Kids These Days Are Overindulged

LIT 031,LO4,LO8 : Kids these days are overindulged. Colin O’Scope (2010)

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Young people in the 2000’s are severely overindulged. This is the result of systematic over- privileging of their needs and viewpoints culminating in a state of confused roles for parents, adults and young people. In the period since WW2, children, teens and youths have enjoyed vastly different conditions and circumstances compared to previous generations. The critical difference is that young people have grown up in a period of unprecedented material affluence and rapid social change, much of which has centred upon redefining childhood and youth and challenging previously held notions of authority, rights and responsibilities, attitudes and behaviours.

From the time a child is born into our affluent, overindulged society, it enters a situation where it is practically worshipped by its parents. For the more affluent members of society, this might mean that the child is provided with inordinate amounts of attention and material goods; it might also mean that it exists within a psychological environment in which the child can do no wrong. Some parents, for example, refuse to say ‘no’ to their own children; some parents are bullied by children who have no experience of failing to get their own way. In most cases, parents feel extreme anxiety about the very role of raising children and, as a result, attempt to cater to the child’s every desire and protect the child from the realities of life.

From a very early age, children are coached in their own rightness and authority in the face of adult authority. If a child is having problems at school or kindergarten, parents automatically assume that the problem lies outside of their child and within the school, and in particular with the teacher. Children are driven everywhere by parents who have become de facto chauffeurs; they receive coaching in a range of different disciplines and want for nothing in a material sense. Mobile phones, internet access, high fashion and expensive holidays are all commonplace commodities for young people.

As young people enter teenage years, many undergo personality changes which they are told are normal but which are, in fact, artefacts or constructions of our particular culture. Young people in these years are encouraged to be assertive about their own needs and rights and to stand their ground in the face of authority. Inappropriate behaviour is excused by the hormonal changes of puberty. Young adults continue to be looked after in their homes as if they are still small children

1 and little is asked of them in return. If they have a part-time job, they do not usually share the burden of household expenses but use their income to indulge in more of the rewards our society has to offer.

In previous generations, a teenager was perceived as a young adult who might even be employed full time in the workforce. Economic constraints meant that a person in their teens might have to contribute substantially to the welfare of the entire family by working or doing duties to maintain the functioning of the house. Autonomous (independent) teen parenthood was not unusual. By contrast, throwing a tizzy fit and demanding to have one’s own way would have been looked upon as a form of mental instability and people who consistently flouted parental or societal authority usually bore the consequences.

Young people in the 2000’s see few consequences for their actions. Parents and schools have few consequences that they can implement and those few are usually not perceived as threatening or sufficiently coercive, so little change occurs. After years of informing youth about their rights, of refusing to say no, of encouraging assertion, the parent or teacher confronted with a bullying adolescent usually tries (unsuccessfully) to persuade the adolescent to do the right thing. However, there are only weak consequences for doing the wrong thing and few incentives for doing the right thing. Suspensions are seen as a holiday and, when you get rewarded no matter how you behave, why bother changing.

Walking through the nightclub strip on any Friday night and witnessing the wanton disrespect exhibited by young people towards the police, other young people and the general public, leaves one in no doubt that the youth of today have no sense of propriety, decency or justice and that this is the result of a worldview which has been forming since childhood which leads them to believe that they are not accountable and that nothing should stand in the way of their behavioural choices, no matter how inappropriate or harmful.

Young offenders display these social trends in the extreme. Adolescents who commit crimes such as armed robbery, rape and murder are sent to juvenile justice centres around Australia. One would expect that after committing such heinous crimes that offenders would be punished by stringent conditions and the denial of privileges. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Offenders in these institutions go on to offend on the inside, assaulting youth workers and other staff as well as each other. There is no expectation that youths in these settings will conform to rules and, instead, they form small gangs, terrorise others and damage property. They are simply not accountable and, apparently, no one has the authority to make them accountable. The “social 2 worker” ethic which has permeated most theory and practice in juvenile justice settings suggests that offenders need to be treated delicately in order to be rehabilitated. However, humane treatment does not exclude the need for stringent rules and regulations and, above all, accountability and consequences. Currently few offenders are being rehabilitated because they are learning that crime does pay and that the punishments are trivial. A holiday with your sociopathic mates with sporting facilities, movies, good food, interesting activities and innocent people to terrorise is hardly a punishment.

While most young people are not criminals, the systematic inculcation of this new worldview means that young people feel at liberty to go wild on footy trips, schoolies vacations and muck- up week. Generation Y are notorious for walking away from jobs anytime they feel bored or annoyed. The new generations spawned on this new worldview walk away from marriage in record numbers. If something gets difficult, they just walk away and find another partner or another job. The problem can’t be them, it must be everyone else.

The responsibility for this overindulgence lies at the feet of a few generations of parents who may themselves have been overindulged. While overindulged children are victims of their parents’ parenting style, they are not unwitting participants in their own lives; they too make choices. Unfortunately poor choices are often reinforced by parents, institutions and other members of society. Several years ago, the federal government issued a homeless youth allowance. The allowance was set up to protect young people who had left home to escape abuse. However, the concept of abuse became systematically broadened to encompass a dislike of parental authority and applied to young people who may have left home and subsequently become homeless simply because they couldn’t bear to conform to normal household rules such as attending school, coming home at a reasonable hour or behaving in a civilised manner to other family members. Ironically, youths who had left home on this pretext became even more vulnerable to real abuse on the streets. This didn’t stop the government subsidising the program. Society’s fear of abusing young people or failing to notice and stop abuse has lead to a situation in which authority, power and rights have been handed to many people who simply can’t handle them.

Youth in the 2000’s from a variety of social strata are overindulged in a variety of ways including material overindulgence, laissez faire parenting, hyper-parenting and in the granting of institutionalised rights and privileges. Social trends and generational patterns of overindulgence tend to contribute to and compound this phenomenon which is itself unusual from an historical perspective. THE CULTURE OF NARCISSISM. 3 Definition: Narcissists have a very positive and inflated view of the “self”, lack empathy, are vain and materialistic and have an overblown sense of entitlement, they believe they are better than others, lack emotionally warm and caring relationships and constantly seek attention.

It is no surprise that narcissism is found to be increasing in modern westernised societies. Popular culture goes out of its way to promote self obsession, self interest and disregard for the rights of others.

Youth culture has progressively become more and more permissive and unaccountable since the nineteen fifties. The nineteen sixties saw the beginnings of teenage rebellion: adults were seen as the enemy, the symbols of an oppressive system and representatives of the man. In the eighties and nineties, child and youth rights became paramount and media space became saturated with youth worship. Young people knew all about their rights but had no concept of their responsibilities. This was a period in which psychologists assisted patients to retrieve non- existent memories of childhood sexual and ritual abuse in a scam known as repressed memory syndrome; a time in history when youth were largely unaccountable while the rest of society felt some unspeakable guilt about failing them in some way. Parents felt guilty for not being good enough and spent most of their time driving their children around from event to event and from theme park to theme park. Out of this context grew the culture of modern narcissism: self obsessed individuals who are largely unaccountable and who feel as if the world owes them.

The internet has become a focal point for self promotion and self obsession. Not only can people promote themselves on sites such as facebook, my space, and YouTube, they can also use these forums to bully others. Reality television programs have also fostered the sense of self importance and self obsession. Apparently, almost everyone in the western world has a talent which needs to be displayed on a talent show, a cooking show or a show about hanging around in a house with other people who also have no particular talent. This is the era of Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie, young women famous for being famous.

According to researchers at San Diego State University, narcissistic traits are increasing even faster than previously thought. From 2002 to 2007, college students' scores on the Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI) rose twice as fast as found previously in a study that covered changes between 1982 and 2006. The increase in narcissism was stronger for women than for men in both datasets. Men are still more narcissistic than women on average, but women are catching up fast. This makes some sense, as a lot of the cultural push toward narcissism has a bigger effect on girls and women. 4 There have been big cultural changes: plastic surgery and procedure rates increased six times in just ten years; materialistic attitudes have increased, and people are more willing to go into debt to afford the best; there is an increase in attention-seeking crimes - for example, ''beating someone up and putting it on YouTube''. Celebrity gossip magazines are more popular while the circulation of other magazines and newspapers has plummeted. The whole society has become more narcissistic - not just the people, but our entire value system. Generations have become progressively more individualistic—more focused on the self and less on social and community issues (The Narcissism Epidemic: Living in the Age of Entitlement, Jean Twenge and W. Keith Campbell, 2009)

In recent research, Professor Twenge found that the rate of narcissism for people in their 20s was three times as high as rates for those over 65. Professor Twenge argues that permissive parenting, celebrity culture and the internet are among the causes of the emerging narcissism epidemic. She said telling children they were special to build self-esteem could foster narcissism. She said narcissistic students tended to have poorer results and were more likely to drop out, probably because they thought they didn't have to study because they were already smart.

Dr. Jim Taylor , Adjunct professor of psychology, University of San Francisco Narcissism: On the Rise in America? Posted: 05/28/11

According to recent research, narcissism is alive and well in America. One study found that 30 percent of young people were classified as narcissistic according to a widely used psychological test. That number has doubled in the last 30 years. Another study reported a 40-percent decline among young people in empathy, a personality attribute inversely related to narcissism, since the 1980s. These findings aren't surprising to anyone who pays attention to the "it's all about me" culture in which we currently live.

One obvious place where young people are learning narcissistic traits is our omnipresent and unrelenting popular culture. A study by the celebrity psychiatrist Dr. Drew, in which 200 "celebrities" completed the Narcissistic Personality Inventory, found that they were significantly more narcissistic than the general population. Interestingly, the celebrities who actually had a real talent (for example, musicians) tended to be less narcissistic. Female reality-TV stars (famous for being famous) were the most narcissistic !

5 Another fascinating study that was just published explored the changes in music lyrics over the past three decades. The researchers found a significant shift toward lyrics that reflect narcissism ("I" and "me" appear more often "we" and "us") and hostility (change from positive to angry words and emotions). And these findings aren't just due to the increased popularity and influence of hip-hop music (which is known for its aggrandizement of the artists and its venom), but rather are evident across musical genres.

It's not surprising to see a rise in narcissism in this generation given that young people are being bombarded by these messages 24/7 through every form of media, the majority of these messages venerating and encouraging narcissism.

The self-esteem movement has likely contributed to this increase in self-adoration. Many parents these days do everything they can to make their children feel good about themselves. The result has been a decline in real self-esteem and an increase in self-love and unjustifiable personal "exceptionalism."

Technology and social media have also done their part to promote narcissism. All of the time spent absorbed in screens has reduced the amount of actual human, face-to-face interaction that children have, thus depriving them of the experiences needed to develop essential social skills such as empathy, compassion and consideration for others.

Certainly, the shift in societal values away from collectivism and toward individualism, away from civic responsibility and toward self-gratification, and away from meaningful contributions to society and toward personal success (as defined by wealth, power and status), have also contributed to the cultural messages of narcissism in which young people are presently immersed.

But the real concern is not the individual narcissists among us, but when our society embraces and accepts narcissism as the norm. In fact, some researchers have argued that the recent rise in narcissism is due more to this generation's willingness to express what they really believe rather than an actual increase in narcissism. But there seems to be a qualitative, rather just a quantitative, shift in so many aspects of our culture that challenge that explanation.

The answer may be a gradual yet inexorable tear in the fabric of our society. Think of all the qualities that enable us to form a functioning and vital nation -- respect, compassion, tolerance, selflessness -- and you will see that they don't exist in the narcissistic personality (or culture). The indifference, egotism, disrespect and lack of consideration that are central to narcissism are also 6 reflective of the increasingly polarized and vitriolic tone of our current body politic, recent unethical corporate behaviour, the rise in cheating among students in school and the gamut of bad behaviour among professional athletes.

1. Generation Y are not more narcissistic, it's just the minority giving the rest a bad name.

2. Narcissism is particularly an Anglo-Saxon phenomenon.

3. Gen Y and Z are much less respectful, less tolerant and more racist simply because they are more honest.

4. Gen Y is not as bad as everybody says.

5. Gen Z is even worse than Gen Y