Popular tormentors
Moderately popular teens, not social outcasts or the most popular kids, frequently harass their peers physically, verbally and by spreading gossip, say University of California, Davis, sociologists Robert Faris and Diane Felmlee. Kids at the very top of the social totem pole at middle schools and high schools in North Carolina rarely picked on other students over a three-year span, the researchers report in the February American Sociological Review.
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