We are raising a generation of deluded narcissists

[dan_bgblue]

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2013/01/08/are-raising-generation-deluded-narcissists/?intcmp=HPBucket

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 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.

[KSRBEvans]

Every parent wants their kids to be "gifted." And there are a ton of gifted programs in schools around the country. In fact, very few students are actually "gifted"--they may be above average, they may come to certain things like reading at an earlier age than other students, but that doesn't mean they're truly gifted.

Even if they do meet that definition, that really doesn't mean anything if they're not willing to apply themselves and polish that gift. That's one of the things I like best about Cal. He's recruiting elite players, but it's not enough to rest on their gifts.

[CitizenBBN]

Hope no one is waiting for me to disagree. The sense of entitlement bothers me a lot more than being just self centered. They're lazy as heck and think they're doing real work and should have what someone has who has been getting it done for years and decades.

Every generation has those people, but they sure seem to be breeding faster than the hard work and responsibility crowd.

[KeithKSR]

This is what happens when everyone has to play the same number of minutes, everyone gets a trophy and no one is held responsible for their own actions.

[CGWildcat]

I always told my students this line..... “Opportunity is missed by many because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.” –Thomas Edison

[CitizenBBN]

I always told my students this line..... “Opportunity is missed by many because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.” –Thomas Edison

That's an awesome quote. I have to find a good place to use that.

[jazyd]

BE, my daughter was in the gifted program all thru grade schoolm middle school and high school, but she is not a gifted young adult like we think of as 'gifted'. 'Smart but not gifted, great young teacher but not gifted. Thankfully she has never thought of herself as 'gifted' and above others or thought she was entitled. WEll, she did think in college she was entitled to dad's money, what little there was of it.

My generation and those a tad younger than I have basically ruined our kids. I have 4 young girls working for me, every one of them has a better an new car than my wife and I. Two have the following, 2010 Accura, 2010 Lexus. I have had kids who drove a mercedes, lexus, high end Toyota, mustang GT, to work while in high school. I will say for the most part those same kids do work rather than run around each afternoon waiting for mom to hand over money. But we have had many kids tell us they just don't want to work, don't have time. One should go to the lparking lot of a private high school and see what these kids are driving, see what kind of phones they have, what kind of expensive purses the girls carry, boys who have pickups and then mud run them on weekends and tear out transmission and think nothing of it. Kids in sports in grade school with $300 bats, $200 basketball shoes, jeans that are $100. My jeans are wrangler that I buy at the outlet in the seconds rack for $9. LOL When they go out to eat, my girls can tell me all about the expensive places to eat.

I am so thankful for my daughter and the way she turned out, she values money, values her church and spiritual life, is a great young mother, just a wonderful young lady. Her mom did good. Mick would agree with that.


Every parent wants their kids to be "gifted." And there are a ton of gifted programs in schools around the country. In fact, very few students are actually "gifted"--they may be above average, they may come to certain things like reading at an earlier age than other students, but that doesn't mean they're truly gifted.

Even if they do meet that definition, that really doesn't mean anything if they're not willing to apply themselves and polish that gift. That's one of the things I like best about Cal. He's recruiting elite players, but it's not enough to rest on their gifts.

[CitizenBBN]

Jazy if you could explain the $200 sneakers to me I'd be grateful. Dang if I get it.

[BigBlueBrock]

If today's generation are deluded narcissists, then they most certainly learned how to be from the most self-entitled group of deluded narcissists ever to grace this country - Baby Boomers.

[CitizenBBN]

If today's generation are deluded narcissists, then they most certainly learned how to be from the most self-entitled group of deluded narcissists ever to grace this country - Baby Boomers.

You'll get no argument from me. This turned at the end of WWII. We went from hard work to enjoying the spoils and the fault is on the parents from the Boomers on down.

[suncat05]

If today's generation are deluded narcissists, then they most certainly learned how to be from the most self-entitled group of deluded narcissists ever to grace this country - Baby Boomers.

Not sure I am 100% on board with that sentiment. To a small degree, yes, but not totally. This "baby boomer", as you describe my generation, has worked his a$$ off to achieve what little I have. And poor though I am, I am very happy with what I have accomplished and do not begrudge anyone else's success in any way. But I'm just speaking for me, myself, and no one else.

And I really do not see it as narcissistic as much as it is blatant ignorance and a total lack of humility among today's generation. Any excuse to whine and cry about how bad they have it when in fact they have life much, much better than many of us here did when we were their age, "back in the day" as they like to say.

That's just how I see it.

[CitizenBBN]

suncat I just see it as a trend. A certain percentage of Boomers spoiled their kids, that expanded in the next group and so on till now we have this notion that kids shouldn't have to face reality till they are 18 or even post college and "enjoy their childhood." Pre WWII that ended at age 12 or so at the latest. Now it's 25.

It hasn't been one generation but an increasing acceptability of the notion that the way to raise kids is to give them things rather than teach them how to get them for themselves.

[jazyd]

Wish I could be can't other than they have to look as good as the friends.



Jazy if you could explain the $200 sneakers to me I'd be grateful. Dang if I get it.

[jazyd]

sun, I see it pretty much as you and the state by brock is total BS. Those in my generation have worked hard to get where we are, yep alot of dumb ass hippies in the bunch and many are now screwing up this country even more as members of this administration, but I didn't know anyone in high school, college, or the work place who felt entitled to anything. Well, there was one from Reidland but he was a jerk. Many of us started businesses, worked for low wages out of high school, became teachers, police, fire, sales reps, lawyers, doctors, whatever. I certainly don't have a lot of money right now while looking at retirement, mainly because of one bad investment that went way south, but some of my friends have retired nicely and many are still working trying to keep their heads above water.

I didn't whine or cry about having to pay off my student loan or ask the government to forgive it. Like most of my friends we started out in small places to live after college, for us it was a garage apt and then we all worked hard to get something a little better. We certainly didn't feel we needed to have ahouse as big as our parents.

I screwed up alot along the way financially but we still are okay, we have a great daughter who knows the value of hard work and a dollar. But many of us as parents just gave the kids way too much and now so many feel they are entitled to everything from the get go.

Good Luck to this generation, they have helped elect the worst president in the history of this country, hope they enjoy what he will do to them, it will be ugly



Not sure I am 100% on board with that sentiment. To a small degree, yes, but not totally. This "baby boomer", as you describe my generation, has worked his a$$ off to achieve what little I have. And poor though I am, I am very happy with what I have accomplished and do not begrudge anyone else's success in any way. But I'm just speaking for me, myself, and no one else.

And I really do not see it as narcissistic as much as it is blatant ignorance and a total lack of humility among today's generation. Any excuse to whine and cry about how bad they have it when in fact they have life much, much better than many of us here did when we were their age, "back in the day" as they like to say.

That's just how I see it.

[BigBlueBrock]

Not sure I am 100% on board with that sentiment. To a small degree, yes, but not totally. This "baby boomer", as you describe my generation, has worked his a$$ off to achieve what little I have. And poor though I am, I am very happy with what I have accomplished and do not begrudge anyone else's success in any way. But I'm just speaking for me, myself, and no one else.


Your personal anecdote doesn't absolve your generation of anything, sorry to say.

Who raised this current (i.e., my) generation of deluded narcissists? Baby Boomers.

Who taught us in school (very poorly, by all accounts)? Baby Boomers.

Who's been running the country for 20 years? Baby Boomers.

What generation took the greatest, wealthiest and most powerful country on the planet and flushed it down the toilet? Baby Boomers.

What generation is and will be retiring for the next 10-15 years, placing and increasing burden on the state and my generation as they draw Social Security and Medicare? Baby Boomers.

Apologies if I offended anyone, but I just find a great deal of irony in my parents' generation (that would be you Baby Boomers) complaining about "kids these days." FYI, Pops, your high school classmates raised today's kids. Want to get angry, call your classmates in the class of 1969.

[CitizenBBN]

Most historians trace this back to the generation who raised the boomers. In post WWII America life was far more prosperous than pre WWII America. We became far more suburban, jobs took another significant shift to higher paid manufacturing and white collar work and away from agriculture (happened in the post Civil War era as well).

The "Greatest Generation" was born in a world where you went to work far younger and the nation while prosperous wasn't the same as 1950s America. They then lived through the depression and WWII and when they came home and had kids they set about giving their kids things they didn't have, like a childhood.

This is when the whole concept of "teenager" began. There was no such thing pre WWII in the "let them enjoy their childhood" way of thinking. It was "do your chores".

the reason most here will have had a different boomer experience is they are from the south, which was still very agricultural and lacked the high paying jobs that led to more leisure time and less demand on children to do much of anything. our group will be on the farther end of that distribution.

The "boomers" were Woodstock and hippies. Again not so much in the south, but it's hard to argue the boomers set the nation on a path of social liberalism and a focus on everything but hard work and capitalism. again, the south had a very different experience than the coasts.

So IMO you're both right. The experience of most here will be hard work and responsibility, but overall the boomers were the first "teenagers" and the first to embrace consumption over production. The "we generation" and the "me generation" were boomers. The liberal movement was created by them. not ALL of them, but it came from that generation.

They then raised a generation that gives consumption over production thinking a whole new meaning. SOME of the boomers were useless and misguided, many if not most of this generation now fits that mold.

if you want to blame anyone blame the Greatest Generation for maybe enjoying the spoils of war (the US the only industrial economy left standing) a little too much.

This is an historic reality. Societies are built by hard work and people who are hungry for more, and go into decline as they begin to consume the wealth that was created rather than add to it. Every great nation has suffered he same fate, and so are we. We're just doing it WAY faster on both sides than ever before.

[CitizenBBN]

FWIW you see it in families as well. There's an old rule of thumb that the 1st generation makes it, the 2nd maintains it and the 3rd spends it. by having wealth you lose the life lessons and real world experience that allows for its creation.