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Teenagers really are misunderstood - even by other teens.

Researchers have found that adolescents have  major misconceptions of what their friends are doing when it comes to sex, drugs and studying.

They say teens tend to conform to stereotypes - thinking jocks study less and drink more, for instance.

Nor conforming: Researchers found that adolescents overestimate the amount of drug and alcohol use and sexual behaviours that many of their peers are engaging in.

'When they are judging the popular crowd, the jocks, the burnouts or the brainy kids at school, the gist is that students in these crowds are misperceived,' said Geoffrey Cohen of Stanford Graduate School of Education who co-authored the study.

'They tend to misperceive what their peers are doing.

'So they are conforming to norms based not on reality but on stereotypes.'

The team found that adolescents overestimate the amount of drug and alcohol use and sexual behaviours that many of their peers are engaging in.

At the same time, they underestimate the amount of time their peers spend on studying or exercise.

The study examined the perceptions and behaviors of 235 10th-grade participants at a suburban, middle-income high school.

Following a method commonly used in adolescent research, five reputation-based groups were identified: socially oriented 'populars,' athletically oriented jocks, deviant-oriented 'burnouts,' academically oriented brains and students who were not strongly affiliated with any specific crowd. Jocks and populars ranked higher in likability than burnouts and brains, and were thus identified as high-status.

The 'brainy' crowd studied on average only about half the amount of time that their peers thought they did.

Students reported their engagement in various behaviors confidentially, allowing researchers to compare the actual and perceived behavior of the groups.

Comparisons between the groups, from what the individuals reported as their own behaviors to what others thought of them, clearly resulted in what the study called 'gross misperceptions.'

'This quest for identity can sometimes lead adolescents in the wrong direction,' Cohen said. 

'The lesson of this research,' said Cohen, 'is that people may conform to norms and identities that are in their head rather than in reality – both for good and, too often, for ill.'