Who are the Socs?

The Socs, which is an abbreviation for Socials, is a gang of wealthy adolescents who reside in the affluent West Side of town and are the Greaser gang's rivals. The members of the Socs are depicted as upper-class, spoiled teenagers who are superficial and materialistic. They enjoy wearing madras jackets, driving fancy cars, and having beer blasts at their parents' homes. The Socs are essentially entitled adolescents who get a kick out of jumping Greasers. Ponyboy ends up befriending Cherry Valance, a Soc cheerleader, who compares her social group to a rat race and admits that all Socs act aloof, distant, and unemotional. Ponyboy also mentions that the Socs are callous, heartless individuals whenever they fight, and he has a difficult time realizing that Socs have their own unique set of issues in life. Ponyboy also has a conversation with another Soc member named Randy Adderson, who explains to Ponyboy that Bob Sheldon wished his parents would have told him "no" instead of blaming themselves for all of his mistakes. Overall, the Socs are the Greaser gang's wealthy rivals, who cause violence throughout the city by continually jumping poorer teenagers for fun.

In S.E. Hinton's novel The Outsiders, the Greasers and the Socs are the two rival gangs who are the focus of the story. Ponyboy Curtis, the narrator of the novel, describes the Socs in the first chapter as "the abbreviation for the Socials, the jet set, the West-side rich kids," who are positioned against the less affluent East Side Greasers.
The Socs may be wealthier than the Greasers, but they don't necessarily act any better. Ponyboy describes Greasers as hoods who steal and and fight and cause other kinds of problems within the community, but the Socs also get in trouble a lot. The community sees Greasers in only a negative way, while the Socs are generally considered outstanding members of society that occasionally do something out of character. This imbalance in perception is part of what causes the problems between the two rival groups.