Category: Flourishing

In early November, a swirl of accusations and counter-accusations erupted in social media from the University of Miami. A disagreement between two students, one of them a prominent campus influencer, became fueled by commentary and reaction videos from strangers across the country. It swelled into a conversation about cruelty that led to the dean’s office and eventually to a national news story about young adult influencer culture and social status. But it roiled with something even larger and darker for young adults figuring out their place in the world: what it means to matter or not.

The incident, covered in The Washington Post, highlighted a core truth about the social waters young people swim in today. Popularity — if it can even be reduced to a single word that sounds so 80s, so geeks and jocks, so John Hughes movies — is no longer about just being cool at school. For this generation, social standing is shaped by a temperamental mix of in-person dynamics, the curated worlds of social media, and the invisible pull of moral and emotional expectations among peers. What makes it noteworthy, however, is this: The more psychologists and social scientists learn about wellness, the more so-called popularity is understood as something not outgrown after the mercurial adolescent years. The way a young person chases social standing — and comes to think of themselves during these years — has an impact upon social maturity and wellness for life. 

“The dynamics of popularity affect our relationships, our careers, our success in meeting our goals, and ultimately our happiness,” said psychologist Mitch Prinstein, author of “Popular: The Power of Likability in a Status-Obsessed World.” As director of clinical psychology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Prinstein has researched adolescent and young adult social dynamics for decades. And he believes the new landscape of popularity includes multiple categories. 

“There is likability, and there is status,” he said, “and there is now an online popularity that looks a lot like status, but it’s reinforced with actual quantified metrics that tell you exactly how popular you and every post and comment you’ve ever made may be.”  

As some cold countries are said to have 50 words for snow, the digital age may need an expanded vocabulary for popularity.

Status, or Perceived Popularity

A generation ago, the popular students were those with visible influence: the athletes, the charismatic leaders, the beautiful people and style setters. Prinstein calls this “status popularity,” built on visibility, dominance, and the ability to set social norms. It’s less about being well-liked than being noticed and acknowledged as powerful. It often emerges in adolescence but continues to matter into adulthood, especially in environments that reward hierarchy, competitiveness, and performance. 

This is the terrain of old-school status that still exists, where the superficially strong survive and bullies thrive. Physical attractiveness still carries an advantage; in young adults, so do subtle cues of wealth or access, like coming from certain zip codes or private schools, having a luxurious vacation home or fancy car.

Students are remarkably clear-eyed about this. One junior who described her sorority as “top tier” recognized that social circles sometimes coalesce around people with access to attributes of wealth and connections. But even in that environment, access doesn’t buy genuine affection. “People hang out with some kids because of the things they have access to — like money, drinks, drugs — even if they don’t like them that much.” Clothes can matter as barometers of style, she said, but the more subtle the better, lest you be seen as trying too hard, or “too Gucci.” Those might be your party friends, but “you wouldn’t trust them with your secrets.”

Athletic success can function as modern status currency as well. Ben, a recent graduate of Northeastern University, noted that athletes who are recognized as being on the path toward professional fame can have name recognition on campus — though he was quick to add that if they are jerks, they might be more notorious than popular, per se. Tessa Garcia, a therapist who works with adolescents and young adults in the San Francisco Bay area, called athletic achievement one of the “most intense” forms of comparison, for better or for worse, because “it’s concrete — it’s right there, publicly seen, how many goals you scored or missed.”

On many campuses, Greek life reinforces a hyper-visible hierarchy. For some students, Greek life becomes a social safety net, perhaps after struggling to make connections elsewhere. But it can also be a gauntlet of scrutiny and self-doubt, of striving for “top-tier” houses that offer the QR codes as door entry to the best parties. Garcia compared parts of the sorority rush process to “getting recruited for a sport — except your sport is your identity.” Appearance, enthusiasm, and social-media presence are evaluated as if they were performance metrics. 

Donna Steinberg, a longtime college mental health counselor in New Hampshire who has worked with Dartmouth students, sees this emotional toll up close. “Freshmen are going to the frat parties, trying to belong,” she said. “By sophomore year they have to decide whether to pledge, and the Greek system can look like pure tiers and ranking. They can be crushed by rejection, and they have to make sense of it somehow. Usually, they patch themselves up by the time they become seniors, but that sense of questioning why can stay with them.”

The New Status Economy Online

If traditional status operates through in-person visibility, digital status popularity operates through metrics: follower counts, likes, shares, and algorithmic amplification. This form of popularity is volatile, public, and precarious. Any interpersonal conflict can become a public spectacle, and any student’s reputation can be remade or destroyed in real time, at least for those who put stock in digital popularity. 

If traditional status operates through in-person visibility, digital status popularity operates through metrics.

Online popularity looks a whole lot like status, Prinstein said. But instead of being inferred through social cues, it is quantified with numbers. Students now live with a permanent scoreboard next to their names. “Things like follower counts play a really big role, and that could be because you’re a good content creator and you just happen to attract a lot of people to your content, and that has nothing to do with your social skills. And that alone is enough to give you high status in your particular online niche.”

The University of Miami controversy illustrates how quickly online status can ignite conflict — and how swiftly it can smolder in public humiliation. Students who were previously known only within their campus community suddenly found themselves scrutinized by thousands of strangers. Some aspiring influencers who want to monetize this milieu choose majors in marketing, communications, and digital media, giving academic clout and higher stakes to the personal side of content creation and brand building.

For some undergraduates, courting this attention is intentional, but can be fleeting. Because online status can be gained or lost overnight, students may find themselves constantly monitoring, adjusting, curating, and performing — an emotional drain further removing them from the “real world” of interaction. It shapes perceptions — who is seen as aspirational, who is judged, who is excluded. Prinstein worries that social media collapses the nuance of human relationships into flattened, reactive fragments. “Your humanity is 128 characters long. You’re as good as your last post.” Young adults internalize this without realizing they are aligning their behavior with a system that rewards controversy, beauty, or performance more than kindness or integrity. 

And yet, the paradox is striking: Online popularity is everywhere, yet often irrelevant to the relationships that make college life meaningful. Someone cultivating an influencer persona isn’t necessarily an authentic person others want to call friend. 

“You see these people trying to be influencers, posting day-in-the-life videos. Usually, it’s considered kind of… cringey. Like it’s trying too hard,” said Sophie, a senior at the University of Virginia. The reaction, she said, is often skeptical: “We know you. You’re not living that life.”

Zoe, a sophomore at Vanderbilt, sees similar disconnects. “Someone can be huge on TikTok,” she said, “but on campus nobody cares. It doesn’t translate.”

Some students recognize this, and speak about the difference between the friends you “go out with to clubs” and the friends you “go grocery shopping with in pajamas.” 

Interestingly, many students emphasize the shift from status-based judgments in high school to authenticity-based judgments in college — a form of social standing that depends less on being admired and more on being someone others feel comfortable around. Once you find your people, Sophie said, there’s really no such thing as popularity anymore. 

“Honestly,” Ben agreed, “I don’t think there is really the idea of popularity in college these days, or at least not at Northeastern. There are fraternities; there are sororities; there are athletes and theater kids and everything in between. But nobody really looks at a different clique and feels like they’re less. Do you know a lot of people and do fun things? It’s not like high school. There’s no prom king.”

Warmth, Empathy, and the Social Skills that Last 

Likability — or sociometric popularity — reflects the degree to which someone is genuinely well-liked, trusted, and valued by peers. It emerges from warmth, empathy, emotional intelligence, and kindness. A young person who embodies these traits is often recognized early as someone other kids want to be around and parents want their children to spend time with. 

That degree of natural confidence might be the most organically attractive factor of all: the confidence to be kind to others without worrying how cool it makes you look or not, or whether being nice to someone who isn’t cool will be a social liability. “Being a generally likable person — someone who is a really good communicator, a good listener, and someone who’s interesting, — is what honestly makes you well-known and well-liked by the greatest number of people,” Sophie said. 

Zoe echoed this. Being outgoing and confident is naturally attractive, she said. If you are comfortable in your own skin, and interesting, it makes others want to be in your orbit. And it also gives you more latitude to be different. “People are attracted to people who’ve got spice and pizzazz. One of my guy friends is a huge history geek. He went to a museum during his fraternity formal road trip to New Orleans,” she said. “People really respect when you got something that’s a little bit edgy to you because it shows that you have a personality. There’s more than just what meets the eye. It’s endearing and alluring because it’s like, ‘Oh, I want to hear more about this person.’”

Prinstein considers likability the most important of the popularity types, noting that it predicts our health, our marriage, our salary, our parenting skills, even our age at death. Unlike status, which can be addictive but hollow, likability forms the basis for stable, meaningful relationships across the lifespan and decreases the chances that we’ll be lonely — a real wellness risk as we age.

Educators’ Takeaway: Recognize the Forces at Work

College students today are navigating an exceptionally layered social reality. For educators, counselors, and other adults who work with young adults, understanding this complexity is essential to being able to provide guidance that resonates with them.

Adults who grew up in an era before social media may underestimate the emotional force of public scrutiny, said Garcia, who emphasizes that these students are “the first generation growing up with themselves being exposed in ways previous generations weren’t.” And the punitive repercussions of social media situations like those at the University of Miami have to be recognized as a significant risk to wellbeing. Acknowledging the legitimacy of these pressures is the first step toward helping students manage them.

Because likability predicts long-term well-being, educators can foster it through intentional shifts in group discussions, promoting collaborative rather than competitive norms, and creating structured opportunities for students to form meaningful relationships.

In environments where Greek life, varsity athletics, selective majors, or elite internships are status dynamics that carry enormous weight, educators and counselors can help students make sense of these systems and disentangle personal worth from external ranking. For students who may feel “crushed” by rush rejection or other status-based competitive pressure, compassionate reframing can prevent temporary disappointment from becoming lasting harm.

Popularity today is a complex and sometimes contradictory matrix of status, visibility, and genuine connection. Students may be admired online but lonely on campus, or socially powerful in one community and invisible in another. They may chase influence without realizing they are sacrificing belonging — or believe they are failing socially when they are actually cultivating the kind of friendships that endure. 

Prinstein’s research underscores that these distinctions matter. For educators and other adults, the work is not to dismantle popularity but to guide students toward the version that sustains them. In a world where social media can amplify every misstep, and where the stakes of visibility feel impossibly high, helping students build the skills of authentic connection is not ancillary to their success — it is central to it. 

“Likability and status can go hand in hand. In fact, about, I think, a third of kids who have high social status are also very likable,” Prinstein said. “We should be investing lots of time and energy in helping kids to appropriately navigate a social world in real life instead of chasing metrics that end up not lasting. Even kids who are having the hardest time with peers can do really, really well with one trusted mutual friend and positive friendship. We need to help those who are suffering by helping them to have an actual relationship with a real human offline.” 

Prinstein emphasizes moving away from metrics: encouraging students to invest in the relationships that ground them, rather than the platforms that distract or distort — and to appreciate that status doesn’t have to build at the expense of authenticity. You can have status and style and still be the friend people choose to go grocery shopping.

James Forten was nine years old when he stood among the crowd outside the Pennsylvania State House to hear the newly signed Declaration of Independence read aloud for the first time. In 1776, he was a free Black boy, for whom the universal human rights laid out in the Declaration were far from promised, nor intended to be so as a result of the forthcoming revolution. Forten still fought for America. At 14, he joined the Continental Navy and, upon being captured by the British, chose imprisonment at home over an offer of release to England. He survived the war and went on to grow a flourishing sail-making business. It made him one of richest men in Philadelphia and funded wide-ranging abolitionist efforts, including William Lloyd Garrison’s famous paper, “The Liberator.”

Those who tune into the latest documentary from prolific filmmaker Ken Burns, “The American Revolution,” will learn about Forten in the final episode. His is one of many lesser-known stories in the six-part, nearly 12-hour series and, perhaps, a favorite of Burns, who invoked the young revolutionary during a panel discussion at New York University last week: “He does not for a second believe these self-evident truths don’t apply to him,” Burns said emphatically of Forten’s immediate grasp of what the Declaration of Independence could mean. “He knows they apply to him.”

To Burns, Forten seems to offer a model for how today’s young people, too, might pull from foundational American ideals to shape their own vision of the future. The documentarian was at N.Y.U. as part of a campaign to promote his new film among students at colleges and universities. On November 19, the “Campus Conversation” brought together Burns, his co-director Sarah Botstein, two experts featured in the film — law professor Maggie Blackhawk of N.Y.U and history professor Christopher Brown of Columbia University — and a moderator, politics professor Patrick Egan, also of N.Y.U. They asked each other: At a time when students might feel removed from — or repelled by — their nation’s early and flawed history, how could this film’s fresh telling be helpful to them, even inspiring?

Coinciding with the event was an announcement from its host school: The day prior, N.Y.U. launched its new Berkley Institute for Civil Discourse and Civic Solutions. It’s one of the latest centers of its kind, designed to promote engagement with diverse perspectives, in an ongoing trend towards building them on college campuses. Egan, the moderator of the Burns conversation, is the institute’s inaugural director.

Early American history would certainly be fertile ground for civil discourse centers interested in taking up and sorting through topics fraught with controversy. “The American Revolution,” for one, does not shy away from challenging, sometimes disturbing truths; their inclusion is part of an explicit mission to offer a complete portrait of this moment in history. The patriots of the 13 colonies may have bravely defended their freedom from tyranny, the film reveals, but they also hanged British representatives in the streets — poured hot tar over one in particular and covered him humiliatingly with feathers. Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence asserting the necessity of liberty for all, while being attended to by an enslaved valet, the young son of Jefferson’s father-in-law and one of his slaves. George Washington, who also owned hundreds of slaves, was the revered general who led his forces to victory and recruited them in part by promising each enlisted hundreds of acres in Western, Native-populated land that wasn’t his to give away. 

At N.Y.U., Burns captured one of the most central and slippery contradictions of early America — as both anti-colonial mission and burgeoning empire at once. “We called it the Continental Congress and the Continental Army, and we knew where we were going,” Burns said in reference to plans for westward expansion. 

Confronting these contradictions may be how “The American Revolution” draws in today’s college students. In moving beyond a traditional or glorified rendition of the founding, the documentary digs up details that feel less tired or overfamiliar. Even more, it presents a period whose intense divisions are evocative of American life in 2025 and how people at every level of society, not just the top, drew from the emerging notions of equality and democracy to push for personal understandings of justice.

“The people who wrote it down may not have been representative of us, but the people who have put it into motion — even until today — are us. And it still is something that a lot of us are pushing for and that young people do care about it.”

Yasmeen Rifai, a junior studying politics at N.Y.U., attended the conversation with Burns and said she appreciated its inclusion of “all the other groups that are so often left out.” What resonated with her most was the discussion of how those at the margins adopted and repurposed certain foundationally American ideals, for example, from the Declaration of Independence.

“The people who wrote it down may not have been representative of us, but the people who have put it into motion — even until today — are us,” Rifai said. “And it still is something that a lot of us are pushing for and that young people do care about it.”

Young people in particular were central to the revolutionary movement, said Christopher Brown, the Columbia history professor who participated in both the panel and the documentary itself. So despite ongoing cycles of older generations grumbling about the politics of younger ones, a youthful inclination to fight for the future appears to be as old as the country itself. “Political activism is part of our culture. It’s part of what freedom is about,” Brown said in an interview with LearningWell. “So I also think that the Revolutionary Age is a little bit of a reminder that this is a country that was founded in political division and was energized by political mobilization rather than political quiescence.” That goes for politics across the aisle, he said.

Young people may find the applications of Burns’s film are not only political or intellectual but also personal. In the style of “formative education,” engaging with the liberal arts, history included, is a way of exposing students to different ideas and traditions they can then use to reflect on their own, larger values — moral, spiritual, and otherwise. Stanton Wortham, an anthropologist and dean at the Boston College Lynch School of Education, said this process of reflection is what he and others in the formative education field call “discernment.”

“It’s a projection of yourself into a historical situation,” Wortham said of the practice for students of history. “That gives you a chance to develop not just intellectually because you’re learning new things and learning how to reason and look at evidence and so forth, but it also gives you a chance to engage with this ethical challenge that somebody else was facing and think about your own values and what your own values would lead you to do.”

The purpose of the approach, then, is not to tell students what to believe, but rather to expose them to the kind of provocative questions that let them consider for themselves. When it comes to the American Revolution, questions of tyranny and rule, justice and violence, might emerge. “A lot of people got killed. Was that okay? Was it okay that a whole bunch of people got killed for these particular ideals because they imagined a particular way of life was right?” Wortham said he might ask students of the period. “Does that apply today? There are lots of people today who are living in situations that are unjust, so should we be supporting people who are fighting back against what we or they consider as unjust things?”

Of course, all the ways students could interact with Burns’s new film are not a promise that they will, in fact, do so. Yasmeen Rifai, the junior at N.Y.U., had yet to see the series at the time of the campus event, although she said the conversation did make her want to start. Christopher Brown said former students now in their 30s and 40s have written to him to say they saw him in the documentary, though more recent ones have not. 

Amanda Garvey is only a first-year at N.Y.U. but already knows she wants to pursue a major in history. She attended the conversation with Burns last week because, she said, she loves the American Revolution. Originally from Bucks County, Penn., she grew up a short drive away from where George Washington once famously led troops across an icy Delaware River and towards a crucial victory in the war for independence.  

By Garvey’s discernment, the panel discussion illuminated an important and enduring legacy of not just crisis, but possibility. “What’s happening right now, it’s kind of a crazy time. I think the idea that these people were fighting for what they truly believed in — I think it still can be applicable today,” she said.

“Not everything is lost. There’s still hope, and I like that.”

You can reach LearningWell Reporter Mollie Ames at mames@learningwellmag.org with comments, ideas, or tips.

Following the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel, war broke out in the listserv for alumni of Patrick Mason’s graduate program in peace studies. 

Not even advanced training in conflict management could stop the former classmates from dividing into camps and hurling accusations back and forth. For Mason, now a professor, the vitriol was disturbing, but also “galvanizing.” 

“What it revealed to me is that it’s not enough simply to have knowledge; it’s not enough even simply to have skills,” he said. “This kind of work has to sink deep into your heart and soul.”

At Utah State University, where Mason teaches Mormon history and culture, the belief that mastering peacebuilding requires certain personal aptitudes has inspired a new approach to the field — one focused on equipping students with the character traits they need to be successful, as much as the tools or theories. 

This fall, with a $747,310 grant from the Educating Character Initiative at Wake Forest University, U.S.U. launched a three-year project to promote, as its name suggests, “The Character of Peace,” campus-wide.

The project’s two primary initiatives include the development of general education courses to expose more students to “the character of peace;” and strengthening an existing program, Space-Makers, through which students trained in conflict management talk peers through life challenges.

For years, U.S.U., which Mason estimates serves a majority of students raised in the tradition of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, has been increasing attention to peace studies. 

In 2020, a group of U.S.U. faculty from different departments recognized a shared interest in peacebuilding and decided to create a formal certificate around it. Together, they identified a collection of classes across disciplines that covered conflict management and could count towards such a program.

It wasn’t long before one certificate turned into five. In 2022, philanthropist and U.S.U. alumnus Mehdi Heravi made a donation generous enough to endow an entire center dedicated for peace studies on campus: the Heravi Peace Institute. 

Now, students can pursue certificates in global peacebuilding as well as conflict management, interfaith leadership, leadership and diplomacy, and social entrepreneurship.

Beyond academic work, one of the funder’s personal priorities was to support experiential learning opportunities, like study away, internships, and foreign language training, that would help students apply their education to the real world. In a diversion from semesters abroad in popular cities like Barcelona and London, students of the H.P.I. head to some of the most consequential conflict sites in modern history. 

In nearby Preston, Idaho, a group visited the site of the Bear River massacre, the largest mass murder of Indigenous Americans by the U.S. military. Trips to Northern Ireland, Bosnia, and Rwanda have offered similarly powerful insight into post-conflict societies, although in less familiar cultural contexts. 

Other activities at the H.P.I. include academic research, campus events, and community engagement. Non-students can attend conferences, workshops, and even entire courses in conflict management. 

In 2024, when H.P.I. Inaugural Director Austin Knuppe applied for and received a first, smaller grant from the Educating Character Initiative at Wake Forest, the official foray into character education began.

Students of the H.P.I. head to some of the most consequential conflict sites in modern history. 

“It just so turns out in order to do that work effectively, you have to be a person of a certain type of disposition or character,” said Knuppe, a political science professor who specializes in political violence and conflict processes in the Middle East.

Alongside a team of interested colleagues, including Patrick Mason, Knuppe used the initial support from the E.C.I. to begin crafting a more formal framework around the attributes of a successful peacebuilder and how to teach them. 

The group ultimately landed on four key traits: moral imagination, or the dual compassion and creativity to consider undiscovered solutions; cognitive flexibility, or the open-mindedness to hold contradictory narratives; emotional attunement, or an awareness of the human lives at the core of any conflict; and reciprocal love, or the capacity to relate and, especially, forgive.

Another central concern in these early conversations about character, Mason said, was how to engage as many students as possible in the work. 

The primary objective has never been only to prepare the next generation of “peace professionals,” he explained, but to help young people across a range of degree programs with a range of professional aspirations become “better citizens.”

“If students only take one class from us, that’s okay. If they take three or five classes — if they get a whole certificate — fantastic,” Mason said. “We’re just really convinced it’s going to serve them well and serve our society well if we have more people out there with good conflict skills.”

For Justice Cheatham, a current junior at U.S.U., the original motivation to pursue peace studies stemmed from needing to tackle a personal conflict, rather than an academic or even professional one. 

When Cheatham started his first year of college, he was still struggling with the disappointment of having left early from his mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He had been stationed in Columbia, when he came down with a mysterious illness that forced him to return home and finish his service from there.

An introductory class during his first semester at U.S.U. covered conflict management and offered Cheatham a way forward. In a few sessions on interpersonal conflict, he gained a new vocabulary and skillset to deal with the difficult emotions he was battling.

Today, he is pursuing a certificate in conflict management alongside his major in communications and serves on the H.P.I’s inaugural student board. 

With general education courses in conflict management in the works, more students like Cheatham without prior interest in peacebuilding may similarly start to see its wide-ranging applications.

Junior Abbi Zaugg isn’t pursuing any of the academic certificates through the H.P.I., but she still attends events there. “I am just a great lover of thought exchange,” the double major in political science and creative writing said.

That’s the outlook that inspired her to join a recent conversation following the killing of Charlie Kirk at Utah Valley University — just a two-hour drive away from U.S.U. — about whether controversial speakers should appear on campus. 

“I was participating very, very heavily,” Zaugg said of her role in the session. Her favorite part of dialogues like these is being able to hear her peers respond to her ideas, even if they disagree.

The common narrative that Gen Z is unwilling to engage with viewpoints unlike their own indeed does not seem to apply to Zaugg, nor her peers who attended the same event.

Zaugg even wondered if today’s young people are uniquely suited to deal with conflict, given that “most of us have been in conflict since we were very young.” She called her nearly lifelong concerns about school safety “a normal fact of life.”

Justice Cheatham, who also attended the H.P.I. event, stepped away feeling proud of his fellow students. They didn’t have to show up to an uncomfortable conversation. The weather had been nice that evening. He knew they could have been hiking instead.

“I have a lot of faith in our generation, and I think we can change the world,” Cheatham said. 

Soon, students like Cheatham may have the opportunity to participate in change-making on the state level. 

Utah Governor Spencer Cox, who is a U.S.U. alumnus, has been considering new partners in higher education for his think tank, Disagree Better, to help advance programs for peace. The H.P.I. is at the table. 

The Educating Character Initiative at Wake Forest University recently announced a request for proposals for grants between $50,000 and $1,000,000 to fund character education projects at U.S. colleges and universities.

You can reach LearningWell Reporter Mollie Ames at mames@learningwellmag.org with comments, ideas, or tips.