托福作文：family or friends influence young adults

No.114 Which is the most important influence on young adults, family or friends? No one can deny the fact that family and friends are two indispensable parts of one person, since both parts exert great impacts to a person throughout his whole life. They are widely considered to be two essential elements which weigh a lot in influencing people in many aspects, especially for young adults. When asked which produces more important influence towards youngsters, most people tend to lay a higher value on family. But is it really the case? I maintain that it is friends, not family, that hold the influence to a larger extent. In the first place, young adults usually spend more time with their friends other than their family. People may grow up with their family members around, nevertheless, along with the growth of people, the function of family begin to fade little by little. For instance, when a person graduates from high school, he probably chooses to attend college, or to enter work force directly. Whatever options he makes, he will surely start a brand new living style, that is, he will no longer spend much time with family, instead, will fill his free time with visiting friends. These friends are therefore, in a much better position to influence him. In the second place, young adults learn to be sociable by communicating with their friends. It is undoubted that being sociable is one key for youngsters to survive in modern society, and to keep a favorable status as well as reputation. By no means can family provide the chances for them to socialize simply due to the limited range of family members. However, hanging out with different friends can offer them quite a few opportunities to cultivate their ability to socialize, such as getting along with people of various personalities, making compromises and tolerating distinct opinions. As a result, friends create a profound influence on young adults, not only on their character's formation, but also the development of their interpersonal skills, or even the success in the future. Finally, young adults usually find it easier to adopt ideas given by their friends. It doesn't come as a surprise to you to see youngsters making complaints about the huge "gap" they have with their parents. The main reason that accounts for this phenomenon, which is pretty obvious, is that parents' ideology seem not be able to catch up with the growing of the world. They still believe in some ideas that are regarded as too conservative and stereotyped among the younger generation, so conflicts come inevitably. They differ their opinions in many aspects, for example, the attitude to marriage, job or living habits. Such contradictions hardly occur on friends, who have a more advanced view of how the world works. The latest survey shows us that most young adults have more pleasant associations with friends than family. Consequently, they are more likely to be influenced by friends, taking their advices or exchanging ideas with them. From what has been discussed above, I'm firmly convinced that friends play a far more important role on young adults. To some extent, we may say that how well you behave in making friends determines how successful you are in life.