As children grow older and venture out from their fami-lies, community conditions become a greater influence. Gangs tend to cluster in high-crime and economically disadvantaged neighborhoods
This is an example of a child whom is very wealthy but has gotten into a gang and now hangs out on the lower side of town because that is where most of the gang members are located.
One of the strongest risk factors for gang membership is associating with peers who engage in delinquency (Thorn-berry, Lizotte, et al., 2003). Aggressive and antisocial youth begin to affiliate with one another in childhood, and this pattern of aggressive friendships continues through adolescence
This piece explains how the more anti social children with a corrupted past are more likely to join up with others like them and find there way into a gang.
This section examines risk factors—forces that push youth toward gangs or increase the likelihood that affected youth will join a gang.2 Researchers cannot predict whether a particular individual will join a gang. Rather, research shows that individuals who possess certain risk factors have an elevated chance of joining a gang.
This shows that there is no way of telling who will join a gang or when but most of these decisions do not lie with the person but with the people that they hang out with and what they are doing.
Children and adolescents form starter gangs to introduce themselves to gang culture (i.e., distinctive attitudes, jargon, rituals, and symbols). In some areas, established gangs sometimes create cliques or sets composed of younger youth called “wannabes,” “juniors,” “pee wees,” and the like (Vigil, 1993). Where members of starter gangs may engage in minor delinquent behaviors, gang members may be involved in serious and violent offenses.
This piece shows that younger kids are wanting to do this but are getting regected for their young age and they are starting to do violent crimes to get noticed by the gang so they would let them in.
Local youth gang problems in the United States increased during the 25-year period leading up to the mid-1990s (W.B. Miller, 2001). Whereas in the 1970s, only 19 states reported youth gang problems, before the turn of the 21st century, all 50 states and the District of Columbia had ac-knowledged gang activity. Gang problems reported by law enforcement in the National Youth Gang Survey (NYGS)1peaked in the mid-1990s, followed by a precipitous decline (Egley, Howell, and Major, 2004).
This shows the turning or starting point of how more teens wanted to be "cooler" by joining a gang to show off to their friends.
Youth join gangs for protection, enjoyment, respect, money, or because a friend is in a gang
This partially explains why teens feel so compelled to join gangs for that wanted respect from others.
More study is needed to determine if the effect shown in the game study is the same when teenagers are in the presence of an opposite-sex friend or romantic interest. In the study, there were no meaningful differences in risk taking among boys and girls. However, some real-world driving data suggests that teenage boys take more risks behind the wheel when one or more boys are in the car, but drive more carefully if they are with a girlfriend.
This is also a big info breaker as the brain knows when to and how to impress the people around it as when with a girlfriend the brain knows not to impress them by being risky but by showing them that they can be safe.
The effect is believed to be especially strong in teenagers because brain changes shortly after puberty appear to make young people more attentive and aware of what other people are thinking about them, Dr. Steinberg said.
This shows that many teenagers would do some pretty crazy things to get their peers to like them more rather than not holding those people at a higher standard.
Dr. Steinberg notes that the findings give a new view of peer pressure, since the peers in this experiment were not even in the same room as the teenager in the scanner.
This in a way explains that the friends don't even need to be in the same room as the one being pressured, this shows that the person just needs to know that they would be there/ watching them.
Among adults and college students, there were no meaningful differences in risk taking, regardless of whether friends were watching. But the young teenagers ran about 40 percent more yellow lights and had 60 percent more crashes when they knew their friends were watching. And notably, the regions of the brain associated with reward showed greater activity when they were playing in view of their friends. It was as if the presence of friends, even in the next room, prompted the brain’s reward system to drown out any warning signals about risk, tipping the balance toward the reward.
This section shows that when young adults and teens are around friends they are more likely to do more dangerous things.
To test how the presence of peers influences risk taking, the researchers asked 14 young teenagers (ages 14 to 18), 14 college students and 12 young adults to play a six-minute video driving game while in a brain scanner. Participants were given cash prizes for completing the game in a certain time, but players had to make decisions about stopping at yellow lights, and being delayed, or racing through yellow lights, which could result in a faster time and a bigger prize, but also meant a higher risk for crashing and an even longer delay. The children and adults played four rounds of the game while undergoing the brain scan. Half the time they played alone, and half the time they were told that two same-sex friends who had accompanied them to the study were watching the play in the next room.
This shows how peer pressure affects the thinking patterns of not only teens but adults as well
This shows that the teen and adult brains are affected by peer pressure because of their decisions.