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As someone with a moderate interest in sociology, despite that field of science generally being captured by leftist activists I cannot really stand, I’m somewhat intrigued by the American concept of ‘peaking in high school’ which I wasn’t even aware of until recently. I tried to dissect what it actually means but I feel like I’m not getting that much closer.
Before I continue I’d like to state two assumptions on the subject, based on what limited information I’ve gathered. One is that the concept, or accusation/dismissal if we want to be more honest, is almost always applied to men only. The second is that it doesn’t really exist as a subject of any conversation outside the jock-vs-nerd dichotomy as a wider concept. It’s a subconcept, if such a thing even exist. It's also inseparable from the idea that your high school years are the best years of your life.
As far as I can tell, the concept basically describes a high school guy who’s a midwit and largely without ambition or intellectual curiosity in life but also has street smarts and some level of charm, plus genetic attributes that are to his advantage (muscle mass, height, jawline etc). Whatever he goes on to do after graduation, wherever he moves to and whatever choices he makes, his social status will never be relatively higher than it was in high school. He’ll never be more popular in his social circle or at his job than he was in high school. Whatever level of success he goes on to have, it’ll never surpass the success he had in high school in terms of noteworthiness within his social circle. The things that made him popular he probably is not even aware of, and he just doesn’t know any better.
Is this an accurate description or am I missing the point?
‘Teenager’ is a marketing category created by the media, so of course media filters perception of the teenaged years in popular consciousness.
There are definitely people who enjoyed their high school years more than their adult life, because the paradigm of ‘teenager’ as a category that exists creates an impulse in authority structures to incentivize the ‘fun’ parts and not the ‘becoming a grownup’ parts. That’s what this is corresponding to; people remembering their fun as the important part of life, not their responsibilities.
It should be noted that this memory is, in general, rose coloured glasses. ‘Teenager’ is an unnatural category in that it poorly aligns with the telos of these people, hence teens are on average unhappy.
I can't help wondering how much of this is North America specific and created by the pop culture. I'm sure there are some people who enjoyed their high school more than anything later around here too, but I don't think I've ever seen anyone take that position publicly. The trope here is that your university years were the best time in your life (for some people), although that might have changed in the recent years (or not - I haven't seen much talk of that lately). There is certainly a lot more partying in university for those who want it.
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