ABSTRACT
As children move into adolescence, they spend increasing amounts of time interacting with peers. The features of the closest peer relationships those between best friends, also change during the transition to adolescence. The most important change is the emergence of intimate friendships characterized by open disclosure of personal information. The effects of friends' influence on adolescents' attitudes and behavior are controversial. One perspective that is accepted by many researchers, parents, and other adults can be illustrated—or, perhaps, caricatured—by the following fictional vignette. Writers who emphasize the negative outcomes of peer pressure rarely state precisely who these peers are. Some researchers have used peer pressure to refer to the influence of the entire peer group in a particular setting. For example, Bronfenbrenner described the pressure on Soviet adolescents that come from the group of other adolescents who live at the same boarding school. However, the effects of an entire peer group are weak.
