Narcissism: Live It

From USA Today: "In her new book, The Narcissism Epidemic: Living in the Age of Entitlement, psychologist Jean Twenge of San Diego State University and co-author W. Keith Campbell of the University of Georgia say research shows more young people today have 'narcissistic traits' than in previous generations. Such traits, Twenge says, include a very positive and inflated sense of self, which is illustrated by a preoccupation with MySpace, Facebook and YouTube."

Well, color me not surprised. I don't need a book to fall on my head, or slap me in the face, or back me into a corner to know that narcissism and entitlement are on the rise among young adults. Hello, I work in public relations. But I don't know if I would place the blame squarely on social media platforms, I mean, let's also cast an eye of scorn and judgement upon those parents who still cut the crust off their children's sandwiches well into their twenties. They've crippled a generation of people who can can't string a sentence together or tie their sholeaces - these are also the same people who took out loans on homes they could not afford and spent spent spent money that just wasn't there and have burned our economic system into the ground. These folks didn't have Facebook pages and certainly weren't tweeting about their reckless spending, but sure enough their entitlement has become everyone's problem. And let's not forget our former president, the poster child of the entitled, narcissistic baby boomers who took us to war to make sure the Real Housewives of wherever have gas for their Hummers.

So, there's lots of blame to go around with lots of living and breathing culprits at the top of the list of suspects for the epidemic of me-me-me.