essay on self centred generation

The New York Times

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Is Your Generation More Self-Centered Than Earlier Generations?

Questions about issues in the news for students 13 and older.

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Is narcissism, or excessive fascination with oneself, increasing? A psychologist, Nathan DeWall, analyzed the language in three decades of hit songs to answer this question, and he thinks it is. “Late adolescents and college students love themselves more today than ever before,” he says. Do you think this is true? Read the related Science Times article to learn about his research, then respond below.

In “A New Generation’s Vanity, Heard Through Lyrics,” John Tierney writes:

Now, after a computer analysis of three decades of hit songs, Dr. DeWall and other psychologists report finding what they were looking for: a statistically significant trend toward narcissism and hostility in popular music. As they hypothesized, the words “I” and “me” appear more frequently along with anger-related words, while there’s been a corresponding decline in “we” and “us” and the expression of positive emotions. “Late adolescents and college students love themselves more today than ever before,” Dr. DeWall, a psychologist at the University of Kentucky, says. His study covered song lyrics from 1980 to 2007 and controlled for genre to prevent the results from being skewed by the growing popularity of, say, rap and hip-hop. … The researchers find that hit songs in the 1980s were more likely to emphasize happy togetherness, like the racial harmony sought by Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder in “Ebony and Ivory” and the group exuberance promoted by Kool & the Gang: “Let’s all celebrate and have a good time.” … Today’s songs, according to the researchers’ linguistic analysis, are more likely be about one very special person: the singer. “I’m bringing sexy back,” Justin Timberlake proclaimed in 2006. The year before, Beyoncé exulted in how hot she looked while dancing — “It’s blazin’, you watch me in amazement.” And Fergie, who boasted about her “humps” while singing with the Black Eyed Peas, subsequently released a solo album in which she told her lover that she needed quality time alone: “It’s personal, myself and I.”

Students: Tell us how you feel about this study and Dr. DeWall’s findings. Do you think young people are more narcissistic today than ever before, or do you think there is some other explanation? For instance, do you think that today’s young people are just more willing to admit to narcissistic feelings that were always there? How would you answer the questionnaire mentioned in the article that asked students to choose between the two statements “I try not to be a show-off” and “I will usually show off if I get the chance”? Why?

Students 13 and older are invited to comment below. Please use only your first name. For privacy policy reasons, we will not publish student comments that include a last name.

Teachers: Here are 10 ways to teach with this feature.

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Its a bit ridiculous to base an entire judgement of society based on lyrics of music. To make such a statement would require a much more pervasive study. This study outlines an interesting trend but does not indicate any kind of causal relationship.

This thought passes through my mind on a daily basis. I grew up in an Australian household where there is potent a “tough-luck” attitude towards everyone and everything; I never got pats on the back for doing the dishes or getting A’s. Normal, mundane achievements to my family were normal mundane achievements. Yet, to every other American family in the area, every “A” grade paper was hung on the fridge; instead of punishing their children for a failing quarter grade, they threatened to sue the teacher. And the infallible smile plastered on the faces of every show-mom and soccer-dad was, quite frankly, just a little sickening. Our youth’s obsession with itself does not just begin with itself, Snookie and Ke$ha. At least from what I saw growing up (and continue to see today), it comes from a healthy dose of over-bearing, over-proud parents, who believe it’s healthier to shower their children with praise than constructive criticism. You don’t need to be a Tiger Mom, but instead of suing the teacher for every “F” that your child gets, why not ask yourselves what they might be doing wrong, first?

I do see our generation more self centered. We ask for more and try to make ourselves look better than what we really are. Everyone has a little self centeredness in them. It’s a human thing. We can’t help it but it’s true. Some people more than others but still. But even my little sisters generation which is 9 years younger than I am has it worse I think. Just today she said she hopes that she gets more presents than she did last year for her birthday. That right there shows how self centered anyone can be. Like seven year old.

I don’t think our generation is more self centered. I just think that the singers now in days are starting to write lyrics more about their life and themselves. But late adolescents and college students might love themselves more because maybe they can relate to the lyrics that are in the songs. And how some people have favorite singers that they really like because of their lyrics that they make. So that might tend to make teenagers feel a lot better about themselves then they used to.

It is unscientific to say as of now that my generation is becoming more self-centered because the lyrics in the music my generation likes is also self-centered. More study is necessary especially on how other forms of media has affected young people. However, music has been proven to affect the brain and from what I see in students in my grade (senior) to my sister’s grade (7th grade), narcissism is growing exponentially by descending grade to the point that most of the seventh graders (excluding my sister) are jerks! God help us all!

i think the youth is more self centerd. because we belive we are better than other people. that is the biggest reason why.

I do agree that lyrics have become more narcissistic because most of the popular songs seem to be very self centered. But the music i listen to, rock music which is a little more original and they use the terms “we” and “us” like in one of my favorite songs lyrics, “This is how we’ll stand when when they try to take us down”. I think its just the music style to be all about them for the modern hip hop genre.

Our generation is very self centered. Just look at facebook and the billions of people taking dozens of pictures in the restroom. But what do you expect since we were children we have been praised and glorified for just being alive.

Yes! Very! Kids now are very self centered. All they care about is fashion, styles, and gossiping. They don’t exactly think there is more to teenage life than those things. So, yes my generation is more self centered. JB WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAS HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEERE!!!

I do see more self-centered these days. People love the way they look. Because THATS the only way people like agree with you. They always care about fashion, hair, make-up, and MIRRORS. Lots of people think that they are WAY better than other people when they are actually not. And they NEED to face the truth. What I have learned from living in these days, that people will do anything to survive. So people will make sure that they don’t die. 😉 TAYLOR WAS HERE! CHECK MY COMMENT AND BE SMART! LUV YA! BUH-BYE!

I kind of think our generation is more self-centered because I know a lot of kids who don’t want to give, they just want to receive. I know that kids like to receive, because you get things, but I think it is better to give because you get to help people. I like to help people in need, and I like to know that I helped someone and I like the feeling of doing good. Most people that are the generation before like to give a little more because they grew up before all the electronics and the things that kids become self-centered about were created.

well yeah my crazy sister is so self sintered it makes me sick. Its all about here when it comes down to moms favorite child. some times i say some specificly harribly rude words to her face.

Although I like the idea of the study, I’m not sure it really proves that my generation is the most conceited so far.

Although I did not live in the 1960’s, the characters of Mad Men seem as conceited to me as the people of my generation. Would they also enjoy my generation’s music — music with lyrics about being the best at everything including inducing the opposite sex to fall for them? I think so.

The article I’m responding to cherry-picks lyrics from the lowest of music. Although it is the most popular music, it’s because the lyrics are about something everyone can relate to: wanting to be the best. The author of the article forgot to include lyrics like the following from the hip-hop group Atmosphere (a group that mostly young people know): “How’s the love? How’s the music? How’s the self-abusiveness?” That line is directed at himself, yet I can relate. So can many young people.

The pop music industry is in the business of selling a fantasy. Who wants to listen to Johnny Cash talk about wanting to kill himself when they’re on their way to a party? I think most people would much rather listen to music that reminds them why they should approach that guy or girl: because they’re the best, so forget the rest.

Yes, I think that our genoration is more self centered because everything is about them. Alot of people dont care about anybody and they wont lift a finger to help someone in need.

Yes i do believe our generation is much more self-centered, because we have much more technology, and other things that make us that way. Many people care about them,and themselves only,they dont care about anyone else. I think that people should start caring about other peoples needs more but still about themselves.

I don’t know if I completely agree with this because it’s just based on song lyrics. Just because all the rich celebrities that sing these songs are self-centered doesn’t mean that the rest of us are…

I think that this generation is more self-centered because growing up we were taught to go after what we want and do it with any means necessary. This is why kids now only care about themselves because when they were younger they were taught that all they need to do to succeed is be the best.

I think today’s generation is more self centered. But it is not the music it is the way the people are being raised. I mean parents should not let their children parade themselves like this. Music in a way does have effect on people but it is the same in the 70s too. I mean look at the rock band and even the Beatles what they did had a lot of effect on how many people did drugs. Today’s music like Ke$ha and Lady Gaga are people parading themselves half naked on a stage and intoxicated, these are the idols kids are looking up to change that.

It is ridiculous just to base this off of music. Yes, it might be possible that we are more self-centered, but music is not great evidence

I feel that our generation is more self-centered than previous ones, but is not necessarily linked with music. In the 1950s and 1960s, for example, children were always very respectable towards their elders. Today, young people still respect elders to an extent but also think of themselves and their thoughts more. Young people now, in my opinion, are more focused on getting their opinions out there to make a statement. But I don’t think music lyrics are necessarily linked with narcissism. Personally, when a musician talks about themselves in a song, I usually connect those lyrics with my life; I find a way to make them relatable.

I do think our generation has become more self-centered. However, at the same time I think there are more problems with teenagers today. More and more teens are developing different disorders. Whether it’s eating disorders or cutting, it seems like no one is happy with who they are.

Ah. Here’s the classic argument. It seems that every generation must face this at one point: the scrutiny of its previous generations. What we have done wrong. What about what we’ve done right? More kids go to college and recycle these days. Here’s a question, if my generation is so sonceited, why is there a sudden increase in the amount of plastic surgery people have? An increase in eating disorders? I must agree, there seems to be a larger number of vain celebrities, possibly because of the rise of reality TV stars, who are worshipped as Gods. Also, people may be more vain because of the role media has taken in our life: it dominates everything, how we think and feel about ourselves, what we wear, watch, and listen to. And, right now the media’s main focus is making sure EVERYONE knows that to be a good person you must have the perfect wardrobe, be very beautiful, and very thin. So, that’s what celebrities are. I don’t see a huge rise in kids around me suddenly become conceited, arrogant snots. I see the same unsure, insecure teens that my parents and grandparents saw in their generation.

I don’t really agree with the proof this article has to offer that this generation is more self-centered than previous generations. Firstly, they are using lyrics created by celebrities and songwriters who knows how to earn millions of dollars by creating catchy tunes with sometimes obnoxious lyrics. The general public are not like these celebrities, and although they may dance to the songs, it does not meant they agree with the song. They may even mock and laugh at the song, joking that they are the greatest people in the world, but it’s more like fun mockery than actual conformity to what the the singer is saying. Also, you can find plenty of obnoxious lyrics from this generation but you can also find many bands who want to make the world a better place and who use “nicer” lyrics, just like you can find self-centered songwriting from previous generations. I think, like many articles that try to examine this generation, this article generalized too much and did not put enough thought into what’s going on in the human mind but into test scores and celebrities. In the New Yorker recently there was an article about “The Me Generation” that was written by a man years ago about our parent’s generation….people the same age as the writers writing this story. Now suddenly our generation is the “me generation.” Will we dump the same legacy on our children? Perhaps we should just sum it up to miscommunication between generations.

I feel as if it is quite ridiculous to base a whole generations’ opinions and actions based on song lyrics. Many adults perform various studies on our generation based on popular song lyrics and facebook postings. However, their conclusions based on the studies are very one-sided and gravitate only toward the teens that are very self-centered or the teens that have no self-esteem what-so-ever. The people that conduct these studies forget about the people in between. The problem with the technological era we are living in now is that one can never tell another’s true identity since they are hiding behind a computer. Thus, one’s facebook page may be loaded with pictures of themselves, but that act of narcissism may not be evident through face-to-face conversation. Though technologies like facebook and twitter help drive teens’ image of themselves up or down, I feel as if we are not any more or less self-centered than any other generation.

I do think my generation is becoming self-centered. On facebook, you see girls posing for their profile pictures, leaning into their camera, sometimes wearing inappropriate or revealing clothing. At the bottom, their friends send her dozens of comments saying how pretty she is. I admit to doing this. Everyone likes to be told that they look nice. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but I feel like a lot of it is just fishing for compliments. Is music a reflection or an instigator of teenage narcissism? I’m not so sure, but if is a cause of it, it is definitely not the only one.

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Are younger generations truly weaker than older ones?

Younger cohorts are often stereotyped as being lazy, entitled or self-obsessed – and have been for centuries. Is there something to this perception?

From being branded ‘snowflakes’ to being accused of prioritising buying avocados over houses, younger generations are enduringly maligned as somehow weaker, less hard-working or less resilient than their older counterparts. This isn’t a new phenomenon; after all, people have complained about ‘kids these days’ for decades. But is there really any truth in the idea that millennials and Gen Z are weaker than Boomers or Gen X?

Evidence shows newer generations do, indeed, measure highly on traits that their older counterparts might consider as a sign of weakness. Yet experts also believe that Baby Boomers (born roughly between 1946 and 1964) and Gen X (born between 1965 and 1980) might be judging the generations that succeed them much too harshly, and measuring them against standards that have long ceased to be the norm.

Generational context could be key to narrowing divides between decades – yet looking down on young adults is such a long-established and innate instinct that it might be impossible to undo.

Myth versus reality

People have complained about younger generations for thousands of years . In fact, looking down on the generation that comes after you could simply be human nature. “The tendency for adults to disparage the character of youth has been happening for centuries,” says Peter O’Connor, a professor of management at Queensland Institute of Technology, Australia.

He points out the stereotype remains alive and well, with research showing thousands of Americans believe that ‘kids these days’ lack positive qualities that participants associate with older generations. But this wasn’t necessarily because the youths of today actually did lack these qualities – the researchers argued that this was because we project our current selves onto our past selves. By doing this, older people are unconsciously comparing who they are today to today’s young people, giving an impression that today’s youth is somehow on the decline, no matter the decade we’re living in.

In early February, British property guru Kirstie Allsopp incited rage after saying it was young people’s own fault they couldn’t afford to buy a home. Allsopp, who purchased her own first house with family help in the 90s , suggested today’s wannabe-buyers spent too much money on ‘luxuries’, such as Netflix and gym memberships, instead of saving for a deposit.

Allsopp’s words were the latest in a string of high-profile remarks about how young people today aren’t prepared to make the same sacrifices that older generations did, or aren’t as tough as their parents or grandparents once were.

In 2017, Australian real estate mogul Tim Gurner similarly suggested youngsters spent too much money on avocado toast instead of homes (in spite of house prices in many parts of Australia doubling in the last ten years , while wages have only risen by 30%). In 2016, the phrase “Generation Snowflake” was added to the Collin’s English Dictionary to describe adults born from 1980 to 1994 who were ‘less resilient and more prone to taking offence than previous generations’. And think-pieces are already emerging about the Gen Zers refusing to work nine-to-five , or questioning why they need to be in the office full-time – an echo of the ‘entitled millennial’ trope of the 2010s , which is only just beginning to fade from view.

An outdated standard

Older generations might still suspect they’re hardier than today’s youth – but can this even be measured?

Some experts think so. One 2010 study that examined millennials graduating university between 2004 and 2008 showed that they had more traits associated with low resilience than people who graduated before 1987. Other research has demonstrated that neuroticism and a need for recognition have increased in younger generations, while one 2012 study suggested that youth are more self-centered than they were in the past.

Yet for many experts, these measures don’t point to younger generations being weaker than older ones. Instead, they are simply ways of judging a generation shaped by a modern and technologically-focused society by the standards of decades ago. 

“Prior generations were taught to repress instead of express, but for newer generations it’s the other way around,” says Dr Carl Nassar, a mental health professional at LifeStance Health, who regularly works with adolescents and families struggling with generational divides. “That’s caused a perceptual rift, with older generations seeing this expression as a sign of weakness, because they were taught that vulnerability is a weakness and not strength.”

Nassar believes that the trope of younger generations being weaker is largely anecdotal, and is based on a mismatch between how different generations express their problems, which could skew data on how resilient they really are. This is an idea echoed by Jennifer Robison, a senior editor at US analytics and polling company Gallup.

“Gen X and Boomers have troubles, too, but voicing them feels unprofessional,” she says. “So, what appears to be needy or ‘snowflake-y’ in the young may actually just be the social norm of transparency.”

The oft-cited idea that millennials and Gen Z act in selfish ways that prevent them from getting on the property ladder is one example of how difficult it is to judge a generation by a decades-old standard. Homeowning Boomers, who were in early adulthood in a period of widespread economic prosperity , probably remember scrimping and saving to buy their first house. Now enjoying the spoils of homeownership , they begin to believe that young people who are unable to do the same are weaker than them. This ignores the problem of rocketing house prices , stagnating wages and the rise of insecure work , all of which prevents people getting mortgages.

Similarly, older generations might point to the fact that Gen Z are the most depressed and anxious generation as a sign of their lack of resilience, forgetting that this is a generation coming to adulthood during a global pandemic, in a period of unprecedented loneliness and widespread economic insecurity . The different generations, and the challenges that they face, are not comparable.

“The reality is that Gen Z is coming of age facing a variety of challenges that other generations have not faced at the same life stage, most notably the Covid-19 pandemic and the always-on pressure of social media directly to their smartphone,” says Jason Dorsey, president of the Center for Generational Kinetics, a generations research firm based in Austin, Texas. “Add in the mental-health challenges of social distancing and isolation during the pandemic, distance-learning challenges and all the formative elements of young adulthood, and it's easy to see why the generation is feeling like it’s a challenging time.”

A product of their time

Each generations’ actions and beliefs are shaped by their own unique problems and challenges. Boomers and Gen X might have grown up without the convenience of smartphones, but they also didn’t have to battle with the complexities of growing up online – likely prompting the need for recognition and self-centered traits uncovered in some studies.

Similarly, older generations might not have had the same access to education as younger generations, but they were also more likely to obtain a middle-class job without a college degree, and aren’t saddled with crippling levels of student debt .

And, on the other side of things, Gen Zers might believe that their parents’ or grandparents’ generation did not fight hard enough against social issues, such as climate change and financial inequality (an argument which prompted the viral rise of ‘OK Boomer’ , a phrase intended to disparage their older counterparts).

Yet they also may forget that many of them had to battle against other societal problems, such as starker forms of sexism and racial inequality. After all, when some older Boomers were in early adulthood, women still had to get a man to co-sign a credit application to buy a house in many countries, and interracial marriages were still banned in some US states – laws that people had to fight hard to overturn.

The truth is older generations have been accusing their predecessors of being lazy, entitled and self-obsessed for centuries. We seem almost compelled to judge people who grew up in a different time to us – and the ability to share memes poking fun at overly-woke Gen Zers or wealth-hoarding Boomers only deepens divides.

Dorsey believes that there is a way around this – but that generational context is key to debunking the persisting weakness myth.

“It’s awareness of what these different generations have gone through, why they are the way they are,” he says. “The best way to get older generations to stop dumping on younger generations is to create a dialogue that simply does not exist right now. Instead of having candid conversations across multiple generations, we have viral memes that say younger people are snowflakes and older people are dinosaurs. But the truth is that we’re all human.”

Additional reporting by Bryan Lufkin