Generations: Getting Worse and Worse

The great philosopher Socrates once said: “Our youth now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for their elders and love chatter in place of exercise; they no longer rise when elders enter the room; they contradict their parents, chatter before company; gobble up their food and tyrannize their teachers”. Even though this was said over two thousand years ago, this quotation still can be applied to the generation of today. I'm my opinion, I feel more pessimistic about the youth of today. This is because of the changes that have occurred in my generation; we have become a more materialistic and narcissistic generation.

I Want Everything

In a study conducted by Jean Twenge and Tim Kasser at the San Diego State University, they surveyed over three hundred thousand high school students between 1976-1978 and 2005-2007. The study found that Generation X is more materialistic than those of the Baby Boomers. When asked if it’s important to be financially successful, 62% of students of Generation X said that it was important while only 48% of Baby Boomers said it was. They were then asked the question of whether or not they were willing to work hard to accomplish this. In Generation X, 39% said they wouldn’t want to work very hard to accomplish this compared 25% of the Baby Boomers. Twenge suggest that this could be due to the amount of advertisements the youth are exposed to. She says this is because “advertising rarely shows the work necessary to earn the money necessary to pay for the advertised products”.

Worm in love with itself

Another problem is the rise of narcissism. According to Twenge, she believes that “young people are just completely convinced that in order to succeed they have to believe in themselves or go all the way to being narcissistic”. In a study, they were able to test for narcissism through the Narcissistic Personality Inventory. It’s a questionnaire which asks questions to see if people would choose the narcissistic option or the more empathetic one. Since the test was created in the 1970s it was found that, according to Peter Gray, “approximately 70 percent of students today score higher on narcissism and lower on empathy than did the average student thirty years ago”. The big question is: why is this happening? Although the test results can’t necessarily reveal these answers, there can always be speculation. Gray thinks that this is due to the build-up self-esteem in children. In the 1980s, there was an initiative to increase the self-esteem in children by constantly giving them praise. This is still true today when we get participation awards for everything and anything. In theory, those who believed these fed off these commendations and it led to their rise of narcissism. Gray also speculates that it could be due to the increase in competition, whether it be in sports or school. This increases the focus on one self and the need to be better than everyone.

To say the least, these are the main reasons why I'm so pessimistic about my generation.