Talking To Teens: Expert Tips for Parenting Teenagers

Andy: I read a lot of books, definitely everything that comes out in this kind of pop psychology genre, I'm all over it. So, I picked up this book and really just whipped through it. It did something that I think all the really great books in this genre do, which was that it kind of takes a phenomenon that you think you understood or knew about, and after reading the book, you can't really think about it in the same way again.

Mitch: Oh, wow. Thanks. That's nice.

Andy: Yeah. You do that for the concept of popularity in this book. I wonder, how long have you been studying this? What got you interested in it, and why did you decide to write this book?

Mitch: Yeah. Well, I mean, I guess in some ways I could say I've been studying popularity since I was five, but formally I've been studying this for about 20 years now. I got really interested in it because, as you say, it's a kind of topic that we think we know, we think we understand, and many of us think maybe it's just a high school thing that kind of grew out of, but what kept me fascinated for all these years is that our popularity as kids continues to affect us in ways we don't even realize is happening to us for decades and decades later. To me, that's just really interesting.

Andy: I think one of the big things for parents is, "Do I really want my kids to be popular?" Because isn't the hope for a parent that your kid's just going to be a nerd and they're not going to get invited to the parties and they're not going to get the drugs. Guys aren't going to be trying to date my daughter. She's just going to study and she's going to be smart, and she's going to get into a good school and she's going to be a nerd.

Mitch: There are these two different kinds of popularity. You want your kids to have one of them. You want your kids to be likable. That leads to a lifetime of advantage. But you don't want your kids to be high in status, which is the kind of popularity you think about when we think about that high school prom king and queen, because that's the kind that grows up to be at greater risk for problems.

Andy: What kind of problems are we talking about here, Mitch?

Mitch: Well, of course it's not the case that every single most popular kid grows up to have these problems, but there is now research that shows that the kids highest in status, the ones that were a little bit more aggressive and highly visible and influential and kind of cool, they peak too soon. By their thirties, they seem to be more likely to have relationship problems. They are a greater risk for addictions. They report more anxiety and depression. The people that they're with at work and in their personal lives report that they don't like these people pretty much, they don't enjoy spending time with them. They don't really trust them.

Andy: Why do you think that is?

Mitch: People that have gotten overly reinforced when they were young, people who felt like they could do no wrong, they never really learned how to deal with adversity. In particular, those were really high in popularity, they seem to believe that the best way to get through day by day is to make sure everyone knows that they are the best, that they are the most dominant, that they are the ones everyone should be paying attention to, and putting others down as a way of making them seem higher up. Think about it. That might work really well in high school for a short period of time, but that doesn't work in the real world when we all grow up.

Andy: Is that related to attractiveness, you think? Because there are some classic studies on kindergarten students who are more attractive, their teachers don't discipline them as much, and they're more likely to think it was probably the other kid's fault. I mean, what is it from an early age that sets kids on these trajectories of popularity?

Mitch: You're exactly right. Physical attractiveness is a big part of it. When it comes to status, because that really emerges in adolescents. We don't have cool high status kindergarteners. That's really a puberty and beyond thing. That's really strongly correlated to physical attractiveness. It makes sense, right? I mean, at that age, when suddenly you're thinking, how do you get the most attention for others? It's the thing that suddenly kids become aware of in puberty that wasn't really as big a deal before. So, attractiveness brings status, big time, but it turns out that attractiveness is part of what makes people likable too. The reason why is that research says simply being attractive, as you say, you get different kinds of attention from teachers, from parents, and even from peers. There's research that shows that infants spend more time looking at attractive infant faces than they do looking at less attractive infant faces. Clearly this is before socialization, right? No one's to care about this. We're biologically programmed to spend more time focusing on attractiveness. That helps. That helps people be more likable.

Andy: Yeah, yeah.

Mitch: It gives them more chances to interact with others and learn social skills.

Andy: I was thinking that a section of a book is good when you find yourself talking to multiple people about it. "Oh, I read this thing in this book and it was really interesting." One of the things in your book was about height, because I've heard before, "Oh, yeah, CEO's are more likely to be taller, and taller men more likely to be successful," but you kind of broke that down a little bit. The way I read it was that actually, what might even be more important than how tall you are when you're 30 something is how tall you were when you were 15.

Mitch: Yeah. Isn't that cool? It's really kind of a great example, I think, of how much we still think of ourselves as the version we were when we were 16. No matter what you look like when you're an adult, no matter what you're surrounded by, no matter how much attention and positive feedback you get in your adult life, there's still a little part of you somewhere that still conceptualizes yourself, thinks of yourself as that 15 year old. If you were a really popular or tall or attractive 15 year old, then you walk around with a sense of confidence in your adulthood for the rest of your life. But if you weren't, research is now showing something about the way your brain is responding to even daily stimulati, to everything you see in a year, that's still filtering it through that 15 year old brain.

Andy: See, that is interesting. Is that because this is kind of the age where you're really kind of forming your identity or something like that? What is it about this time period that is setting the foundational cement starting to dry on your personhood? Why is that?

Mitch: This is the time when your brain is suddenly turning from a child's rage when adults brain. You can remember things for longer, you can think about yourself in a more permanent way. It's not just how you feel in that moment. You really are really going to reflect on your life. All of that starts around puberty, and that's the same exact point of time that people will really care about popularity, and they're really starting to develop an identity. I think that it's kind of like the juxtaposition, a mash up of all those things happening at once that kind of leaves this imprinted version of who you were the very first time you started to have that adult brain. That sticks with us.

Andy: You know, it's interesting. I was just talking to my dad about this the other day, kind of just talking about aging, and the crazy thing about aging, he said, is that I don't feel any older. I look at my body and it's older, but I as a person don't feel any older. I was thinking, it's kind of the same. It's like, "Here I am." When I was a kid and would look at someone who's almost 30, I would think, "Wow, that's like an adult," but man, I still feel like a kid. But when you say that, it makes me think that it's not necessarily that I feel like a kid, because when I was 10, I definitely felt older than I did when I was eight. But it is kind of like there's this solidification that happens in the mid teenage years to late teenage years, that you feel like you kind of have become the person that you're going to be.

Andy: There's a great study by Dan Gilbert, The End of History Illusion in Science Magazine, where he surveys people and asks them, "How much have you changed in the past 10 years and how much do you think you're going to change in the next 10 years?" Whatever age they're at all across the lifespan, 19,000 people that he surveyed, oh, everyone's quick to say, "Yeah, I changed a lot in the last 10 years, but in the next 10, I don't think I'm going to change that much." Maybe that starts in adolescence.

Mitch: Yeah, I think you're right. I mean, it really is the sense that we all feel like the person that we are is simultaneously really, really different than who we were. At the same time, thinking, "Well, in a way, I kind of do feel like I was." We have this duality about how we think about our past and our future. When I was working on this project, I really loved finally getting an answer to that. What's happening is where we're really pulling up these old memories and using them to compare everything in our presence all the time. To me, that's why it's so important to think about popularity is not something that we've just forgotten about after we graduate high school, it really is still being invoked and used to help us interpret our social relationships today.

Andy: So, jumping back to what you were saying earlier about it's almost like there's these two kind of archetypes of the cool kid who's super popular, but that nobody really likes, that I think we all can look back on our high school and be like, "Yeah, I could name a few kids who, if you asked anybody who are the most popular kids in class, they would be the ones that people named. But if you ask people if they really liked those kids, nobody would say yes." Right? Then the opposite end of the spectrum is the kids that everyone likes, but that wouldn't necessarily be considered popular.

Mitch: Exactly. I mean, 30% of those that are really high in status, the really cool kind of kids, they can be also really, really likable. That means that 70%, by far the majority of those who are high in status or are not well liked. In fact, they're hated, they're very disliked and resented. That's a really big concern, actually, and that was a very unfortunate piece of this for women. The message is if you want to be high in status, you're going to be someone that just can't also be well-liked. Of course that's not true, but girls get that message really, really strongly when they're teenagers. You can think of every Hollywood movie that depicts that as well.

Andy: Totally. The popular girls are always the bitches.

Mitch: That's right. That's right. They're depicted as being scheming and manipulative towards one another, and that's true in some cases, of course, but that doesn't have to be the way that status works for adult women.

Andy: That is so interesting. It makes me wonder as a parent, how can you help your daughter navigate this? A, if you have a daughter who is one of the popular girls, or B, if you have a daughter who isn't one of the cool kids, I wonder what you could do or communicate to help them navigate that.

Mitch: I do think it's possible to tell boys and girls, "Look, status is fine. If you're engaging that stuff in adolescence, whatever. That's what adolescence is about. But don't forget about likability. Don't become the person that is so focused on your status that you're not also being nice to other people and caring about the relationships." I would say now more than any other time before, in a world that has us all focused on gaining status and followers and things like that, this message is probably more important than ever. Don't forget about also trying to build your likability and just generally have real connections with people. That's the kind of popularity that pays off for decades to come.

Andy: You know, I remember when I was in high school, I really struggled with finding my place and finding somewhere to fit in. I was really kind of smart, but also kind of rebellious, so I didn't really feel like I fit in with the smart kids, and I didn't really feel like I fit in with troublemaker kids as much, and really had a hard time kind of finding my crowd. I remember my dad sat me down one day, I don't remember exactly what he said, but it was something along the lines of, "You know, I know that this world and social world that you're in seems so important right now. But what I realized when I got to college, when I got into the bigger world is when I really could start to find my crowd. Here's what's important to focus on now." It's just what you were saying, is how you treat other people. Here I am, and he didn't know the science, but he just kind of intuited that I needed that message a little bit, and it was impactful enough that I still remember it today. I mean, what are the key points you should hit with something like that?

Mitch: I mean, I think parents really need to know that when you're having that conversation, you're fighting 60,000 years of evolution. Our brains are developed to help us one day be autonomous of our parents. Right? So, if you think about the beginning of our species so many years ago, we were built to one day do our own laundry. That was all done by making our brains suddenly become really, really excited about peer interactions. Hanging out with our friends is way cooler, and to biologically think that our parents become totally lame as soon as we turn 12 years old. That's done on purpose. When you're talking with an adolescent about popularity, the part of their brain that we share with all other mammals, it's a really primitive, powerful part of our brain. It's basically flooding them with neuro transmitters that says, "Go get as much attention as you can from your peers." There's not going to be a rational conversation at that's saying, "Just forget about it. It's not important."

Andy: Oh, okay. Thanks, mom. Yeah.

Mitch: Yeah. Cool, all right. I'll shut off.

Andy: Now I don't care about it anymore. Right?

Mitch: I think much like your dad said, just kind of planting the seeds, just saying, "Look, whatever you're experiencing now, this is not going to be the thing that matters the most. You will find a way to feel connected that's far more substantial, that feels more important and really will pay off in the long run." For a lot of kids, that message is so helpful to hear, especially if it's someone that feels like, "Gee, I know everyone wants you to be popular, but that's not possible for me right now, or that's not what I feel like I'm in control of right now." That's really a helpful life rafts that adolescents hold onto when they're in those turbulent waters of popularity in adolescence. You say, "One day, I know that things are going to work out." It was a pretty confusing time. Popularity is not in our control. We can't just wake up one day and decide to be popular. We have to weather that storm.

Andy: You've kind of talked about this a couple of times. I wonder if we could just dive into it a little deeper, how teenagers are starting to care so much more about social hierarchy. Why is it that teenagers are all of a sudden caring so much more and noticing so much more how other people are seeing them and where they fit in the social hierarchy?

Mitch: Yeah. A lot of people these days have heard about oxytocin and dopamine. Oxytocin, remember, being kind of like a social bonding substance, and dopamine being the reward piece that makes us really good. It's actually the same system that is related to using recreational drugs, right?

Andy: Sure.

Mitch: It's very addictive. It's related to other parts of the brain that tell us, "Whatever that just was, do more of it. That felt really good. Do lots more." All of this is kind of what's starting to develop first. Before you see any behavioral changes in a kid, before their growth spurt or their changes in their body or voice, this is the stuff that's changing first. So ,if kids suddenly feel like all they want to talk about is who's popular and why are they popular and who gets attention, any parent will tell you that their kids suddenly seem obsessed with talking about nothing about this. Around 11, 12, 13, 14, this is exactly what we know is a manifestation of this oxytocin and dopamine kind of starting to out swirl the other, as it were, and what's actually happening is we increase receptors for it. So, when it's transmitted, we suddenly soak it up like a sponge way more than we would have before.

Mitch: Kids are just really having this major reaction to those two substances in the brain. This is really important. I think one of the things that freaks me out a little bit, to be honest, is that there's research now that's looking at what's happening in the brain when you put them in a context where they have the opportunity to see what popularity might look like. In particular, there's some research on Instagram, what is happening to the adolescent brain while they're on Instagram? You can show them pictures of things that are really dangerous and immoral and illegal, and their brain responds by saying, "No, I want to avoid that stuff. That's bad for me."

Mitch: If you show them those same exact pictures with little icons that say, "This was liked a lot by social media," then that part of their brain, that pre frontal cortex area that tells them to avoid these things, it shuts off. It says, "Now that you see this is popular, don't avoid it anymore. Don't feel inhibited about this anymore." That's really scary. That's Russian government fake news scary. That's manipulating our brains by showing us things online and depicting them as popular and trying to change our attitudes in a subconscious way. That's the stuff that's freaking me out the most.