When popularity is more important than anything else

I study peer popularity among children and adolescents. Some of my research has shown that being popular isn’t always associated with good things. Meaning, sometimes popular kids are mean to other kids, and sometimes they do things that their parents would probably rather they not do (drink, have sex). Popular youth are more likely than other kids to do stuff like this. I’m not the only one coming to these conclusions; there are lots of us doing similar work.

Despite findings like this, I have always been quick to end discussions of popularity with a comment like “…but of course not all popular kids are mean. Some popular kids are kind, cooperative, friendly, trustworthy kids.” And I mean it—our data show a lot of variability in aggression, alcohol use, etc., among the “in” crowd. It’s simply unfair not to acknowledge that.

But then I read something like this, and I just want to tear my hair out. Go on, have a look. (Thanks for the link, Sophie.)

Scary, isn’t it? And doesn’t it make you angry?

Stories like this are exactly why I study popularity. Popularity comes with social power—the power to influence others in good ways or bad, the power to make peers happy or make them miserable. There are lots of theories as to why some popular kids act the way the girls in the advice column acted (maybe we’ll tackle those in another post).

But here’s my question: Why is it that other kids are so willing to walk into the trap? Experience being a teenager and experience studying teenagers tells me that if a group of popular kids is mean to other kids, people probably know about it. Is the lure of being part of the “in” crowd so enticing that kids will risk the kind of humiliation that this poor girl experienced?

So while I usually come at this issue from the perspective of the popular kids, this story has me thinking hard about the perspective of their peers. We make a lot of assumptions about the way popular kids are perceived–like, they are sometimes disliked, they are envied, they are seen as competition for romantic partners–but we don’t test these assumptions very often.

If we are to truly understand the dynamics of popularity, we must go beyond studying popular kids themselves. We have to understand how they fit into the larger peer group, how their peers feel about them, and what it is about being popular that is so alluring to some kids that they’re willing to be victimized in order to fit in.

And for what it’s worth, I like Amy’s advice in this column. But I doubt the young girl who wrote her will follow it. If she was willing to submit to hazing in order to hang out with those girls in the first place, something tells me she won’t be willing to make a (possibly very public) issue out of her experience with them. Yet another indicator of just how much power these kids have.