The Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth - Alexandra Robbins [119]
Social circles are most homogenous during middle school because to define themselves by their group, students want to view that group as having clear characteristics. Therefore, they are more likely to adhere to group norms and to demand that other group members conform. Psychologists have said that this period is characterized by a “strong, if not totalitarian, press for conformity to the peer group’s expectations.” These are then the standards by which middle schoolers judge each other and reorganize their social categories.
At the same time, the standards for conformity aren’t necessarily static. Students this age change their minds about everything from fads and fashions to goals, values, and dreams. They can be rigidly idealistic without knowing how to define their ideals. Worse still, they haven’t yet developed all of the skills necessary for group problem-solving, making it more challenging for their group to agree on a standard of conformity in the first place. Concordia University psychology professor William Bukowski warned, “As this consensus is elusive, the struggles for power within groups may provide nearly perfect conditions for some group members who upset a tenuous consensus to be victimized.”
Puberty then complicates all of these dynamics. Middle schoolers are more likely to hang out with older students, form opposite-sex friendships, and enter romantic relationships. They might date, play hormone-driven party games, and, as the media is fond of reporting, engage in sexual activities. With puberty comes an increase in sexual harassment and harassment about gender nonconformity (boys wearing eyeliner, girls with short hair, etc.). Furthermore, children don’t hit puberty at the same rate, which means that both early maturers and late bloomers are at risk for being seen as different.
And different, in this intransigent world in which strict group boundaries reign, can have powerful repercussions. A thirteen-year-old Midwesterner pinpointed seventh grade as the year in which her ex-boyfriend and his friends daily made fun of her breasts. “[He] would call me man chest and wrote poems about me that made me cry every night. [Another] guy called me pepperoni face because I had acne. Everybody thinks we’re the perfect blue-ribbon school and we’re all friends, which isn’t true.”
Early adolescents report more antagonistic interactions both within their groups and with outsiders than do younger and older students. The rate of cyberbullying peaks in middle school. Antagonism is strong during these years because groups most want to separate themselves from other groups when the importance of group membership peaks. They create this separation by using hostility. “Kids in middle school are, in a social sense, fascists,” psychologist David Anderegg has written. “Desirability of all kinds is rigidly circumscribed by what is seen as ‘normal.’ . . . Since they cannot impose any regularity on their bodies, they impose a rigid regularity on each other. Although this social hazing now starts earlier and earlier . . . , seventh grade is at its peak. It is a time in most kids’ lives when being different from the agreed-on norm is an absolute guarantee of social death.”
It is also a time in which students are increasingly sensitive to negative evaluations from others, and the aggressive kids vocalizing these critiques are increasingly admired. Many studies show that early adolescents value dominance and aggression, which they associate with high social status. For girls, the association of popularity with these negative behaviors plateaus in the seventh and eighth grades, at about the same time that the social goals for both genders often shift from likeability to perceived popularity.
Popularity is paramount in middle school. At no other time of life is it so important to students to be in a popular group. Yet during the grades when they are most susceptible to peer influence and