How often does an opportunity come along to blame a) the kids, b) the Internet, and c) the self-esteem movement for every ill that besets 21st century society? If you answered "every five minutes" you'd be approximately correct. This state of affairs has unfortunately not dampened media enthusiasm for these linked themes. The press has had a field day with the recent publication of Generation Me: Why Today's Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled -- and More Miserable Than Ever Before by Jean M. Twenge, a professor at San Diego State University.

Check out the lurid cover. Good Lord, that's it! Slutty MySpace girls are taking over the world! Just look at that tattoo (tsk), and that belly-button bauble (tsk-tsk), and... wait... is that an iPod in her pocket?!?!

Never mind that no self-esteeming narcissist would ever be caught dead in a tat that ugly.

But let's back up a second. In my personal view: a) the kids are alright, b) the worst danger of the Internet is that it so perfectly reflects the values of global capitalism, and c) the self-esteem movement was indeed one of the biggest boondoggles ever visited upon a terminally gullible America.

Note, however, that with the possible exception of the kids being alright, these are complex concepts that require more than hysterical sound-bites to unpack. Most germane to the book in question, the relationship between "self-esteem" and what the DSM-IV calls Narcissistic Personality Disorder calls for an intelligent examination of both pop buzzwords and psychoanalytic diagnostic criteria to differentiate between cultural inclination and genuine pathology. For instance, being told from birth that you are "Special," that "You Go, Girl!" and suchlike ego-affirmative formulations will probably not make you mentally ill. It may, however, in later life, make you indistinguishable from the village idiot.

The Publishers Weekly review of Generation Me observes:

Twenge argues that those born after 1970 are more self-centered, more disrespectful of authority and more depressed than ever before. When the United States started the war in Iraq, she points out, military enlistments went down, not up.

May I be permitted a resounding "Duh!" here? Hell, I was born in 1947, and since 1970 I've been a lot more depressed myself -- starting with the whole disco thing. As to a lack of authority-respecting gung-ho for the recolonization of Iraq, that seems hardly confined to some ill-delimited cadre of navel-gazing "young people."

Wrapping up its contribution to the feeding frenzy, The Chicago Trib quotes Nancy Baym, associate professor of communication studies at the University of Kansas, as follows...

"We should start thinking of ourselves as brands and control our message," Baym says. "That's what we're doing when we put ourselves out there. People don't have a sense of their identity as something they have property rights to."

From: Narcissism on the Internet isn't risk-free.
Source: Chicago Tribune (Chicago, IL), March 14, 2007.
Via: HighBeam™ Research
COPYRIGHT 2007 Chicago Tribune

To close this brief rant, let me suggest that with brains like Nancy Baym and Jean M. Twenge holding university posts and using them as bully pulpits to impart such "wisdom" to our young, we need look no further for the source of our civilizational discontent. Enlist in the Army and Brand Yourself. Why, the argument is so inherently powerful, so intrinsically persuasive, I can already see kids bailing out of YouTube in droves, heading for a brave new dawn of cultural concern and social commitment.

Sure, that'll happen. Hold your breath.