We are raising a generation of  deluded narcissists

Read more:  http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2013/01/08/are-raising-generation-deluded-narcissists/#ixzz2HWe3Q3j5

A new analysis of the American Freshman Survey, which has accumulated data  for the past 47 years from 9 million young adults, reveals that college students  are more likely than ever to call themselves gifted and driven to succeed, even  though their test scores and time spent studying are decreasing.

Psychologist Jean Twenge, the lead author of the analysis, is also the author  of a study showing that the tendency toward narcissism in students is up 30  percent in the last thirty-odd years. This data is not unexpected.  I  have been writing a great deal over the past few years about the toxic  psychological impact of media and technology on children, adolescents and young  adults, particularly as it regards turning them into faux celebrities—the  equivalent of lead actors in their own fictionalized life stories.

On Facebook, young people can fool themselves into thinking they have  hundreds or thousands of “friends.” They can delete unflattering comments. They  can block anyone who disagrees with them or pokes holes in their inflated  self-esteem. They can choose to show the world only flattering, sexy or funny  photographs of themselves (dozens of albums full, by the way), “speak” in pithy  short posts and publicly connect to movie stars and professional athletes and  musicians they “like.”

Using Twitter, young people can pretend they are worth “following,” as though  they have real-life fans, when all that is really happening is the mutual  fanning of false love and false fame.

Using computer games, our sons and daughters can pretend they are Olympians,  Formula 1 drivers, rock stars or sharpshooters.  And while they can turn  off their Wii and Xbox machines and remember they are really in dens and  playrooms on side streets and in triple deckers around America, that is after  their hearts have raced and heads have swelled with false pride for “being” something they are not.

On MTV and other networks, young people can see lives just like theirs  portrayed on reality TV shows fueled by such incredible self-involvement and  self-love that any of the “real-life” characters should really be in  psychotherapy to have any chance at anything like a normal life.

These are the psychological drugs of the 21st Century and they are getting  our sons and daughters very sick, indeed.

As if to keep up with the unreality of media and technology, in a dizzying  paroxysm of self-aggrandizing hype, town sports leagues across the country hand  out ribbons and trophies to losing teams, schools inflate grades, energy drinks  in giant, colorful cans take over the soft drink market, and psychiatrists hand  out Adderall like candy.

All the while, these adolescents, teens and young adults are watching a  Congress that can’t control its manic, euphoric, narcissistic spending, a  president that can’t see his way through to applauding genuine and extraordinary  achievements in business, a society that blames mass killings on guns, not the  psychotic people who wield them, and—here no surprise—a stock market that keeps  rising and falling like a roller coaster as bubbles inflate and then,  inevitably, burst.

That’s really the unavoidable end, by the way. False pride can never be  sustained. The bubble of narcissism is always at risk of bursting.  That’s  why young people are higher on drugs than ever, drunker than ever, smoking more,  tattooed more, pierced more and having more and more and more sex, earlier and  earlier and earlier, raising babies before they can do it well, because it makes  them feel special, for a while.  They’re doing anything to distract  themselves from the fact that they feel empty inside and unworthy.

Distractions, however, are temporary, and the truth is eternal. Watch for an  epidemic of depression and suicidality, not to mention homicidality, as the real  self-loathing and hatred of others that lies beneath all this narcissism rises  to the surface.  I see it happening and, no doubt, many of you do, too.

We had better get a plan together to combat this greatest epidemic as it  takes shape.  Because it will dwarf the toll of any epidemic we have ever  known. And it will be the hardest to defeat. Because, by the time we see the  scope and destructiveness of this enemy clearly, we will also realize, as the  saying goes, that it is us.

Read more:  http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2013/01/08/are-raising-generation-deluded-narcissists/#ixzz2HWdlsWYq