Rejoice, dweebs! Kids who are considered "cool" at a young age are more likely to have issues with alcohol and substance abuse, and difficulty maintaining intimate relationships in later life.

Kids who showed a focus on "physical appearance when choosing friends", engaged in minor delinquent behaviour and were romantically involved at a young age, were also more likely to engage in criminal behaviour later in life.


That's according to a new study into the long-term impact of so-called "pseudomature behaviour", or imitating seemingly adult behaviour, in young adolescents.

Instead of being part of the rough and tumble of childhood, the study's authors argue "pseudomature behaviour may not simply predict future problems, but may also predict the development of more serious adjustment problems over long periods of time".

The study, published in the journal Child Development, involved interviews with 200 children over ten years, starting when they were 13 years old. The interviews included questions about the importance they placed on popularity and who they saw as being popular, tests on how physically attractive their perceived their friends to be, and questionnaires about drug use, romantic activity, and criminal behaviour.

By compiling that information into a single variable for pseudomature behaviour, the authors showed that in the long-term such behaviour linked to poorer outcomes in adulthood. "A constellation of pseudomature behaviours in early adolescence predicted significant difficulties in social functioning up to ten years later, in early adulthood," write the authors.


Whether or not the data collected is strong enough to support the arguments made by the authors is arguable. A number of subjective choices were made in the data collection and it's possible that making a different set of choices could lead to different outcomes.

The study assumes, for example, that having physically attractive close friends is a sign that a person places importance on physical attractiveness in their friendships. It's possible, perhaps even likely, but one doesn't necessarily lead to the other.

But if the study's measure of "cool" behaviour is accurate, it appears to show that at age 13 such behaviours were associated with popularity, but that the perception dropped off over time.

Perhaps predictably, the kids who were most likely to exhibit such behaviours were those who placed the greatest importance on being popular.

The paper argues: "This status-seeking link is important, in that it suggests that at a formative point in social development some early adolescents are learning to establish connections with their peers by engaging in pseudomature behaviours so as to impress those peers, rather than by learning to connect successfully with them via more adaptive means."


In other words, the "cool" kids aren't really any more at ease with the world or themselves than anyone else, they're just imitating adult behaviour as a substitute for emotional development.

Which is melancholy music to the ears of a former 13-year-old dweeb.

Image: Brad Flickinger/CC/Flickr