> If the friends are not much smarter this is rather an argument against the game to me. If the friends urge him (your "We are fun little social creatures" arg

> If the friends are not much smarter this is rather an argument against the game to me. If the friends urge him (your "We are fun little social creatures" argument), one should tell the child to quit being friends with them, since they get the child down - thus they not people one should want to be friend with. This seems like bad advice. School is unlike the adult world. Children are essentially stuck there for a decade or more - they can't (easily) quit, walk out, tell the boss to go fuck himself or otherwise do much else other than show up the next day. I'm not trying to be edgy when I say that in many ways it's like prison - you have little choice over who you associate with and things like violence amongst the inmates are accepted there in ways that would never be tolerated on the "outside".