Best answer: I read a random /r/television thread on reddit today, I think it was about 13 Reasons Why, and every single person on that thread said the funny series "American Vandal" was perfect in it's portrayal of the current American teenager's life. As of a year or so ago.
posted by sanka at 7:54 PM on May 25, 2018 [4 favorites]

Best answer: Next month, I'm going to the graduation party for the daughter of my one my high school friends. She's graduating from the same high school we went to. The theater kids remain unchanged.
posted by Ruki at 8:00 PM on May 25, 2018 [4 favorites]

Best answer: I'm a teacher so I don't get to see the inner workings, but- my observations.

Footy boys - the jocks. Also, now, joined by the footy girls, which is SO encouraging.
Gamer boys - glued to games on iPads (fortnite & pubg being popular) - two subsets here- the cooler kids who also do sport, and the nerds.
There's a 'weird kid' group that is really happy to have found their tribe- they love anime and music and tends to attract some of the non-neurotypical kids. It's actually really lovely to see these kids who would be normally loners (kids are so harsh) find their tribe now they have come to a larger highschool
Drama girls - not as in acting, but as in "who is going out with who, were is the fight, we totally hate her today, love her tomorrow" swirling around the yard in posses- These girls are fueled by social media, unfortunately.


Of course, these aren't american groupings!
posted by freethefeet at 8:21 PM on May 25, 2018 [3 favorites]

Best answer: American Vandal seemed to be identical to my late 90s school, which I attributed to the writers being a similar age.. but maybe things haven’t changed that much?
posted by sandmanwv at 9:03 PM on May 25, 2018

Best answer: US high school teacher at mostly white, upper middle-class suburban school here; I'll give you more of a rundown of social classifications from smallest amount of kids to largest (I am aware that will seem pretty gendered and stereotyped, but this is what it is):

* cognitively-challenged kids. have an aide with them, all the kids in the school are really nice to them
* loners/weird kids. usually male, wear military clothing, hygiene issues, rarely see them interact with other kids
* militant kids. openly hostile to everyone, self-identify as "others," they bond over disgust towards pretty much everyone
* social warriors. not as militant as the others but focus on community service (i.e. Greenpeace warriors)
* wildly over-entitled kids (stereotypical bros/mean girls). radiate "I don't care" aura, get expensive Hummers/BMWs at 16, very loud, can be found shoving smaller kids and guffawing. lots of guffawing, travel in packs, wildly overfamiliar with teachers, have parents who demand to know how school will ensure their kid gets A's, very, very often diagnosed with ADHD, while they're a small clique they take up a lot of space
* student leaders. not academic superstars but they work hard and do okay, very polite, the kids who ask other kids to join them, not social warriors but have passions
* tech kids, sometimes smart-alecky, can genuinely fix anything tech related, all hang together, are generally liked by others
* art kids, quirky, usually funny, talented, inclusive and nice kids, liked by everyone except entitled mean girls/bros
* academically-driven minorities. always looking for opportunities to increase GPA; major goal is MIT or Harvard, go to school early to meet with teachers, take maximum of AP classes, play instruments in school band, don't socialize because they're too busy doing homework, seem ready to snap
* theater kids. often overlap with non-militant LGBTQ++ kids, socialize a lot with each other, have a tendency to have wildly dramatic peer issues and one can often find female members crying in Guidance office
* gamers. not super tech savvy, but spend most of their time outside of school online, usually male
* athletes, can be divided into Track/Basketball (very accepting), Soccer/Baseball/Softball (somewhat accepting), to Lacrosse/Football/Sailing/Wrestling/Swimming/Skiing/Gymnastics/Field Hockey/Golf (essentially cults that do not accept outsiders and only socialize with each other)

which leaves us with most of the other kids, who became friends in early years and still hang out together. sometimes have emotional challenges but generally come to school, do their thing, hang together, maybe join a club, not hugely academically motivated but do okay

I would say that one thing that has changed in 5 years is that kids interact online WAYYYY more than they do in person. It's super common to see kids all sitting together at lunch on their phones, ignoring each other, they check social media between (and often during) classes, and these cliques now sometimes overlap because of social media. So they often feel more connected with more kids online, but in reality, they do not talk to each other as much as kids did 5 years ago.

Last thing: because of social media, rumors can get really ugly and spread within seconds. Reputations ruined within minutes.
posted by yes I said yes I will Yes at 3:01 AM on May 26, 2018 [18 favorites]

Best answer: I'm a US HS teacher in a smaller rural district where about 80% of students qualify for free or reduced-cost lunch, and I see basically the same groups as yes I said yes I will Yes described above, with a few differences:
*The super-entitled kids tend to lead cliques of other kids (football kids, fem club kids, art kids) rather than form a separate clique (probably not enough of them in our district to form a critical mass).
*All sports tend to be more open and accepting of new members.
*Spanish-speaking students form another group at our school.
*Exchange students (we usually have 12+ each year) tend to group up and sit together at lunch, hang out together socially.
*We have a group of kids that identify as rednecks, or "back-row-truck-parkers" as our principal calls them at staff meetings because they park their pick-up trucks in the back row of the student parking lot. I don't have as much experience with them because they tend to choose German rather than Spanish if they take a language.

With it being a small-ish school (450 students), there's a lot of overlap, which is encouraging to see. Last year, the leader of the football clique encouraged a bunch of the guys to try out for the musical and they did a great job with it and seemed to have a lot of fun. Some of the students who are learning Spanish as a second language hang out socially with the students who speak Spanish as a first language at lunch and school dances and things. The clique that hangs out in the back of my classroom during their free homerooms is a combination of gamer kids (both boys and girls), theater/choir kids, the organizers of our school's GSA (a couple of openly gay and bi kids), and kids who would never go to a GSA meeting even if there were free cookies.
posted by abeja bicicleta at 4:54 AM on May 26, 2018 [7 favorites]

Best answer: I remember reading a thread on Ask Reddit on this recently which asked high schoolers themselves to weigh in. I'm pretty sure it was this one.
posted by capricorn at 5:30 AM on May 26, 2018 [3 favorites]

Best answer: One massive change from my day is there's really no longer a druggie clique because more kids do drugs, so it's not a separate culture. Stoners are football players, artsy kids take Xanax, typical kids are on Oxy, etc.
posted by yes I said yes I will Yes at 6:40 AM on May 26, 2018 [3 favorites]

Best answer: I teach at a small, academically elite, wealthy, private school and I agree with yes I said yes I will Yes's clique categories. Because we are small (about 300 students) there is lots of overlap and movement between groups.

The only other item to note is the discrepancy between how highly engaged the majority of girls are (a good number, in every grade seem to do sports, be social justice warriors, do theater, and achieve academically all at once) compared to the critical mass of unengaged boys. About 1/3 of the boys in Grade 10 (Sophomores in the US?) always form a group who's only goal is to party and avoid school and home obligations. They are very pack-oriented. By half-way through Grade 11 (Junior year?) these boys are starting to differentiate from each other, and develop their own goals and motivation. Then they integrate into more of the school structures and groups. Even by the end, though, the number of highly achieving boys is always lower than the number of highly achieving girls.
posted by Sauter Vaguely at 7:40 AM on May 26, 2018 [1 favorite]