Social acceptance affects people of all sorts and includes children, teenagers, and adults. Social acceptance could be defined as the fact that most people, in order to fit in with others, attempt to look and act like them. Or sometimes it is the ability to accept or to tolerate differences and diversity in other people or groups of people.[citation needed]
Children and teenagers tend to do a lot of things to try to be accepted among friends, a phenomenon known as peer pressure. Peer pressure sometimes determines how they do their hair and what clothes they wear. A desire to be accepted by those whose friendship the child or teen values also determines the child's openness towards smoking, drinking, swearing,and much more.