My personal experience with US high school as an exchange student is that there was a much higher pressure on being "cool" and "popular", than back home, to a great detrimental effect on the social environment. Students were being unfriendly and mean to each other for no other apparent reason than to climb the social ladder. It also seemed like it was a goal to be disgusting - with indoor spitting, food-fights and generally gross behavior. Not only kids, but also weak teachers were bullied. Reciprocally, some teachers bullied weak students to an extent I consider clearly unprofessional. And god forbid if you were gay or something (this was in the mid-nineties, so a while back now).
How refreshening it was to return to my native high school after that year! Although it had is problem too, at least the norm among student was to be nice to each other. Being "cool" was certainly a thing, but students generally weren't obsessed about it. I am generally nostalgic about my high school days, except the year in the US.
This is just my personal anecdote, and is of course ludicrous to say that "bullying doesn't exist in Europe", but I cannot help but wondering whether my experience fit into a pattern. Watching American teenage dramas, it's just too uncannily like what I observed myself.
How refreshening it was to return to my native high school after that year! Although it had is problem too, at least the norm among student was to be nice to each other. Being "cool" was certainly a thing, but students generally weren't obsessed about it. I am generally nostalgic about my high school days, except the year in the US.
This is just my personal anecdote, and is of course ludicrous to say that "bullying doesn't exist in Europe", but I cannot help but wondering whether my experience fit into a pattern. Watching American teenage dramas, it's just too uncannily like what I observed myself.