These young teenagers sought out friends who were physically attractive; their romances were more numerous, emotionally intense and sexually exploring than those of their peers; and they dabbled in minor delinquency — skipping school, sneaking into movies, vandalism.
As they turned 23, the study found that when compared to their socially slower-moving middle-school peers, they had a 45 percent greater rate of problems resulting from alcohol and marijuana use and a 40 percent higher level of actual use of those substances. They also had a 22 percent greater rate of adult criminal behavior, from theft to assaults.
June 24, 2014
"Cool" adolescents are "pseudomature," and they're not doing too well when they reach their early 20s.
"A constellation of three popularity-seeking behaviors characterized pseudomaturity, Dr. Allen and his colleagues found."
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30 comments:
Is this from the Journal of D'uh?
Ah Jeez....
One of the links was to a product on Amazon. I eagerly await all the targeted ads with similar items that will be showing up as I prowl the web....
#firstworldproblems
I hung out with the cool kids, but spanking was part of my early discipline.
My butt would tingle whenever they crossed into uncharted territory, and then I would just wander away.
It's this always the case? The popular kids in high school peak early. And they drift downwards from then, as the non-popular/overlooked kids ascend. They had to study this and didn't know it as fact from their own lives and observations?
See also Bruce Springsteen's Glory Days.
Being a young teenager was a much more emotionally intense time in life. Nothing I do now compares with the highs and lows experienced in adolescence.
Even with an increased risk of problems later in life, it might be worth it still to be attractive and popular and sexually active at that age.
"Acceptance" is a progressive condition which afflicts a majority of adults, and results in sociopathic behaviors from theft to assault to abortion/murder. Adolescents exhibit this corruption for exactly the same reasons as most adults.
"pseudomature" is a really goofy term.
Does this mean conservative values are demonstrably better for the children?
In other words, revenge of the nerds against the "cool kids".
IMHO, As noted in the comments (edited), this study (pseudoscience?), or maybe the reporting of such, sounds like a mid-last century moral cautionary tale that we nerds were fortified with.
For what it's worth, our Fonz turned out to be a gourmet cook in a posh restaurant.
The guy voted most handsome in our grammar school class, well deserved, got all the attention.
Fast forward 30 years or so: as I was coming up out of the subway, there he was, a sad figure begging at the entrance.
(Yes, I ignored him. Go ahead with the censure.)
So kids who grow up as self-indulgent twits grow into self-indulgent twits as adults. What a shock.
Maturity generally involves work and personal responsibility.
Perhaps the same qualities that make it possible to be popular in high school become mostly maladaptive after high school?
We always have known this.
After HS Graduation, all the "cool dudes" were working at a gas station when the uncool ones were going to college and all the "hot chix" were fat and pregnant at age 20 while the ugly duckling girls became the college hotties in my town.
2007:
Detrimental Psychological Outcomes Associated with Early Pubertal Timing in Adolescent Girls
Two trite comments:
(1) "Your dog wants steak."
(2) "Hey, hey, it's okay. You'll be working for us some day."
No need to go all bluenose, Crunchy Frog. One person's self-indulgent is another's person's self-actualization. I lived it up until I was 23 and don't regret a moment of it. I drank, smoked marijuana, and slept with all the girls that I possibly could. We called it the 1970s.
I turned out to be a productive citizen and have no criminal tendencies at all - it isn't like I work for the government or something.
We need studies to know these things?
This has been my answer whenever anyone gives me cap about my home schooled kids missing the high school experience. I have some that would be the picked-on nerds, and some that would be the cheerleader or quarterback. It isn't a good experience for either type ultimately. Plus, it is a completely artificial social situation that will never exist in the outside world, not even in college.
At some schools doing those things would make you unpopular.
@BDNYC 9:28 Hit the first pitch out of the park!!!
We figured this out at the 5 year reunion.
Yeah, I agree with Freeman. I had the interesting experience of attending three high schools, and these kids would only have been even moderately cool at one---the ghetto one. At the other two, the kids I remember as being popular all seem to be doing alright (On Facebook at least) all things considered. Kids who snuck into movies or otherwise stole or did more than fairly mild partying were called burnouts and freaks, generally thought of us either pitiable creatures or good for a laugh occasionally.
The sloppiness in using the word "cool" rather makes the whole study meaningless to me. Coolness comes from doing things sufficiently slowly and carefully to have confidence that one is not making a big mistake--there's nothing "fast track" about it. Doing reckless things is unsettling--it quickly causes uncoolness in the mind. If they meant merely "popular", that is what they should have said.
It's almost like burnouts burn out or something.
Sounds more like the popular kids from junior high to me. They burned out by high school, at which point the new popular kids had brains and looks. They did very well into college and beyond.
Junior High kids are/were feral no matter what their socioeconomic background. Like John Mulaney, I'm scared of them to this day. I was completely unsurprised that those two 12 yr old girls tried to kill their friend for Slender Man. High school kids were rational in comparison.
Go to Vegas sometime. You'll see legions of these mokes, kidding themselves that drinking and tattoos are a substitute for education and success.
On second thought, gotta give the cool 13-yr-olds their due. They're the only ones that got to legally live out the sex fantasies of many a well-off, respectable, aging male without actually being a creepy old psycho guy courting arrest ...that's gotta be worth something, right?
Of course, this is what destroys them. They 'got nowhere to go' from there. ;)
I graduated from high school in 1973, in northeast Florida. A public school, not a private school, but, at the time, considered the best public high school in the county.
All the most popular kids in my high school were also the high achievers and smart kids, not the layabouts or burnouts or bullies. (The high achieving smart kids in my high school were not, with rare exceptions, "nerds," but well-adjusted, sociable, and socially successful kids.)
Is this anomalous? I don't know. If it is, why was it so? I don't know.
Is it possible the notion that the "popular kids" are the reckless and wild, "mature beyond their years," (i.e., precocious sexually and in their use of intoxicants), and the smart kids are social rejects, awkward "uncool" nerds, is inaccurate, mostly myth?
This is from an obscure album by an obscure band that came out and that I bought in my senior year of high school. I've always loved this album. This song, despite being titularly about "tough" kids--as opposed to "cool" kids--is apt to the subject at hand, and the last verse prefigures SGT Ted's comment @ 11:35 a.m.
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