New Study on Teen Bullying

The LA Times is reporting on a study published in the most recent edition of the American Sociological Review that finds a direct link between the social status of teenagers and their propensity to bully their peers.

This is hardly groundbreaking. I don’t think I’m alone in recalling that the most menacing kids in school were the ones who were most concerned with their position in the social pecking order. My own worst behavior coincided with high sensitivity to my low popularity stock and desperate attempts to improve it. Everybody who has endured even a day of American middle or high school knows that aggression is the emission of the teenage social machine.

But here’s something interesting from the study:

However, those who were in the top 2% of a school’s social hierarchy generally didn’t harass their fellow students. At that point, they may have had little left to gain by being mean, and picking on others only made them seem insecure . . .

I remember this too. There were certain cool kids who were . . . cool–to everyone. They seemed possessed of a self assurance the rest of us lacked. Perhaps their popularity afforded that luxury, or perhaps their popularity was a product of it. In any event, they were above the usual social feeding frenzy.

When I tried to talk to my high school students earlier this year about bullying and the social pecking order, I was surprised to hear a rather rosy description of affairs. “People can hang out with whoever they want,” some of the told me. “Nobody bothers you.” All the while, a silent minority traded knowing looks with one another. A big part of the story wasn’t being told.

My rosy-eyed students weren’t lying. And they’re not naive. They are part of that top 2% of their peers. I’m sure of it. For them, life at school really is a cake walk. Nobody bothers them. They’re never the targets of aspiring socialites’ arrows of verbal and physical injury. But they’re not inflicting it either.

The challenge with these students, it seems to me, is to cultivate some empathy for their peers who are suffering the slings and arrows that they, the popular elite, never see, so that 1) they share in the experience of the bullied and maligned ,and 2) they advocate on the beat-ups’ behalves among their popular peers, upon whom these elite kids exercise real influence.

How to do this? There’s a treasure trove of narrative resources in scripture, from Jesus’ advocacy for the least of these to the prophets to the giving of the Law. There’s lots of doctrinal reflection that can be done here too, from the community of the Trinity as a non-hierarchical community of self-giving love to the mission of God’s people in sum.

What are some of the best ways to do this, to equip the cool kids to stand up for their uncool peers?