Remember the popular kids? The ones who looked ten years older than the rest of us, always seemed to have “the right look,” and got away with murder (well, figuratively) at school? Yeah, those kids. Well, as it turns out, we may have reason to worry about those kids, rather than just envying them the fruits of their attractiveness and social power.

In a study to be published in the Journal of Research on Adolescence this month, Marlene Sandstrom (Williams College), Toon Cillessen (Radboud University, the Netherlands), and I measured substance use, sexual behavior, and peer status in over 500 high school sophomores. We then followed up with the same teens two years later, during their senior year.

While teens who scored high on social preference (being nominated as likeable by many grademates) in 10th grade generally scored low on substance use and sexual behavior two years later, teens who were popular in 10th grade were more likely to drink alcohol and engage in sexual intercourse by the end of the 12th grade. (We also investigated the opposite possibility—that substance use and sexual behavior in 10th grade would predict increases in popularity two years later. This did not pan out.)

These findings raise a number of important concerns. Are popular teens more at risk for the physical and mental health problems that can result from substance use and risky sexual behavior? Are the friends or associates of popular youth at particular risk for acquiring these behaviors, because of the social influence power they wield? What about lower-status teens who look up to the popular crowd? At the very least, it raises an interesting question, one that was posed by one of our manuscript’s anonymous reviewers: Should parents wish that their children not be popular?