At 2:00 am, Minh Anh, 26 years old, quickly closed her laptop after an over 16-hour workday. Her eyes red from staring at the screen, she reached for her phone on the bedside table to scroll through social media before sleeping. The bright screen displayed a post from a high school friend holding the steering wheel of a newly purchased car, accompanied by a caption boasting a high income from a side hustle. Scrolling further, she saw that a former colleague of the same age had just been appointed department director.

Minh Anh put down her phone, staring restlessly at the ceiling. She is a communications specialist in Ho Chi Minh City, earning around 22 million dong per month – an amount sufficient for a single person's life. However, for the past six months, she has taken on three additional freelance projects in the evenings and on weekends. Coffee dates with friends were canceled, and home-cooked meals were replaced by instant noodles hastily eaten at her desk.

"I took on extra work not because I lacked money, but because every time I opened social media, I saw my peers had gone so far ahead, while I was still stuck in place", Minh Anh said, "so I decided to put all my effort into breaking through."

Several social media applications on a mobile phone. *Photo: Ngoc Thanh*

According to the American Psychological Association's dictionary of psychology, peer pressure occurs when an individual is influenced by others in the same social group and changes their attitudes, values, or behaviors to conform to group norms. The 20-25 age group is most clearly affected, as they are entering independent life with limited experience but a strong desire for success.

Vietnam currently lacks comprehensive research on this phenomenon. However, an analysis of Google search keywords in Vietnam during 10/2021 revealed nearly 40,000 searches for "what is peer pressure and its solutions", an increase of over 67.58% compared to the previous month. This marked a record increase over the past year and continues to rise.

Instead of merely causing anxiety, this pressure is leading to risky financial decisions.

Quoc Huy, 28 years old, a graphic designer in Dong Nai, had accumulated 400 million dong after six years of working. Huy's peaceful life was disrupted when classmate chat groups buzzed with discussions about buying land, flipping apartments, and the trend of financial independence before 30.

"Attending class reunions and hearing friends talk about billions of dong, I felt like I was settling, inferior", Huy said.

In 4/2023, Huy decided to invest all his savings, borrowed an additional 200 million dong from relatives, and signed a 1.3 billion dong bank loan for 20 years to purchase a suburban apartment. With a monthly salary of 25 million dong, the principal and interest payments to the bank consumed 16 million dong.

A photo of the apartment key posted on his personal page garnered over 500 likes and hundreds of congratulatory messages. However, this was immediately followed by a period where Huy had to drastically cut living expenses. He canceled his gym membership, declined all wedding invitations, brought cold lunches to work, and ran the air conditioner for about two hours each night to save electricity. At the beginning of each month, when the bank debt deduction message arrived on his phone, Huy suffered from prolonged stomach pain due to stress.

Master Vuong Nguyen Toan Thien, Professional Director of Lumos Psychological Counseling and Therapy Center, explained that when people constantly see others succeed, the human brain activates a social comparison mechanism to self-evaluate one's position.

"On social media, users only expose glamorous slices like beautiful homes, luxury cars, and high salaries, while hiding debts or family support. When receiving one-sided information, the brain easily concludes that someone your age owning a home while you don't means you've failed", Mr. Thien said.

According to Mr. Thien, when caught in the comparison trap, the line between healthy developmental effort and toxic fear of missing out (FOMO) blurs. A person with healthy motivation will pursue goals aligned with their physical and personal capabilities.

Conversely, individuals trapped in FOMO act to escape feelings of inferiority. Borrowing beyond one's capacity and working exhaustively day and night are essentially anxiety compensation mechanisms. When prolonged, this stimulates the adrenal glands to continuously secrete cortisol hormone, leading to immune suppression, sleep disorders, and eroding self-compassion.

Psychological damage becomes more severe in individuals with an unstable self-image, those who have experienced performance pressure from family, or those with a history of anxiety or depression. Initial clinical manifestations include social withdrawal and insomnia, which can then progress to panic attacks and chest pain when confronted with information about others' successes.

To alleviate this pressure, psychological experts suggest young people need to start by re-establishing boundaries for information intake and personal financial discipline. Instead of comparing themselves to others, individuals should build an emergency fund equivalent to three to six months of basic living expenses before considering investments or major asset purchases. Controlling social media feeds – unfollowing or hiding accounts that frequently generate negative emotions – is also a necessary step to reduce unconscious comparative triggers.

Peer pressure is increasingly common and exacerbated by the development of social media and mass media. *Illustration: Korea Times*

After one year of struggling with his home loan, Huy decided to resell his apartment to settle the bank debt. Despite accepting a loss on transaction fees, he stated that he had shed his biggest burden to date. With the remaining money saved, Huy moved to rent a small room near his workplace for 3.5 million dong per month.

As for Minh Anh, after fainting at her desk from exhaustion last month, she withdrew from two after-hours projects. Promptly at 10:00 pm every night, she places her phone in the corner of the room, disconnects the Wi-Fi, and opens a book.

"I realized that someone else's house or high income isn't a mandatory benchmark for my own life", Minh Anh said.

My Y