Extra-curricular Activities and Peer Pressure

Using physical activities to reduce the negative effect of peer pressure cannot produce lasting result.
Peer pressure is more of sociological and psychological phenomenon than physical. Physical activities are just vehicles to drive what has been designed to affect individuals' behaviour and attitude.
I need to also mention that not all peer pressure result in bad influence. Association and assimilation also has a great way of impacting individuals for positive response. I have been working with teenagers for over a decade now and I have seen that the best way to help a teenager stabilize is to arrange other teenagers that are established in good character around him.
Many of the teenagers I have worked with both at school and the teenage ministry at church have been challenged by the good and productive disposition of the others. Given that peer pressure has led a lot of young people and even adults down the path of destruction, quite a good number have been positively affected by result –oriented individuals around them.
Physical activities by itself will not lead to the reduction but the kind of the activities and the people involved in the activities. A child can be physically involved in many activities and still have enough time to be involved in heinous deeds. As a matter of fact the centres for those activities can a breeding ground for bad influence. Take for example, a parent desiring to reduce the amount of time available for his child decides to enrol him in a music class after school without checking the fine details of the strength of character of the instructors, the kind of children attending the class, the kind of ‘extra class’ activities that go on there. That child may eventually get worse while attending the class if the environment is not appropriate.
As parents and guardians, we must depend on God for inspiration to be creative in ways that we engage our children for after-school activities that will build them up. In as much as they need a high-quality level of socialisation for development, it our responsibility to guide them into activities that will build them up for the future. We cannot afford to just throw them into any available activity.
My candid opinion is that while productive activities are good, the kind of activities and especially the people involved should be carefully screened for young adults. Our focus for teenagers around us should be the deliberate building of their inner man. If they are well built inside they will not only be able withstand bad influence but exert their own positive pressure on those around them.