Posted on 01/09/2013 10:24:53 AM PST by rarestia
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 of a 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.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
not difficult to accept...70% of the students are women....
Congratulations! You're on Free Republic which is . . . a form of social media.
But FR isn’t a popularity contest by how many friends you have or hown many likes you receive or how many tweeters you have following you.
im 18 and its unfortunate that I have to agree with most if not all of this article
I don’t know...the number of slackers has probably risen steadily for 47 years so the students have more reason to consider themselves gifted and driven to succeed by comparison.
Perhaps the real problem is the thrust toward “self-esteem” that permeates our schools and which is the goal of most mental health treatment. Maybe the younger generation should be taught to esteem God and others, rather than themselves.
Not in the contemporary sense.
Prior to the advent of modern social media (e.g. Facebook and Twitter), you had bulletin boards (BBS) and web forums wherein you could pick what sub-forums you wished to browse. You could read a post about dogs or cats or ferrets and at no point were you forced to participate in the forum. If you had an insight or helpful comment to make, you could. Likewise, if you wanted to be a idiot and post your negative views, you could. However, at no point were the contents of those forums posted to a public board. They weren’t editable by the reader population, and no one could force you to read a “status update” on the board unless you configured your client to do so. Participation was completely voluntary.
Now, as outlined in the article, Facebook pages are replete with inanities, stories about the person’s life they hope others will read about and be as enthralled with as they are/were. Updates are forced to “friends.” It’s like a shrine to one’s self and not informative to any particular thing outside of the narcissist posting. Same thing with Twitter. It’s all engineered to promote self-aggrandizement.
Free Republic is a membership forum in which participants read a news article (or vanity) and others are allows to post their comments. This is nothing like social media in the sense that Dr. Ablow is discussing and is more akin to the Elks Lodge or VFW Hall of older days where people sit around and discuss current events in a digital format.
Yeah, one of them is President.
The problem isnt social media, it is the feedback that your average kid receives for doing nothing of note that used to be reserved for people that did great things.
Millions of viewers for a video on youtube of a kid doing something stupid. Hundreds of thousands of people reading dumb things on a Twitter feed. Even more that like your bad instagram photo.
What kid wouldn’t think they were the greatest thing ever? And all it takes is a few moments and some boredom and you too can be bigger that Jesus.
A proper point to make. The militant feminist movement of the 1960s and 1970s sought to make women "equal" with men, and in many ways, they accomplished that end not by the elevation of women but by the condescension of quintessential male-ness.
It's no longer acceptable to the lesbian feminists to hold open doors, allow women to precede through a doorway first, or hire someone based on qualifications. Everything must be central to the most important question: "Is this fair?"
I'm nauseated by the idea of "fairness," and I think if this canard isn't shot, dressed, and stuffed for display on the mantle of human history as a relic, it's going to consume our society in a conflagration of narcissistic rage.
Our current Marxist-in-chief is the leading narcissist.
I couldn’t agree more. Living in CA I am surrounded my narcissists. Go to the mall see all of these teenagers covered from head to toe with piercings and ghastly tattooes. Go to Venice Beach, pot dispensaries all over the place. Television is worse than ever. The only respite I get from TV is METV where I can watch reruns of the Beverly Hillbillies, Hogan’s Heroes, Batman, Lost in Space, and Voyage to the Bottam of the Sea. And these public schools run by these neo Stalinist teachers unions turning our kids heads into mush. All they learn about in history is Dr. MLK Jr and Cesar Chavez. I have had take my child to the Nixon and Reagan Libraries to get a real history lesson. I have told my child never even think about a tattoo or a piercing. I have enrolled her in Catechism. We go to church every week. I see to it that homework gets done before computer games and TV. I think discpline is the key. Our culture sucks. Our country is bankrupt. Our president is Marxist. All the rest of the country had to do was look at my pathetic state. But no. The rest of the nation seems hellbent determined to follow CA’s descent into hell and bankruptcy.
High self esteem is bogus if its not earned. This ‘self esteem” push propaganda tells them they are all great even when its obvious they are worth their salt.
are NOT worth their salt
They know how to text their friends on an Iphone, could Einstein do that?
Iphone = all about ‘I’
I know a 31 year old that was so jealous of our 57 year old VP who is a 30 veteran pilot that we called “Captain Brad” that he refused to address him as such, proclaiming, “F*** him! He doesn’t call me anything special for all MY lifetime achievements!”
Yep, a 31 year old loser demanding equal status to a chief airline 747 captain.
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