Paul Graham explores this question at great length in his essay, "Why Nerds Are Unpopular": http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html

Status-seeking behavior is not restricted to teenagers.

Adults grovel at similar idols: money, beauty, fame. They just employ a bit more mis-direction to not make it seem so obvious.

I think a good part of it is the fact that most schools don't really do a good job of meeting the needs of all students. There are so many students who are bored and frustrated because the work they are asked to do is either too easy or too hard. Make a good portion of the student body bored and frustrated, and the pursuit of popularity becomes a focus for many students.

Because kids are uncontrolled there (in varying degrees), so they tend to self organize.

PS: this is default culture in any school.

Do you think it's just limited to schools?

Wanting to be popular is a popular topic in high school.

Always odd to have always realized that the 'cool' kids are popular because they can successfully mimic styles and behaviors pushed on them by corporations and style-makers. Shouldn't they instead be called 'mindless drones'?

Merchants of Cool http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/cool/view/

Basically because they have to organize some form of hierarchy and if there is no shared goal they will organize it around popularity (PG made this observation back in one of his earlier essays)

I am betting that if they end up on a primitive island they would organize with special respect for those who where the best trackers/hunters.

Mirror neurons: http://dspace.learningnetworks.org/bitstream/1820/1858/1/Van...