What should I do when my friends want me to do ___?
Being a kid and growing up isn't easy. I wish I could say that things get easier as life goes on, but in reality, living in the world never gets easy.
On Cheating
There are two general areas growing up and having a life centered around school that this question generally falls under. The first deals with cheating, so I'll cover it first. It has gotten much more complicated since I was a kid. That's just a reality for the world in which we now live.
Let me give you an example from my high school days. I was a good student, the pretty much straight A kind of student. I was struggling with a test question. Most everyone else had turned their test in (mostly because it was a geography class that I thought would teach a lot about the world we lived in but which turned out to be a class designed to let the sports kids get an easy credit so they didn't care what they turned in - if they passed the test they were okay with that). But anyway, I wanted to get 100%. The kid ahead of me turned around and whispered to me asking me if I wanted help and the answer. I don't remember now whether I used his answer or used one of my own. It's been far to many decades. But I do remember wanting to get everything right.
Later, when I was a senior, I was taking a Calculus course, and the teacher of the course gave his first test and then gave a little speech. He said that this was an honors course and he knew we were all good students. He said he had better things to do than to watch us take a test, and he was going to the teacher's lounge to do some work. He said that even though they were all closed book tests, he wouldn't be monitoring us to see if we used notes, our textbooks, or looked on each others papers. But that we were all going to be growing up, going to college, and eventually would become doctors or lawyers or engineers in our communities, and many of us would know each other for the rest of our lives. We would know who cheated in high school and that would carry on with us as we decided who to do business with in the future. Nobody cheated on his tests.
Peer pressure is always a real thing in school and out of school. Today, there are tools online that help you with homework. There are tools online that help you with tests. And with the advent of cell phones, watches connected to cell phones, even glasses that are being tied into AI to recognize your surroundings and provide useful information about what you are looking at via internet sources, it is easier to cheat now than ever before, and to get away with it. What you must realize is that while it is good to know how to use online resources to help you with your work, it is up to you to really learn any subject you take. AI isn't awful. But really, it is just a tool that analyzes tons of content and tries to formulate what it has parsed to answer any question you ask. Now in the real physical world, there are some facts that are pretty incontrovertible. What is the chemical formula for water? Most engines would say H2O, and that would be the commonly accepted answer. What about heavy water? Well, it's D2O, but depending on how you ask the question you might get different answers. You can ask a LLM is it safe to do this on a computer - say upgrading a particular package while running? It might say yes, it is perfectly safe to do that - because mostly it is. If you ask instead "What can go wrong if I upgrade package X while running?", the LLM might give you a whole list of bad things that could happen at a low level. That's the problem with trusting AI. Both answers are right. If you don't know your subject, whatever it might happen to be, you will trust the first answer and be okay most of the time unless you hit a situation the second question gave a list of.
It is always important to actually learn the subject matter yourself. If you don't, then you will have no idea what questions to ask nor will you know if the answers you get have hidden problems that could blow up in your face if you implement them. Using online resources to help you understand something the teacher didn't explain well is one thing. Just taking answers off the internet to fill out homework problems that you don't think will ever be on a test or cheating on a test because you didn't do the work to learn the material in the first place means you haven't really mastered a subject. When you get further on in school or life where the instructors or your boss expects you to build on the principles you should have mastered because they can see your grades or your evidence of previous "work" that you didn't earn, you will be at a disadvantage with those students (here or around the world) who actually learned the material.
Everything you study in school forms your mind. It helps to develop how you think as well as learning the material itself. If it isn't a field you end up using in your career, then the knowledge will eventually become stale and if asked to make use of it decades later, you might have to do quite a bit of work to get back to the place where you remember how to do it. Helping my kids with calculus or science was an example for me. It wasn't something I used much in my career, so it took some additional study to try to answer some questions. There were some I had to tell them to ask their teacher about because I was too rusty. But having studied it once, I was in much better shape to help answer most questions than if I hadn't studied at all.
Every time you take the easy way out, you're really just hurting yourself. Whether you go to public school or the preppiest private school around, it is up to you to learn the subjects well. Some subjects may be ones that you have no aptitude for. Some people are great with art. Some people find science easy. Some find math to be a breeze. Others struggle to make a stick figure look good, can't figure out genetics or chemical formula reduction, and struggle with basic algebra. Every person's brain is wired differently. But the majority of us can learn if our brains are pushed hard enough. Do the work, especially when learning is "free". Eventually, you'll go on to college and into jobs where you are paying for your education, or must perform to stay employed. The people who have stepped up to the challenge to learn will eventually excel in their professions. Those who have cheated will never be any better than the best LLM on the internet, and if an LLM can do your work, you won't have a job either. This world needs a more knowledgeable work force. It needs people who can distinguish between a good AI answer, and something that the AI model just dreamed up. I read an article today that said it was frequently easy to get an AI model to change it's answer completely just be asking it if it was sure about the result. The AI models, at their base, are designed to please the person they are interacting with. And that is a huge problem that people haven't figured out yet. Be a student that excels. Realize that when you cheat, you are just cheating yourself in the end. And also realize that people notice, and that will affect you through your entire life.
On Peer Pressure
It isn't easy growing up, and like the previous section, it doesn't get easier when you get older. Most people are social at their core. Even those with personality disorders have some sense of wanting to fit in. It is a truly exceptional person that is comfortable being a loner. To fit in, there will always be pressure to conform to the group that you want to be a part of. We think of peer pressure as being a young adult thing, but it never goes away.
Peer pressure can be used for good or for evil. If you are with a group of kids in the world, they are going to try to get you to do worldly things. They may try much harder with you, if you're a Christian, than if you are more like them to start with. On the other hand, if you are in with kids who are Christian, there should be peer pressure to give up the things that the world does and replace them with activities which are acceptable to God. So peer pressure has both bad and good tendencies. But since our audience is Christian, we'll deal mostly with peer pressure to do things which are wrong.
To handle life, there are a few things that you must do and get figured out. Different groups of people in the world have different standards of living. The "country club" set has a set of pressures to fit in where what you wear, what your hobbies are, where you live, how much you make, and the like try to make you conform to their expectations for their group. The group that hang out in a bar and get wasted and go home with random people to hook up and may wake up needing to reach a toilet quickly to deal with their body's rejection of alcohol have a different set of "standards" that you will be expected to conform to if you want to fit in. The "church" group will have its own set of "standards" that you will have to try to measure up to to fit in with that crowd. And all of these standards are different. In school, there were the "nerds", the "jocks", the "cheerleaders", the "smoker's alley" group, and a few other groups when I was going to school, and I don't expect much has changed because people haven't changed. If you want to be part of a group, there will be expectations placed on you to do what the group does.
As Christians, we know that our time on earth is temporary. Eventually, everyone on earth is going to either end up in heaven or hell. Accepting Christ as Savior leads to heaven (or wherever God directs us to be, but at least not a place of eternal torment away from God). As Christians, we need to realize that regardless of what any particular social group wants us to do, we need to be sure that we stay part of that Christian group, because in the end, that's all that matters. Eternity never ends. You need to be sure of your eternal destination.
To do that, we need to know that our every day choices influence that final destination. God's forgiveness is free and easy. But God expects us to change our lives to conform to His will once we've accepted Christ's blood as a sacrifice for our sin. Our basic sin nature is left on the cross Jesus died on. When He said to take up the cross and follow Him, he meant that accepting His blood sacrifice for our sin also crucified our sin nature and we are supposed to leave it behind and follow on without it.
The Bible gives us the guidelines as to how to live out our lives in a way that is pleasing to God. There are the basics in the ten commandments that form a core set of beliefs. The only one that Christ didn't carry over to the New Testament was remembering the Sabbath day to keep it holy, because the Jewish leaders had turned the Sabbath into something it was never meant to be. It was meant to be a day mostly of rest, but they had turned it into something that forbade work on the Sabbath and almost made the law their own god. In addition, it is useful to read Jesus sermon on the mount where He makes clear how much better than the core concepts of the law God expects us to be.
We can't fulfill the law on our own, and nobody could ever do all of the law right. If we could, there would have been no reason for Jesus to come and die for our sins. But just because we aren't perfect doesn't mean that we shouldn't strive to live a life that is pleasing to God. In addition to His word, He also gave us the Holy Spirit to help direct our paths and bring us closer to God. It is the Holy Spirit that tries His best to direct our paths early on and direct us to seek God. But if we keep ignoring Him and doing our own thing, then eventually we stop listening to that voice of "conscience" completely. That voice may still be there, but we've shouted it down so long that we don't notice it any more. It becomes easier and easier to justify an action or inaction and deem it good in our minds, regardless of what God has to say. So we need continual filling with the word of God in written form or reminders from Sunday School or sermons as to what the basics are, and then continual closeness with the Holy Spirit to apply that to our lives.
When we are saved, we might not be directed to fix everything at once, although some things will change immediately. But eventually, God has a best path for each of us to take that He wants to direct us toward. And that path that we take will be at odds with the world around us. He wants us to be the salt of the earth. Something to flavor and preserve for good and keep both us and the world from spoiling further, just like food.
Satan doesn't want there to be any salt in the earth. He wants Christianity and Christians to go away, and he'll do everything in his power to try to draw us away from the path that God wants us to continue down. Peer pressure from groups who don't know Christ is one of the ways he uses to pull Christians away from following God's path. Peer pressure from Christians can be just as influential in trying to pull the world to Christ and keep Christians on God's path. But in order for there to be good peer pressure, you need to choose to associate with Christian groups. If you don't go to church and don't have Christian friends, then it shouldn't be a surprise to anyone if you are being pulled to do things that God has said are wrong.
Unlike the Calculus teacher above (long before the day of easily hidden cams where the teacher could monitor remotely) God knows everything that goes on. He has a real time reporting network from both good angels and I suspect bad angels (looking at Satan's interactions with God about Job), to keep Him informed about all the good and bad that we do. Every choice you make, to do things you know to be wrong in order to fit in with a particular group of friends, isn't hidden. Even if you don't eventually get caught on earth, God still knows. In heaven, all will be laid bare anyway - all our hidden motives and thoughts will be known. SO it's much better for us on earth and in the long run to listen to the Holy Spirit when He says we should or shouldn't do something than it is to go along with what the crowd wants and make God mad or at the very least disappointed in us.
The world likes to paint everything as a popularity contest. If you do "X" you'll be popular and in with the in crowd. The Bible says that you are more likely to be hated by the world if you choose Him. After all, they killed Christ. The world killed almost all the original disciples. There has always been persecution, and it still exists today. What is important is that you keep your eye on your eternal destination. It is always nice to feel included in a group. Just pick the right group. If you aren't involved with a church group, get involved. You can get your social fix and you just might end up saving some of the people Satan is trying to destroy you with. Those will be your buddies forever in heaven. They won't drift away as most friends do that you make early in life (and even in college for that matter).
The decisions about what you do about the Holy Spirit's prompting for what is right and wrong for you will impact your life as long as you live. Peer pressure never goes away. Satan will always be trying to pull you away from God. But there is no pleasure or social group that is worth experiencing or being a part of if it takes you away from God. Being close to God does things for you that even a marriage can't do. Your wife can never speak to you in your mind like the Holy Spirit can. It is a close relationship that can never be duplicated by people. And it is what God wants to have with you. But the decision to live for Christ means that you cannot truly be a part of some social groups because they have no desire to have any contact with God. Eternity is forever and ever and ever. Make wise choices. If you've made bad choices in the past, turn your back on those bad choices and walk away or run away from them. Choose wisely. Your soul is counting on you.