What makes someone popular?
A few weeks ago a friend described me as popular. My reaction was shock. Me? The person who was always chosen last at PE, who was bullied and teased, who at school felt like an outsider and never quite fitted in. There’s no way I would consider myself popular.
This is probably a more vulnerable post than usual, the imposter syndrome is real. I often wonder why people invite me to things, or want me around. I don’t always feel like I fit.
Many of the young people I tutor are neurodiverse, and it’s often said that those who are neurodivergent feel like they don’t fit. I suspect I’m neurodivergent and that adds to how I feel, but the facts about my school life speak for themselves, and in my mind haven’t gone away.
So, I did a bit of research, admittedly it was self-selecting on my Facebook page, rather than a scientific survey. I also didn’t go out and ask people if I was popular but I did ask the question:
What do you think makes someone popular?
Some of the answers were:
- Being kind or nice (okay I am probably that, but surely I was that when I was at school too?)
- Being sociable, – yes I’d class myself as sociable – I’m sitting writing this in a pub alongside a group of writers.
- Being pretty. That’s subjective and could be the subject of a post of its own, but maybe there’s something in it.
- Someone else said that when they were younger, it was wealth, beauty and fame.
Are we really that shallow? As others have said, maybe young people are that shallow, and then we grow up, and learn there are other things that we value?
Another poll I ran on Facebook found:
- 82% saying that they definitely didn’t feel popular at school.
- 13% said that they were popular with their friends but not overall.
- Only 4% said that they were popular.
So when a young person is worrying about not being popular, we can reassure them: they are in the majority.
The word personality came up quite a lot. But what makes a popular personality? Someone interesting? Someone funny? A natural leader? There isn’t a clear answer to that.
When do we begin to feel accepted?
A common theme in the responses from my friends was that after the age of 16 people felt that things change, that circles of friends expanded, people find “their people”, and begin to feel like they fit and find a place of belonging.
Is being popular a good thing?
That’s debatable. In my research there are two trains of thought to this, as humans we want to be accepted, so we use popularity as a measure of this.
Not everything or everyone that’s popular is a kind, beautiful human. It could be said that Hitler was popular. However, It’s unlikely that we’d say that is a good thing.
What does being popular mean?
The Cambridge online dictionary defines popular in a few ways:
- liked, enjoyed, or supported by many people
- for or involving ordinary people rather than experts or very educated people:
- liked, enjoyed, or admired by many people or by most people in a particular group:
- involving or relating to ordinary people or to all the people who live in a country or area.
So it seems that there is a commonality in being liked or admired by others. But as we grow,maybe we admire other qualities.
In conclusion, be ourselves, build our self-esteem, self-confidence, and be the best that we can be, then we should be popular with ourselves. Find our crowd, and we will be popular with them.
At Skills4Parents this is what we care about. We may not help your child become “popular”, but we do help them believe in themselves. We see that their confidence grows as they work with Liz through online maths tutoring. We also work closely with parents, offering support, resources, and guidance to help you navigate the education system and champion your child’s needs.
Join our Facebook group Education Support 4 Parents for free support.
Thank you to all the people who commented on my Facebook posts to help me with this blog post. I appreciate you all! And finally, thank you, to those people who described me as popular, or told me I had the qualities required – I’m on the journey of believing you!