The Narcissistic Generation

San Diego State psychologist, Jean Twenge, has found that over one third of all college students display narcissistic personalities, which is up 100% from just 15 years earlier. She calls the current generation of college graduates, the generation of me, myself, and I. Yes, our future generation of workers and leaders will be spoiled, lazy, and expect government subsidies to survive. The days of personal responsibility and accountability are behind us.

Today, over 20% of all Americans count on entitlement programs for their daily survival. This number is alarming and the reason why social programs such as welfare, Medicaid, food stamps, and low income housing account for a large portion of the national budget and increasing daily. Within the next decade the number of government dependent individuals will account for 30% of our population. In fact, federal government subsidies account for 17.5% of all families incomes in the United States, and this is up a staggering 3.2% in just the past two years. This means better than 1 in 6 dollars ‘earned’ by the people of United States comes in form of government entitlements. The word ‘earned’ is used loosely since most people benefitting from entitlements do not have to make a single sacrifice for what essentially amounts to a government handout.

For better or worse there are three things that define a person’s persona during their lifetime:

•How do you deal with adversity? Every person will face adversity and it is how people deal with these difficult times that will define what type of human being they will become. Those that handle adversity in positive way and learn from the experience will be a stronger individual in the future.
•Are you working on becoming a better person? Individuals should be constantly working to improve themselves to be better people. We as a people should be constantly evolving by bettering our overall intellect, compassion, generosity, and so forth.
•How do you deal with increased authoritative powers? It is a shame, but a large number of people let their egos get the best of them when they are given positions of authority. We routinely see politicians marred in scandals because they abused their power. The same can be said for law officers, or the everyday boss that uses blackmail to manipulate subordinates.
Unfortunately, the narcissistic generation already has supersized egos even before they have received positions of increased authority. If we think our national polarity is bad today, it will get worse as this generation of “know it alls” comes into power. After all, how is possible for adversaries to compromise on controversial issues if both sides feel they are 100% correct? It is not possible, so expect more and more political partisanship and divisive behavior from this future generation.

If anyone doubts that Americans are becoming more narcissistic consider networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter that allow people to talk about themselves. Furthermore, Reality TV shows, YouTube, and media stunts such as the Octa-mom and Balloon Boy are other ways people try to garner attention to oneself.

The key to achieving successful results to the above three questions is to have a realistic ego. And the key to having a realistic ego is to be self aware of ones actions. This is the only way to best understand our strengths and faults to become better people who can cope with adversity and increased authority. And unfortunately, this is not going to happen with this new narcissistic generation of spoiled brats!