We Are Raising A Generation Of Deluded Narcissists

[Ryan Ruck]

We Are Raising A Generation Of Deluded Narcissists

Dr. Keith Ablow
January 8, 2013

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.
These data are 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.

[American Patriot]

lol. DEAD ON!

[Malsua]

Gee, I generally hate other people too; Liberals, left lane slow pokes or in general anyone who serves to make my life more miserable and complicated but I'm far from a narcissist.

Now though, the kids that are coming up are completely deluded assholes. They are going to spend most of their 20s wondering why no one gives a shit about them. by the time they are in their 50s and running government, be glad we're all going to be dead or close to it. It's going to be such a touchy feely government that on the surface feigns cradle to grave care for everyone but achieves it by sheer ruthlessness.

[American Patriot]

Already IS a "touchy feely" government....

Let me demonstrate, from Obama's Speech yesterday:

Together, we determined that a modern economy requires railroads and highways to speed travel and commerce, schools and colleges to train our workers.


Together, we discovered that a free market only thrives when there are rules to ensure competition and fair play.


Together, we resolved that a great nation must care for the vulnerable, and protect its people from life's worst hazards and misfortune.

But we have always understood that when times change, so must we; that fidelity to our founding principles requires new responses to new challenges; that preserving our individual freedoms ultimately requires collective action.

For the American people can no more meet the demands of today's world by acting alone than American soldiers could have met the forces of fascism or communism with muskets and militias.

My fellow Americans, we are made for this moment, and we will seize it -- so long as we seize it together.

But we reject the belief that America must choose between caring for the generation that built this country and investing in the generation that will build its future.

The commitments we make to each other through Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security, these things do not sap our initiative, they strengthen us.

We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations.

The path towards sustainable energy sources will be long and sometimes difficult.

But we are also heirs to those who won the peace and not just the war; who turned sworn enemies into the surest of friends -- and we must carry those lessons into this time as well.

We will defend our people and uphold our values through strength of arms and rule of law.

And we must be a source of hope to the poor, the sick, the marginalized, the victims of prejudice —- not out of mere charity, but because peace in our time requires the constant advance of those principles that our common creed describes: tolerance and opportunity, human dignity and justice.

Just some of his nonsense. We have to save the children, hold "rule of law" through "force of arms" (works nice on foreign states, not your own people!), we can't think more about old people than the young, medican, medicade, social security are all important and getting "sustainable energy" is going to "happen in my time by me, and our Utopia!"

This country's so-called leaders are Collectivist Marxists and they want to indoctrinate us all.

I won't be indoctrinated, and I can't be convinced. I'll be killed and so will the rest of you damned gun owners.

LOL