I must thank Miruna for suggesting this subject. Our group of friends or so-called “entourage” definitely influences our development, but I will try to explain how this happens from a psychologically point of view.
First of all, entourage is seen as influence during teenage. This is the moment psychologists say we are going through a real crisis of identity development. During the first years of life, in childhood, we depend on our parents. They provide us food, clothes, love, they educate us and we are like sponges absorbing everything. The messages they send to us, the affection they show us, they all define our adult live to come. During teenage there is supposed to be a click when we want to make decisions, to take our lives in our hands, to have a say. A lot of physical changes happen at this age too.
Depending on this, the importance of entourage may be higher or lower. If we can’t find affection and normality at home, also understanding and support from our parents, we will look for them somewhere else. If our parents don’t understand what’s going on with us and there’s a war between them and us, we will try to rely on our friends, we will look for people outside our family who share our way of thinking. This is when entourage comes in.
Entourage can influence us in a positive or negative way. It can be positive and a real support if we come from a violent family, we’ve been abused or had an alcoholic parent, we don’t know what emotional presence means, and our entourage will fill our needs. Sometimes teenagers chose an entourage which imitates what used to happen between their parents and therefore live the same trauma. It depends on the case.
Bad influence may come when looking for our own identity in our family and we can’t find it. Then we look for it inside our entourage and find an unhealthy model. We copy it and want to act according to it in order to be seen and validated (these are every human basic needs). Friends from our entourage are most of the times under the influence of their family too; by making a group we receive personal validation, identity, autonomy, which are the very qualities we are looking for in our own families in the process of socializing. Entourage comes in to help us if we are neglected emotionally and in terms of communication.
As a conclusion: the entourage influence comes especially during teenage years when we are going through an identity crisis. We can beautifully get over this crisis when our parents are there for us, emotionally present and offer us the freedom we need. If this does not happen we will look for other role models. We can either choose a totally different model or exactly the same pattern of what we had at home.
I’ll give you an example: a child with aggressive parents will either look in his entourage for careful people or for aggressive ones; he/she finds it familiar. Most of the times, children who have been aggressed, abused, embarrassed or permanent fear has been induced to them, will identify themselves with their aggressors and will repeat the same acting as grown-ups.
My recommendation is for parents to talk to their children and other members of the family, to give them affection, and to be a model for them. If you are an adolescent who misses affection and it’s very difficult to make your parents aware of this, just begin to be more conscious about your own choices. One way is to deal with your parents. To ask for what you need. If you can’t or don’t want to do this, try look for a good role model at be careful with people you get close to.