Michelle: Think back to the 'cool kids' in your high school. The popular ones. Got them in your head? Okay. Now, what if I told you that, scientifically speaking, you probably hated them? And what's more, their 'coolness' likely set them up for a much harder adult life than yours. Mark: Whoa. Okay, that definitely lands. I can picture a few faces right now, and 'hate' might be a strong word, but 'deeply disliked' feels pretty accurate. It’s like that line from the movie Mean Girls: "You think everyone's in love with you, but in reality, everyone hates you." Michelle: That line is basically a peer-reviewed psychological finding at this point. And it’s the central, mind-bending paradox at the heart of Coming of Age: How Adolescence Shapes Us by Dr. Lucy Foulkes. Mark: Right, and Foulkes is the real deal—she's an academic psychologist at Oxford who specializes in adolescent mental health. This isn't just pop psychology; the book got a ton of praise from outlets like The Guardian for blending deep research with these incredibly raw, personal stories she gathered from interviews. Michelle: Exactly. And she uses that blend to pull back the curtain on the secret world of teenagers, a world most of us have forgotten or tried to forget. Let's start with that first idea: the paradox of popularity.

Mark: Okay, so break this down for me. If the popular kids aren't actually liked, what's going on? Michelle: Foulkes explains that researchers have identified two completely different types of popularity. The first is 'sociometric popularity.' This is what we think of as being genuinely liked. These are the friendly, kind, cooperative kids that people actually want to be around. Mark: The golden retrievers of the high school world. Got it. Michelle: Precisely. But then there's 'perceived popularity.' These are the people who are seen as high-status. They're cool, influential, visible. They're the ones everyone knows. But they are often not well-liked at all. In fact, they're often feared or resented. Mark: And how does someone become popular but disliked? That seems like a terrible trade-off. Michelle: Well, it's often achieved through strategic, sometimes aggressive, behavior. Sociologist Donna Eder did a famous study in the 80s where she just watched girls in a school cafeteria for two years. She saw a 'cycle of popularity' where a few girls would become high-status, and to maintain that exclusive status, they had to reject or ignore other girls. Over time, that constant rejection bred so much resentment that they became some of the least-liked people in the school. Mark: That is fascinating. It's a self-defeating prophecy. You become popular by being exclusive, but that exclusivity makes everyone hate you. Michelle: Exactly. And some teenagers even lean into that negative attention. Foulkes tells the story of a woman named Chloe, who was a 'perceived popular' rebel in her school. People would write graffiti on desks calling her a 'slut.' It was constant 'negative press.' Mark: That sounds awful. Michelle: It was. But Chloe had this amazing reframe. She said it made her feel like a celebrity. She connected with a song lyric: "Love me or hate me, it’s still an obsession." She embraced the idea that all publicity, even bad publicity, was good publicity because it meant she was important. Mark: Wow, so she leaned into the hate. That sounds like a proto-influencer mindset, where engagement is engagement, regardless of the sentiment. It’s a very modern way of thinking. Michelle: It is. But the book shows the dark side of that path. The behaviors that get you perceived popularity in high school—the aggression, the risk-taking—often lead to really poor outcomes in adulthood. Studies show those kids are more likely to have substance abuse problems and relationship issues later on. The kids who were sociometrically popular, the genuinely liked ones, are the ones who tend to thrive. Mark: That’s a bit of karmic justice, I guess. But what about getting out of that toxic cycle? Is it even possible? Michelle: It is, but it's incredibly hard. The book has this powerful story of a woman named Georgia. She was in a popular group that bonded over having difficult home lives. But then the group started bullying other students, and Georgia felt morally sick about it. Inspired by her mother's bravery in going to rehab, she decided to leave the group. Mark: I can't imagine how that went over. Michelle: It was brutal. For six months, her old friends bullied her relentlessly—shoving her, throwing things at her. She spent her lunch breaks hiding in the library. But eventually, a new group of girls saw what was happening and invited her to sit with them. They were kind, they defended her, and she found real friendship. She says it was the best decision she ever made, and it completely changed her life's trajectory. Mark: That’s an incredible story of courage. But it makes me wonder, and some critics of the book pointed this out, is this whole dynamic—the cliques, the intense focus on popularity—a uniquely Western, or even American, high school thing? Does this apply everywhere? Michelle: That's a fair question. The book primarily draws from Western research and stories. But Foulkes argues the underlying psychological drivers—the need for belonging, the formation of social hierarchies, the fear of exclusion—are fundamental to human development. The expression might change across cultures, but the game itself is universal. And navigating that social minefield, like Georgia and Chloe did in their own ways, often involves taking what looks like huge risks.

Mark: Okay, let's get into that, because this is the part that I think every parent and every adult struggles with. Why do teenagers do such seemingly stupid things? The book has a defense for this? Michelle: It does, and it's brilliant. The first thing Foulkes does is debunk the old myth of 'perceived invulnerability.' We think teenagers take risks because they believe they're invincible. But research shows the opposite. Adolescents often overestimate the likelihood of bad things happening. They know the risks, often better than adults do. Mark: Wait, hold on. If they know the risks, why do they still do it? Michelle: Because the potential reward feels so much more compelling to them. This is partly due to what's called the 'dual systems model' of the brain. Think of the adolescent brain as a car where the gas pedal—the emotional, reward-seeking part—is fully developed, but the brakes—the cognitive control, long-term planning part—are still under construction. So the urge for a thrill is incredibly strong. Mark: The gas pedal is floored, but the brakes are mushy. I get that. Michelle: Exactly. And what's the biggest thrill for a teenager? Peer approval. A famous study put teenagers in a driving simulator. When they were alone, they drove pretty safely. But when two of their friends were in the room watching them, they took way more risks, like running yellow lights. The presence of peers literally changes their brain chemistry and decision-making. Mark: Okay, but that still sounds like 'peer pressure.' They're just caving to their friends. Michelle: Here's the most important reframe in the whole book. What looks like risk-taking is often actually risk-avoidance. Foulkes's own research found that adolescents are far more concerned about 'social risks' than health or legal risks. The danger of being embarrassed, looking uncool, or being rejected by the group feels more immediate and more terrifying than the abstract possibility of a car crash or getting caught by the police. Mark: So you're saying they're not being stupid, they're playing a different game with higher social stakes? The real risk isn't crashing the car; the real risk is being called a coward and getting kicked out of the friend group. Michelle: You've got it. They're not taking a health risk; they're avoiding a social catastrophe. And the book has this heartbreaking story that shows the flip side of this. A woman named Heather had an extremely overprotective mother who was terrified of her getting pregnant or into trouble. So she wasn't allowed to go to parties or socialize outside of school at all. Mark: The mother was trying to eliminate all risk. Michelle: All of it. But in doing so, she denied Heather the chance to take small, necessary social risks. Heather never learned to navigate friendships, to make small mistakes, to build social confidence. And the result? Decades later, as a fifty-year-old woman with a husband and friends, she still has these crises where she feels like nobody likes her and her friendships aren't real. She learned in adolescence that her friend group could 'carry on perfectly happily without her,' and that insecurity became a permanent part of her identity. Mark: Wow. That's devastating. By trying to protect her from every danger, her mother exposed her to a much deeper, lifelong one: social insecurity. It’s a powerful argument that some risk is not just inevitable, but necessary for development. Michelle: It is. Adolescence is the training ground for learning how to be an adult, and you can't learn to fly if you're never allowed to leave the nest, even if it means you might fall a few times.

Mark: So what's the big takeaway here? After hearing all this, are we just supposed to throw up our hands and let teenagers run wild? Michelle: Not at all. The point isn't to endorse dangerous behavior, but to understand the why behind it. Foulkes gives us a new lens. Adolescent behavior isn't random chaos or rebellion for its own sake. It's a surprisingly logical, if sometimes painful, process of figuring out how to survive in a high-stakes social world while your brain is undergoing a massive renovation. Mark: It’s a shift from judgment to empathy. Michelle: Exactly. The book is a call to have compassion for the teenagers in our lives, but maybe more importantly, for the teenagers we used to be. We weren't just being difficult or irrational. We were playing a very serious game, trying to follow an unwritten rulebook, and doing the best we could to forge an identity. We're all, as Foulkes says, 'standing on the shoulders of our fragile teenage selves.' Mark: That’s a beautiful way to put it. It makes you look back at your own teenage years differently, doesn't it? Michelle: It really does. And it makes me wonder, for everyone listening, what's one memory from your adolescence—a choice you made, a friendship you had, a risk you took—that suddenly makes a lot more sense through this lens? Mark: That's a great question. We'd love to hear your thoughts. Find us on our socials and share a memory that this conversation unlocked for you. It's a fascinating exercise in self-compassion. Michelle: This is Aibrary, signing off.