This must-have volume explores the issues surrounding peer pressure. It presents diversity of opinion on the topic, including both conservative and liberal points of view in an even balance. The sequences of essays guides readers through topics such as brain development, eating and exercise, popularity, parents, individuality, drugs and alcohol, and teacher influence in relation to peer pressure. Do sturdier brain networks help children resist peer pressure? Can organized activities deter negative peer pressure? Readers find answers to questions like these in this guidebook.

In the style of Nudge or The Spirit Level - a groundbreaking book that will change the way you look at the world. Tina Rosenberg has spent her career tackling some of the world's hardest problems. The Haunted Land, her searing book on how Eastern Europe faced the crimes of Communism, was awarded both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize in the US. In Join the Club, she identifies a brewing social revolution that is changing the way people live, based on harnessing the positive force of peer pressure. Her stories of peer power in action show how it has reduced teen smoking in the United States, made villages in India healthier and more prosperous, helped minority students get top grades in college calculus, and even led to the fall of Slobodan Milosevic. She tells how creative social entrepreneurs are starting to use peer pressure to accomplish goals as personal as losing weight and as global as fighting terrorism. Inspiring and engrossing, Join the Club explains how we can better our world through humanity's most powerful and abundant resource: our connections with one another.

"From New York Times bestselling author and economics columnist Robert Frank, a revelatory look at the power and potential of social context. As psychologists have long understood, social environments profoundly shape our behavior, sometimes for the better, but often for the worse. Less widely noted is that social influence is a two-way street: Our environments are in large part themselves a product of the choices we make. Society embraces regulations that limit physical harm to others, as when smoking restrictions are defended as protecting bystanders from secondhand smoke. But we have been slower to endorse parallel steps that discourage harmful social environments, as when regulators fail to note that the far greater harm caused when someone becomes a smoker is to make others more likely to smoke. In Under the Influence, Robert Frank attributes this regulatory asymmetry to the laudable belief that individuals should accept responsibility for their own behavior. Yet that belief, he argues, is fully compatible with public policies that encourage supportive social environments. Most parents hope, for example, that their children won't grow up to become smokers, bullies, tax cheats, sexual predators, or problem drinkers. But each of these hopes is less likely to be realized whenever such behaviors become more common. Such injuries are hard to measure, Frank acknowledges, but that's no reason for policymakers to ignore them. The good news is that a variety of simple policy measures could foster more supportive social environments without ushering in the dreaded nanny state or demanding painful sacrifices from anyone"--

Norbert feels the full weight of unwanted peer pressure when his friends scream at him to go along with the class. Can he resist and make the choice he should?

Harris takes on the "experts" and boldly questions conventional wisdom of parents' role in their children's lives, asserting that it's not the home environment that shapes children, but the environment they share with their peers.

Peer Pressure is a collection of essays previously published online between 2010 and 2011. In the author's words, each essay is an impassioned description or prescription to understand the digital space we inhabit differently. Most of these writings have been highly influential for the (relatively) small community the author addresses, eliciting many heated debates. The texts idealistically address creative platforms, image aggregators, relational practices, internet memes and much more. Brad Troemel makes and writes about art on the internet. His writing has been featured in magazines and books. His art has been featured in galleries and sometimes even museums. He has earned two degrees from prestigious American art schools. He currently lives in a city full of diverse cultures and complicated intellectuals. Friend request or e-mail him, he'd be happy to talk to you. http: //bradtroemel.com