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Popularity: The other kind of vulnerability

April 9, 2014 By Anne Leave a Comment

A study cited in “When Popularity Backfires” at Time.com found that socially ambitious kids can be just as likely to experience bullying and harassment as “social outcasts” at school. Interested in the “hotspots” of social aggression in students’ social experiences at school, sociology professors Robert Faris at University of California Davis and Diane Felmlee at Pennsylvania State University “investigated whether there were other reasons for students’ aggression toward one another, such as using it as a tool for social climbing,” Time reports. They looked at changes in social status (or lack thereof) for 4,200 students in grades 8-10 through a school year and found that, “not only were the socially mobile and relatively more popular students victimized more than the socially stable teens, they were also more sensitive to the effects of bullying. They reported higher rates of anxiety, depression, and anger, and lower rates of feeling central to their social group,” according to Time (their methodology is detailed in the article).

Faris and Felmlee’s research in this area started in the last decade (I last wrote about it in February 2011, linking to New York Times coverage). It was a first look at the relationship between bullying (or, more broadly, social aggression) and school “drama,” which got national media attention, thanks to social media researchers danah boyd and Alice Marwick. Faris and Falmlee challenge stereotypes about bullying and vulnerability, showing that most social aggression is aimed at social rivals, and – in this kind of victimization – it’s the kids looking to change their social status who are most vulnerable.

Related links

  • “Why not a gazillion ‘likes’: Getting wise to gamification in social media (& life)” (2013)
  • “Reflexive responses to digital bullying & self-harm not helpful” (2013)
  • “UK’s teen suicide tragedy: Problems, solutions” (2013)
  • “‘Bullying’ & ‘peer victimization’: Clearer terms, better communication” (2012)
  • “A prominent researcher advising us all to “stop using the word ‘bullying’ in school”
  • “Understanding cyberbullying from the inside-out” (2011) and a follow-up to it
  • About boyd and Marwick’s 2011 oped piece in the New York Times
  • “Cyberbullying: What I’ve learned so far,” with some thoughts about “drama” (2010)
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Filed Under: bullying, cyberbullying, Research, Risk & Safety, victimization Tagged With: bullying, cyberbullying, Diane Felmlee, drama, peer victimization, Robert Faris, school, social aggression, social mobility

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IMPORTANT RESOURCES

SocialMediaHelpline.com – helping
U.S. schools delete cyberbullying

CASEL.org & the 5 core social-emotional competencies of SEL
Center for Democracy & Technology
Center for Innovative Public Health Research
Childnet International
Committee for Children
Congressional Internet Caucus Academy
ConnectSafely.org
Crimes Against Children Research Center
Crisis Textline
Cyber Civil Rights Initiative's Revenge Porn Crisis Line
Cyberwise.org
danah boyd's blog and book about networked youth
Disconnected, Carrie James's book on digital ethics
FOSI.org's Good Digital Parenting
Future of Privacy Forum
The research of Global Kids Online
The Good Project at Harvard's School of Education
Prof. Henry Jenkins's blog
The International Bullying Prevention Association
Let Grow Foundation
Making Caring Common
Raising Digital Natives, author Devorah Heitner's site
Renee Hobbs at the Media Education Lab
MediaSmarts.ca
National Association for Media Literacy Education
The New Media Literacies
Report of the Aspen Task Force on Learning & the Internet and our guide to Creating Trusted Learning Environments
The Ruler Approach to social-emotional learning (Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence)
Sources of Strength
TheseLittleWaves.net, site of Galit Breen, author of Kindness Wins
"Young & Online: Perspectives on life in a digital age" from young people in 26 countries (via UNICEF)
"Youth Safety on a Living Internet": 2010 report of the Online Safety & Technology Working Group (and my post about it)

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