Study finds kids that were cool in school become losers later in life
During my school days, I always wanted to be one of the popular girls. One who wore a mini skirt, went to cool parties and had streaks in my hair. Unfortunately I was the kid who played with toy horses until I was 14 and had a uni-brow, which I'm kinda happy about now because a new study has found that popular teens go on to become total losers as adults.
Researchers from the University of Virginia Joseph P. Allen and Hugh P. Kelly are Professors of Psychology and have been studying teenage popularity. Here's what they had to say:
It appears that while so-called cool teens’ behavior might have been linked to early popularity, over time, these teens needed more and more extreme behaviors to try to appear cool, at least to a subgroup of other teens.So they became involved in more serious criminal behavior and alcohol and drug use as adolescence progressed.These previously cool teens appeared less competent–socially and otherwise–than their less cool peers by the time they reached young adulthood.
The researchers came to this conclusion after a decade of following 184 teenagers from the ages of 13 to 23, collecting info from the teens themselves as well as their friends and parents. The study found that teens who were romantically involved at an early age, engaged in delinquent activity, and placed a premium on hanging out with physically attractive peers when they were 13 were perceived as cool by their peers. This was no longer the case by the age of 23 though, and most of them had problems with alcohol and drugs and were engaged in criminal activities.
There you have it. So that cool dude who banged all the hot girls back in school is probably slumming it in a grotty flat and eating microwaved sausage rolls these days.
