Obviously, though, anyone either less capable of or less devoted to interpreting social cues will be less socialised than others, and hence will be interpreted as "weird" in some way by others for failing to conform.

[Frislander]

I generally didn't experience much pressure to begin with though because people generally kind of accepted me as I am and didn't usually engage in that sort of thing bar one or two occasions.

Pity; although people tut-tut about youth drinking, it's actually the best time for it - it becomes less and less acceptable (and enjoyable) as you get older.

Well I am definitely drinking more now I've turned 18, but that was this August so I was still underage; that and the fact that I really don't cope well with the atmosphere of "the sesh", especially the clubbing element.

That and I get a kind of pleasure out of being stubborn, rebelling against the "rebellion" as it were

I presume you're aware of the Chesterton quote?

I may have heard it but I currently do not know to what you refer.

Anyway, "peer pressure" doesn't really happen anywhere near as often as stereotypes suggest, in the sense discussed here (peers overtly pressuring people into things). What does happen to an enormous extent (and what the term, iirc, was invented to describe) is the passive and implicit way social groups influence their individuals into conforming to their norms, whatever those might be, which nobody but the most institutionalised unable-to-cope-in-society people escapes from. Obviously, though, anyone either less capable of or less devoted to interpreting social cues will be less socialised than others, and hence will be interpreted as "weird" in some way by others for failing to conform.

I would definitely agree that is a major issue with society in general, and one that isn't really avoidable, since all societies must by necessity have norms of some kind, though at the same time there'll always be reasonable people who will accomodate those who are less socialised, whatever the culture.

[Salmoneus]

I generally didn't experience much pressure to begin with though because people generally kind of accepted me as I am and didn't usually engage in that sort of thing bar one or two occasions.

Pity; although people tut-tut about youth drinking, it's actually the best time for it - it becomes less and less acceptable (and enjoyable) as you get older.

Well I am definitely drinking more now I've turned 18, but that was this August so I was still underage; that and the fact that I really don't cope well with the atmosphere of "the sesh", especially the clubbing element.

Huh. Never encountered the idea of "underage" in an alcohol context, other than regarding the US. The legal drinking age in the UK, incidentally, is 5, other than for medical or emergency purposes.*
But yeah, can't say clubbing has ever appealed to me. And anyone who uses first-syllable abbreviations should be avoiding at all costs in any case...

*18 is the minimum alcohol purchasing age; 16 is the minimum alcohol drinking age with a meal in licensed commercial premises. However, you can drink whatever you want from 5 onward, assuming your parents (or any other adult) does the purchasing for you. When I was a teenager, people just went round to a friend's.

I may have heard it but I currently do not know to what you refer.

I'll give the paragraph...

He was one of those who are driven early in life into too conservative an attitude by the bewildering folly of most revolutionists. He had not attained it by any tame tradition. His respectability was spontaneous and sudden, a rebellion against rebellion. He came of a family of cranks, in which all the oldest people had all the newest notions. One of his uncles always walked about without a hat, and another had made an unsuccessful attempt to walk about with a hat and nothing else. His father cultivated art and self-realisation; his mother went in for simplicity and hygiene. Hence the child, during his tenderer years, was wholly unacquainted with any drink between the extremes of absinth and cocoa, of both of which he had a healthy dislike. The more his mother preached a more than Puritan abstinence the more did his father expand into a more than pagan latitude; and by the time the former had come to enforcing vegetarianism, the latter had pretty well reached the point of defending cannibalism.

Being surrounded with every conceivable kind of revolt from infancy, Gabriel had to revolt into something, so he revolted into the only thing left—sanity. But there was just enough in him of the blood of these fanatics to make even his protest for common-sense a little too fierce to be sensible.

[Frislander]

Huh. Never encountered the idea of "underage" in an alcohol context, other than regarding the US. The legal drinking age in the UK, incidentally, is 5, other than for medical or emergency purposes.*

*18 is the minimum alcohol purchasing age; 16 is the minimum alcohol drinking age with a meal in licensed commercial premises. However, you can drink whatever you want from 5 onward, assuming your parents (or any other adult) does the purchasing for you. When I was a teenager, people just went round to a friend's.

Oooooooh... that makes sense, but like I always though that when I was like 12 and my parents let me and my brother have some Cava in celebration they were kind of playing loose with the law but it was actually perfectly legal... I guess I was just taught the law poorly.

But yeah, can't say clubbing has ever appealed to me. And anyone who uses first-syllable abbreviations should be avoiding at all costs in any case...

I guess, but then these are the friends I have my own age; everyone else is at least 20 years beyond me, so like I kinda have to be OK with them and their attitudes because I'm living alongside them for the next 3 years.

(Quote from The Man Who Was Thursday)

Sounds about right, though I'll fight anyone who tries to call me "conservative" in any other context.

[finlay]

"small c conservative"

[hwhatting]

*18 is the minimum alcohol purchasing age; 16 is the minimum alcohol drinking age with a meal in licensed commercial premises. However, you can drink whatever you want from 5 onward, assuming your parents (or any other adult) does the purchasing for you. When I was a teenager, people just went round to a friend's.

In Germany, you can consume and be served soft alcoholic drinks (beer, wine, champaign etc.)*1) in public from age 14 when accompanied by a legal guardian, and you can buy or be served them from age 16. To buy or be served hard liquors you have to be 18.
I don't know whether there is any set age limit below which your legal guardians cannot legally give you alcohol in private. But I assume the general rules concerning mistreatment of children, unfitness for parenting, etc. apply here. So while daddy letting his 4-year-old sip some of his beer occasionally is probably legal (although not recommended), pacifying a baby with a baby bottle of vodka would probably constitute child abuse.

*1) More precisely, the distinction is between distilled alcoholic drinks and mixtures containing them (available above age 18) and non-distilled alcoholic drinks.

[Frislander]

"small c conservative"

Well I mean you could put it that way but in other respects I don't fit even into that kind of conservatism, like I believe that the full equality of women, ethnic minorities, disabled people, LGBTQ+ people etc. in society still has not been acheived for instance.

[Curlyjimsam]

Huh. Never encountered the idea of "underage" in an alcohol context, other than regarding the US. The legal drinking age in the UK, incidentally, is 5, other than for medical or emergency purposes.*

How odd - I'd regard "underage drinking" as pretty much standard UK shorthand for "purchasing and drinking alcohol without a meal under the age of eighteen" ...

[Gulliver]

Huh. Never encountered the idea of "underage" in an alcohol context, other than regarding the US. The legal drinking age in the UK, incidentally, is 5, other than for medical or emergency purposes.*

How odd - I'd regard "underage drinking" as pretty much standard UK shorthand for "purchasing and drinking alcohol without a meal under the age of eighteen" ...

I teach teenagers and one recently had a police officer turn up at her house party were a load of 16/17-year-olds were shitfaced. Apparently, he just said they hadn't had any complaints and that he'd check up later to make sure everyone was okay.

You can't sell alcohol to under-18's, but they can drink. It's not unusual at all and the police treat it as a "just stay safe" thing, rather than an "arrest and detain" thing.