Graham states that "an American teenager may work at being popular ever waking hour, 365 days a year." He also states that "teenagers are always on duty as conformists." Kids seem to follow the path of their fellow peers. If teenagers aren't good looking, natural athletes, or relatives of popular kids they will tend to be nerds and therefore unpopular.
The life of a nerd would be much easier if they were just ignored. In high school nerds are constantly tormented and persecuted. Kids persecute nerds to feel better about themselves just as "when you tread water, you lift yourself up by pushing water down." Kids persecute nerds because it's one of the requirements of popularity. Popularity is based on groups so "kids too nice to pick on nerds will still ostracize them in self-defense." It is very evident who is who on the popularity scale. Graham states that when he was in high school "kids only ate lunch with others of about the same popularity." This was just one way that people could tell how popular you were. Everyone in school knows just how popular everyone else is, even the nerds.
Teenagers are now useless to adults. If kids would be in the office they would just be in the way. Kids now need to go to school because there are too many specialized fields out there that need many years of study where as in "preindustrial times started working at fourteen;" now kids "don't start working fulltime till twenty-one or twenty-two. The only use kids are now is flipping burgers in fast food restaurants. If kids were in any other field of work they"d be a net loss to the company. The main reason that they would be a net loss is because they are to immature to be left unsupervised so an adult that could do the job on their own.
Adults just look the other way when it comes to the persecution of nerds in school. One reason adults just look away is because school is a place to keep their kids busy during the day because they would be in the way in an office.
