School Life: Popular Kids Most Bullied, Bullying

[Ian David]

"High school life is less like Carrie and more like Mean Girls--the social carnage rains down upon the popular crowd far more than it does on marginalized loners.

Why would a kid waste her time picking on an untouchable nerd when she could ascend the popularity ladder by taking out her slightly-cooler BFF?

Bullying peaks among students in the 98th percentile of popularity.

Above that, cruelty drops off. You have to be mean to climb the social ranks in high school. But once you claw your way to the very top, you have to chill out a little bit. Get nicer." (The Most Popular Kids Are Like Benign Dictators Atlantic Wire via High School Heirarchy Tara Parker-Pope, The New York Times).

More:
http://www.typepad.com/services/trackback/6a00e54f8c25c988340147e29ba511970b

[xchrom]

1. interesting. nt

[bluestateguy]

2. OK, perhaps so, but the popular students have a network of supporters to fight back

Supporters, followers, some would say sycophants, whatever, they have the constituency to fight back against the bullies that the less popular kids will not have. The unpopular boy or girl just has to shut up and take it, or learn self-defense.

I remember in high school, one pretty popular girl who was bullied by a thuggish student. The football team saw to it that the bullying stopped. She just had to snap her fingers and the bully was flattened by the entire defensive line.

[alcibiades_mystery]

3. This is absolutely the way it was in my high school

I think the thing that the so-called "marginalized loners" don't get when they imagine the popular kids' "plots" against them is that it's even worse than that: the popular kids don't plot against them because they're totally invisible. It's very common for marginalized kids to think that the popular kids are out to get them. Most of the time, however, it's not true. They're too far off the radar to merit plotting.

[darkstar3]

4. Completely opposite of my school experience.

Popularity was gained by the level and creativity of the cruelty doled out to the "freaks". It was gained in many other ways as well, including the expected sports, sex, and status symbols, but also oddities like how much you could drink in an evening and stay upright.

My sister was a popular girl in that shithole. It was frightening.

[Ian David]

5. My high school was virtually bullying-free. But middle school was intolerable.

The one time I was really bullied in high school, I was actually videotaping at the time.

If you're picking on the guy holding the video camera, and it's not on his shoulder pointing at you, that does NOT mean he's not taping.

Duh!

[bluestate10]

7. At my high school, academically gifted kids ruled. It was a strange and welcome

outcome.

[nadinbrzezinski]

6. Well at least in my painful HS expereince that was NOT

the case.

We nerds had to find refuge from the popular kids.

[no_hypocrisy]

8. Nah, bullies like easy targets. It's the dynamic of picking on the weak

that gives them a feeling of being omnipotent.