The Hidden Reason Students Compete Over Everything

Why does everything at school seem to turn into a competition... 
and why does it so often become a school counseling issue?

In this episode of the School for School Counselors Podcast, we explore what’s really happening when students compete over small moments and why school counselors are frequently asked to intervene even when there’s no clear behavior problem. 

We look at the neurological and social drivers behind competitive behavior, how these moments get misread by adults, and how that misinterpretation quietly increases the workload and pressure placed on school counselors.

This episode isn’t about strategies, tools, or interventions.
It’s about understanding the pattern beneath the referrals.

If you’re a school counselor who feels pulled into situations that don’t quite make sense- but still feel urgent- this conversation will help you see what’s actually happening before the response gets triggered.

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Join the next-level conversation in my Substack.

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Want support with real-world strategies that actually work on your campus? We’re doing that every day in the School for School Counselors Mastermind. Come join us! 

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All names, stories, and case studies in this episode are fictionalized composites drawn from real-world circumstances. Any resemblance to actual students, families, or school personnel is coincidental. Details have been altered to protect privacy.

This work is part of the School for School Counselors body of work developed by Steph Johnson, LPC, which centers role authority over role drift, consultative practice over fix-it culture, adult-designed systems and environments as primary drivers of student behavior, clinical judgment over compliance, and school counselor identity as leadership within complex systems.

Chapters

• 0:13 The Unseen Competition Everywhere
• 1:39 Naming The Scoreboard Brain
• 2:49 Dopamine, Laughter, And Belonging
• 6:39 From Mastery To Performance
• 9:27 The Scoreboard Follows Adults Too
• 10:58 The Cost Of Always Being Seen
• 12:51 Redefining Winning And Belonging
• 15:35 Practical Judgment And Supports
• 17:43 Closing Reflections And Resources

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:07

You know that kid who is always first in line. Before the teacher even says lineup, they're halfway to the door, right? Eyes locked, ready to win. Or you know the cafeteria milk carton athletes. One kid flips it, it lands right, and all of a sudden it becomes a full-on tournament. Half the table's chanting, somebody's filming, and you're just trying to keep the melee under control for lunch duty. So maybe you can go eat your own lunch in peace in a little while. And the weird part about these situations is that nobody really decided to compete. It just happened, right? One flip or one run becomes a hierarchy. And because schools are basically social petri dishes, this kind of competition leaks into everything else. Who's talking to who? Who has the better boyfriend? Who gets the most laughs or the most likes or the most eyes? It is absolutely constant. The scoreboard never shuts off. And the most interesting part about this is that most kids don't even realize the game they're playing. They just know what it feels like to lose. Hey school counselor, welcome back. In this episode of our Why Do They Do That series, we're moving one layer deeper. Last episode, we talked about burn culture, how humor becomes currency and connection can become competitive. Today we're looking at the engine underneath it all: the scoreboard brain. Why everything turns into a competition, why validation starts to matter more than learning, and why this isn't about ego, it's about wiring. So if you're ready for some straight talk, my friend, some clarity on your work and maybe a little bit of rebellion, you're in the right place. I'm Steph Johnson, and this is the School for School Counselors podcast. So let's talk about the addiction we tend to reward. We talk about things like screen addiction all the time in schools, but maybe the real addiction that we should have our eye on, and the one that we're actually rewarding the most is winning. Because every time they say, I'm first, every flipped milk carton, every he likes me lights up the same dopamine circuit that drives craving. Only these also get applause. And teachers will call it motivation, parents call it drive, friends call it confidence, but strip away all of the labels and you're left with chemistry. It's like a mental scoreboard that never stops tallying. It's constantly updating who's ahead and who's falling behind. These little brains are wired to chase the next hit of you matter. And when that hit starts to depend on who's watching or who's losing, the game gets into a cycle that never ends. So let's talk about what that scoreboard brain looks like in action. Because you can almost see it in real time. A student cracks a joke, everyone laughs, maybe harder than the joke deserved. And then the jokester's shoulders pull back, they have a half-smile that kind of flickers across their face. And, you know, if you listen to the last episode about burn culture, this is going to sound familiar because it's the same moment we talked about then, when humor stops being connection and becomes a form of currency. That laugh isn't just approval, it's relief and it's actually safety. So neurologically, social approval briefly lowers threat and it stabilizes the stress response. So essentially, that laugh is giving the nervous system a break, even if it lasts half a second. And in that time, you can almost see their body settle a little bit. Right before the chase begins again. The scoreboard lights up, they get the feedback, and they're off to the races. So roasting, bragging, little one-ups, these aren't just jokes. They're social tests. And each one is asking, am I still seen? And do I still belong? Research shows that when belonging feels uncertain, people monitor social feedback more closely. And they tend to use safer strategies like humor to try to stay included as part of the group. So if you've ever watched some of these things and thought, God, why does everything have to be a competition? Or even better, why can't they just let it go? You're not missing anything, and it's not just them. You're seeing the loop. Social approval activates the same reward systems as risk taking. You pull the lever, you wait for the laugh, and you repeat. It's like slot machine chemistry, only the price is laughter and affirmation. But this is where we as adults on campuses start to misread things. We think it's arrogance. Sometimes we label it attitude. Sometimes we say that they are being aggressive. But often it's anxiety dressed up as confidence, because being invisible to them hurts worse than being wrong. And you really don't even have to wait for adolescence to see this kind of competition and social approval kick into gear. Go watch a group of kindergartners line up for recess. Someone always wants to be first, and someone always yells, I got there first, even if they didn't. And if another kid beats them by even just a hair, you can practically see the world end. At this stage, it's not about social dominance, it's more about mastery and predictability. These little ones are learning that effort leads to outcomes. And that I'm first moment delivers a reward that teaches I did it right. Psychologists call this mastery motivation, the drive to solve problems, complete challenges, and feel effective. Each I did it moment releases dopamine and reinforces persistence. So early on, being first feels like competence. It's the brain saying, I have control, I can do this. But when we shift to adolescence, the feedback loop widens out. And by upper elementary, kids start noticing who's watching. That I did it moment now requires an audience. Motivation becomes social. And that's where things start to shift. Because that I did it first that they had in childhood is now evolving into I am first. I did it. I am. And that shift matters way more than we realize. By adolescence, that reward system is getting louder and louder, and then peers just turn the volume up. At the same time, self-regulation systems are still catching up. So things like lining up, turning in work, even picking up a pencil off the floor can turn into this huge contest. They're not being defiant or disruptive or too boisterous. They're operating inside a brain circuit that lights up when they're noticed. And really, the interesting thing about it is even silent peers can change other students' behavior. Just knowing someone might notice increases risk taking. That's the scoreboard brain. It is always on, it is always scanning, and it is always looking for the next point opportunity. Now, here's a part of this we don't talk about enough. And this might land a little too close to home because this doesn't stop with kids. You see this same kind of circuitry with adults. Think about your school staff meetings. Who gets praised publicly? Whose work gets spotlighted and whose doesn't? And how that affects the adults in the room. Or in our neck of the woods, think about things like National School Counseling Week. Who gets the shout-outs? Who gets the accolades on campus? Who gets the gifts and who doesn't? National School Counseling Week just makes the scoreboard louder for us. But y'all, we're running one just like these kids are. When competition shifts from mastery to performance, anxiety rises and persistence drops. Because the brain stops focusing on improvement and starts just tracking approval. And once that association sticks, the scoreboard doesn't even need to be posted anymore. Because kids start carrying it in their heads just like we do. And there's a cost to this that we don't always name. Because when students learn that being seen requires performance, resting starts to feel unsafe. Quiet begins to feel risky. And being neutral sort of feels like disappearing. So they start to seek to fill the silence. They manufacture moments of recognition. They create competition where none really existed, not because they love winning so much, but because losing track of the scoreboard feels like they are losing themselves. And that's not immaturity. That's actually the nervous system doing exactly what we taught it to do. So kids aren't just chasing attention, they're avoiding stillness. And that begins to shape how they move through school, how they move through relationships, and eventually how they move through adulthood. So now that we understand the cost, we need to understand what happens next. So we know, we feel it in every hallway. There's that quiet, competitive hum, there's a raised eyebrow here or there, a whispered brag, a shouted, I was first. Those milk carton flips and shouts aren't just about being impressive or really even about winning, it's about being seen. Competition among peers isn't the enemy, it's human. The problem is what we've attached it to. Because for many students, competition isn't about growing stronger, it's just about not disappearing. And the social scoreboard becomes the proof that they exist. And when we start to look at it that way, the behavior that once looked arrogant or too aggressive or too out of control sometimes starts to look like survival. And the goal here really isn't to shut that competitive see me drive off. It's to widen the field. Being first can mean helping someone else succeed. Winning can mean recovering from a mistake. And success could be quiet and still count. You know, someday they're not going to remember who won the majority of the milk carton flips, right? But they will remember whether school felt like a place where they had to perform to belong, or a place where they could just exist and still know that they matter. That's how we're going to start rewiring some of these scoreboard brains. We need to show kids that belonging doesn't require a leaderboard, that they can be still and still be significant. And for us, the hardest part of that is learning when something actually needs intervention and when everybody just needs a little space to settle. You're still going to see races to the door. You're still going to hear some roasting around. That's all normal. But when we stop calling it ego and start seeing it as wiring, and when we start to help kids find a way out of the endless scoreboard, we help them feel the difference between chasing recognition and finding meaning, between competition and competence, between the rush of being seen and the peace of being sure. A competition isn't going to go anywhere, but we can teach kids how to compete differently. And really, that's the real rebellion in this world and culture that is obsessed with scoreboards. Now, talking about it is the easy part. But making these calls in real time is not. Some situations need a litmus test. Others, you got to go back and watch the replay, right? And run it back later and see what you missed. And most of us, frankly, were never taught how to do either one. These are the kinds of things that I wish someone had taught me how to do earlier in my school counseling career. Because a lot of times you don't need another strategy. You need a place to slow your thinking down. So if this episode left you wanting to kind of mull these ideas over just a little bit longer, I want you to know I've written a short companion piece over on Substack. I'm trying to publish a little bit over there for some deeper thinking. So this piece is not a recap of the podcast episode. If you read it, you are not going to get a regurgitation of what you heard here. It's going to be a place where this episode kind of finishes percolating a little bit. I'm going to round out my thinking about this a little more. You'll find the link to this in the show notes. But then if what you really need are people and a space where you don't constantly have to explain the context or defend your decisions and a place where we can talk through the patterns underneath behaviors together, that's why I built the School for School Counselors Mastermind. Because it's not just another PD requirement to check off, another certificate to file away with the hundreds of others you have, or even one of those worthless online freebie workshops you see all the time. This is the space I created because I couldn't find it when I needed it. So if either one of these feels supportive to you right now, you can find links to both of them in the show notes or at schoolforschoolcounselors.com. Hey, I'm Steph Johnson. I'll be back soon with another episode of the School for School Counselors podcast. In the meantime, notice what your own scoreboard has been tracking lately. Be gentle with yourself and give yourself permission to slow it down. Take care. I'll see you soon.