How cliques affect preadolescents friendships and personal well being Lessons from Planet Twelve
Fitting into the society is usually viewed as something that is extremely important, but at age twelve, popularity is the most important thing of all. “Planet Twelve” spends a week-in-the-life of a group of sixth-graders at the Mount Nittany Middle School in State College, Pennsylvania to reveal that fitting in is what matters most to twelve-year-olds. ... Being unpopular among peers can lead to both short-term and long-term problems, especially in adolescence. ... Unpopular children report feeling lonely and socially dissatisfied, while children who become less accepted by their peers, lost friends, and made more statements about being poor at developing friendships showed gains in loneliness across time. Finally, being verbally and physically victimized by peers is associated with higher levels of loneliness throughout the lifespan (Kochenderfer &Ladd, 1996). A prime example of this is Kyle from the documentary “Planet Twelve. ... By not fitting into the norm with the rest of his peers he was shunned into being a “loner. ... Developmentally he is becoming scarred, without peer acceptance he is not learning the necessary skills that it takes to make and maintain good friendships. ... Being accepted into a peer crowd effects friendships by the type of people that are in the group. ... “Planet Twelve” never mentioned what happened to the girl that asked Kyle to sit with her, but my assumption is that her peer group made fun of her for talking to him. Instead of being friends with Kyle and loosing all of her other friends she chose her friends.