Movies, books, TV shows, social media, and even walking down the street. These are all places where romantic relationships can be witnessed. Many people engage in relationships during their teenage years. Many teenagers complain about being single and wanting a significant other. Teenagers feel pressure to engage in romantic relationships due to media.
In a survey that I did amongst a group of Juniors at SLA, over half of them agreed that they have felt societal pressure to engage in a romantic relationship. Students in an environment where education should be a main priority express a feeling of pressure from their peers, social media, family, etc to have a romantic partner. Teenagers in this day and age have easy access to the internet, where romantic relationships are especially prominent due to social media pages that post pictures of ‘couple goals’ and other similar ideas of romantic relationships. Through social media it is easy to see who’s dating who, who likes who, who’s talking to who, ways to see relationships. Due to this teenagers feel pressure to fit in and engage in their own romantic relationships.
In an article written by TeenZeen.org the author writes that, “Sometimes, you may not be ready to start dating, but you feel that you have to because everyone else around you is.” A very common way that people, especially teenagers, express themselves is on social media sites such as Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter, etc. Teenagers tend to show off the people that they’re talking to, they like to post about their emotions and how they feel about certain things. This can be a very powerful thing that can influence others feelings on certain topics. Many teenagers follow people that they idolize on social media, many of these social media famous people are teenagers themselves. When teenagers see people their age who are succeeding they feel pressure to mimic their actions to achieve their own success. One way that they might try and do that is through entering romantic relationships, especially if the person / people that they idol are in their own romantic relationships.
Kara Nesvig wrote an article for Teen Vogue about the “21 best TV show couples.” The article lists a few of the many romantic relationships that are shown on TV. She writes that, “These 20 iconic couples make us believe that love is real, even if it’s just on TV.” Almost every single teenager watches some type of TV. This shows how prominent couples are in TV shows and how it makes teenagers have a certain perception of what ‘love’ should look like. Almost every TV show or movie about highschool students has some type of love plot to it. This causes pressure on teenagers to enter their own romantic relationships because, “it’s what everyone else is doing.” By nature, humans want to fit into their environment and with their peers and if that means entering a romantic relationship, even if they aren’t ready, then that’s what they will do.
Relationships are seen everywhere nowadays, even though many teens say that they are content in not being involved in a romantic relationship they feel pressured to be in a relationship. This is due to how often teenagers are reminded of others, especially their peer’s, relationship statuses, and more oftenly the ones who are engaged in romantic relationships.
https://www.teenvogue.com/gallery/best-tv-couples
https://www.teenzeen.org/teens-and-dating.html
Survey done by me
