Going through high school makes up some of the best years of our lives. We get to experience sporting events, prom, and everything in between, however, if we focus too much on being liked, we tend to miss out on the important and fun aspects. In these years thinking about college and our futures is hard enough, so why worry about being popular?
I have only been out of high school for a year now, but what I have come to notice is that once you graduate the popularity you had or didn't have doesn't matter anymore. After graduation, almost everyone goes off to college and they begin life in the real world. One amazing thing about college is that you can be yourself and popularity disappears.
There are countless videos and blog posts online that are promoting high school popularity. Google "How to be popular in high school" and 248,000,000 results come up. This honestly breaks my heart, so many teenagers are willing to change who they are in order to please their peers. There are also movies like Mean Girls that, although funny, shows what high school popularity can do.
If everybody is trying to impress everybody else, who are we really trying to impress? Why spend so much time trying to impress others when in the process you aren't taking care of yourself? If you pretend to be someone you aren't, it will exhaust you.
There is also a negative effect to popularity and bullying in high school. Studies show (http://aspeneducation.crchealth.com/article-back-t...) that 40 percent of new cases of anorexia are in females age 15-19, and this number has increased every decade since the 1930's. As more teens are bullied and pressured into feeling like they aren't good enough, suicide rates are also rising. The Center for Disease Control and prevention did a national study which included students in high school. Here's what they found:
- 16% of students reported seriously considering suicide
- 13% of students reported creating a plan
- 8% of students reported trying to take their own life in the 12 months preceding the survey
High school popularity can also lead to other long term effects. Students who are popular in middle and high school are more likely to have substance abuse problems. A journal, called Child Development, did a study over 10 years that proved this point. It also proved that by the age of 22, most "cool kids" struggled to make friends.
So, with all of this, why spend your four years of high school in a miserable state? Why change who you are to please someone else? We were all born original, set apart to be our own creation. If you aren't popular in high school, it doesn't determine who you are as a person and it sure doesn't determine who you will be one day. Live the life you want to live, and be the person you want to be. If people don't like you for yourself, then they aren't worth having in your life. It honestly feels good to look back at my high school career and think to myself, "Wow, I'm glad I was able to stay true to myself."
