Too Much Confidence: Good, Bad, or Both?

Youth today can be seen to have either an optimistic or pessimistic future. Personally, I am very pessimistic of today’s’ youth. I don’t believe that the majority of today’s youth can reach their full potential and achieve true success. I think this because I believe youth today think they know things/information about life, work, school, themselves when they don’t. This might be because they choose to hear what they want to hear or simply because they only listen to half the things being said because they find it unimportant to them.

New research from Jean Twenge claims that “young Americans are surer than ever of their own self-worth and superiority to their peers.” In fact, four out of five students ranked themselves as being “above average” students.

Now I believe there are two types of arrogance: good and bad arrogance. I feel that Justin Beiber is the epitome of bad arrogance. He is stuck up, self-centered, full of himself, over-confident, and thinks he knows what life is all about. Although, people like Mark Zuckerberg, Emma Watson, and Tavi Gevinson are examples of good arrogance. They use their confidence to continue striving to reach their full potential and give hope for a better youth in the future.

Emma Watson - telegraph.co.uk

Mark Zuckerberg - nbcnews.com

Tavi Gevinson - finerminds.com

Justin Beiber guardian.com

           So you might ask yourself “so what’s the problem?” To which I would answer “there is no problem!” According Hannah Furness of The Telegraph, “researchers in the University of California found that over confidence is often driven by a desire for a higher social status and that pursuit of this status often resulted in more material and career rewards”     

However, there is a catch to having a high level confidence. Tomas Chamorro-Permuzie of the Harvard Business Review believes that people with a certain degree of self-doubt have a better chance at reaching their full potential. Why? Because they push themselves harder. Chamorro-Permuzie thinks that “to be the very best at anything, you need to be your hardest critic.” The issue with overly confident people is that they are incapable to deal with criticism or failure and will therefore not be able to learn from their mistakes to improve themselves. Based on this, I can assume that since youth today are overly-confident they don’t think that they have to listen to thing that don’t pertain to them which leads them to listening to only the things the want to hear. And the consequence of only listening to what they want to hear causes them to think they know things/information about life, work, school, themselves when they don’t which finally leads them to becoming arrogant and ignorant. Hence, I am very pessimistic of today's youth.   

Photo retrieved from weknowmemes.com