The Implications of Social Status on Well-being in Adolescence

Social status is a multi-faceted construct with complex implications for the well-being of youth. Recently, Ferguson and Ryan (2019) reported that lower well-being in early adolescence is associated with both low and high popularity, and low and high liking by peers. The present study aimed to replicate these findings and extend them to preadolescents. Longitudinal analyses were also conducted to test the putative causal relationship between social status and well-being. Participants were 645 students in Grades 4 to 6 (n = 270 boys and 358 girls), and 388 students from Grades 7 to 8 (n = 165 boys and 218 girls) from 8 elementary schools. Peer nominations of liking and popularity were solicited, and participants reported on their loneliness, depression, and self-esteem in the fall and spring of an academic year. Only linear relations between liking, popularity, and well-being emerged for early adolescents, with higher status scores associated with better functioning. However, a significant quadratic relation between popularity and well-being emerged for preadolescents. Notably, the most popular preadolescents reported lower self-esteem and greater depression and loneliness than their moderately popular peers. After controlling for well-being in the fall, popularity and liking were not significant predictors of well-being in the spring for either age group. These findings suggest that the well-being of popular preadolescents are at a higher risk than their moderately popular peers, as they forego important developmental needs; popularity in early adolescence might not be inevitably taxing, but may depend on the stability of their social environments.