Why Do Some Kids Pretend To Be EMO For Attention? A Middle School Teacher’s Guide
The bell had just rung for dismissal last October, and I was wiping cobalt blue paint off my desk when Mia hung back by the door, twisting the frayed edge of her hoodie. She’d been my student for two months, quiet, the kind who leaves extra erasers on the table for kids who forget theirs. That day, she wouldn’t meet my eye. “Can I ask you something about Lila?” she said, and stepped inside, closing the door behind her.
Lila was Mia’s best friend since sixth grade, and six weeks earlier, after a popular girl in our class made a comment that “all the guys think emo girls are so mysterious and deep,” Lila flipped a switch. She dyed her blonde hair black overnight, started leaving her nail polish deliberately chipped, swapped her Olivia Rodrigo playlists for My Chemical Romance, and began making big, dramatic comments about how no one understood her, how she was depressed and no one cared. Last week, she cried in the cafeteria saying she wanted to kill herself, then posted a TikTok after school making fun of “the kids who actually act like that 24/7” for being annoying attention seekers. Mia said it felt like Lila was making a joke out of people who actually struggle, including Mia’s cousin who died by suicide two years earlier.
I nodded, because I’d been watching the shift too. I’ve taught 7th grade art for 12 years, and this isn’t the first time I’ve seen a kid grab a ready-made identity to get noticed. Ten years ago it was kids faking being straight edge to fit in, five years ago it was e-boys and e-girls, this year emo is back on TikTok, and it comes with a built-in hook: being emo signals you’re deep, you struggle, you’re interesting, and that gets way more likes and comments than being the quiet kid who likes unicorns and makes mugs for her little sister.
I didn’t tell Mia she was overreacting, and I didn’t tell her Lila was a bad friend. I just got the lemon drops out of my desk drawer (the ones I keep for kids who need a minute) and pushed the jar across the desk. I said that what Lila was doing wasn’t okay, but it also wasn’t just her being mean. Middle school is the worst time to be invisible, I said. If you’re the kid who doesn’t get picked for sports, who doesn’t get invited to the big parties, any attention is better than sitting alone at lunch. Even the bad kind. Even the kind where you have to pretend to be someone you’re not to get it.
Then I told her what I’ve learned works for this, for teachers and parents alike. First, you never call a kid out for faking in front of other people. A few weeks earlier, Lila had made a big scene in study hall about wanting to hurt herself, and instead of confronting her about faking in front of the whole class (which some teachers have done in the past), we waited until everyone left, and I didn’t start with the emo stuff. I remembered that a month before she changed her look, she’d made a ceramic unicorn mug for her little sister’s 8th birthday, and she’d rambled to me for 10 minutes about how her sister collects unicorns and sleeps with a stuffed one every night. So I asked her, “How did your sister like that mug you made? Did she use it for hot cocoa yet?”
She froze for a minute, like no one had asked her about anything that wasn’t her new look or her sad quotes in weeks, and then she started talking. She told me her sister used it the next morning, spilled hot cocoa all over her homework, and they laughed so hard they got in trouble with their mom. By the end of our 10-minute conversation, she’d wiped all the smudged black eyeliner off under her eyes without even noticing.
That’s the trick, right? If a kid is using a persona to get attention, you don’t feed the persona, you don’t yell at them for faking, you just pull them aside and remind them you see the actual them. For parents, that looks like asking about their old favorite hobby, not the new sad quote they posted to Instagram. It’s carving out 10 minutes in the car every Friday after school where you don’t talk about grades or chores, you just let them ramble about whatever they want. It’s not vague “be supportive” nonsense, it’s specific small things that tell them you don’t only care when they’re having a big dramatic moment.
I also always tell parents and new teachers that even if you’re 99% sure they’re faking, you still take any talk of self-harm or suicide seriously. Performative or not, it’s a signal that something is missing for that kid, and getting a professional check-in never hurts. It doesn’t have to be long-term therapy if it turns out they just wanted attention, but it rules out anything more serious that you might be missing.
It’s been two months since that conversation with Mia. Lila still wears black nail polish most days, and she still listens to MCR when she does homework, but the big public scenes stopped a month ago. She started coming to art club early to make unicorn keychains for the local animal shelter fundraiser, and she brings her little sister with her most weeks. Mia still gets annoyed sometimes when Lila posts a sad quote for likes, but they’re eating lunch together again, and last week I saw them sneaking candy into the gym during assembly like any other pair of 7th grade best friends.
I don’t have a neat ending for this. Some kids keep the persona, some drop it, some grow into parts of it that actually fit them. What I do know is that most of the time, it’s not manipulation. It’s just a kid who feels invisible, finding the first door that someone will open for them. Most of the time, all you have to do is open a different door, for the kid they actually are.
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