According to the Daily Mail, the latest American Freshman Survey, which has accumulated data for the past 47 years from 9 million young adults, revealed a few worrying trends among American youth.
Psychologist Jean Twenge, lead author of the analysis of the Survey, found that over the last four decades there has been a dramatic rise in the number of students who believe themselves to be gifted in the areas of academic ability, drive to succeed, mathematical ability, and self-confidence. However, at the same time, there appears to be an alarming disconnect between these high opinions and the fact that objective test scores show the abilities of these students has actually been declining over time.
Students of today are also spending less time studying than their counterparts in the 1960s. Fifty years ago, the same survey found half of all students saying they studied six or more hours a day. In the latest survey, only a third of respondents claimed to study as much.
During the same time-period, traits such as cooperativeness, understanding others, and spirituality either stayed the same or decreased slightly over the same time period.
What worries researchers is that when the drive to succeed meets with the cold hard realities of life, the impact of these unrealistic expectations on inflated egos means an increasing number of depressed adults.
"Since the 1960s and 1970s, when those expectations started to grow, there's been an increase in anxiety and depression," Twenge said. "There's going to be a lot more people who don't reach their goals."
The results of this study confirm the findings in another study authored by Twenge which found a 30 percent increase toward narcissism in students since 1979.
Keith Ablow, MD, a psychiatrist and member of the Fox News Medical A-Team, said he was not surprised by the results.
"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."
In an op-ed appearing on the Fox website, Dr. Ablow cited social media sites such as Facebook which allow young people to "fool themselves into thinking they have hundreds or thousands of 'friends'”, to block anyone who disagrees with them, and to post only the best pictures of themselves.
"Using Twitter, young people can pretend they are worth 'following,' as though they have real-life fans, when all that is really happening is the mutual fanning of false love and false fame."
He also cited the reality TV shows featured on stations such as MTV which portray young people's lives "fueled by such incredible self-involvement and self-love that any of the 'real-life' characters should really be in psychotherapy to have any chance at anything like a normal life," he writes.
"These are the psychological drugs of the 21st Century and they are getting our sons and daughters very sick, indeed."
Added to this toxic mix is a daily dose of news about a Congress that can't control "its manic, euphoric, narcissistic spending", a president that refuses to applaud genuine achievement in business, and "a society that blames mass killings on guns, not the psychotic people who wield them."
And through it all, we watch the stock market rise and fall as one "bubble" or another inflates, and then bursts.
"That’s really the unavoidable end, by the way. False pride can never be sustained. The bubble of narcissism is always at risk of bursting. That’s why young people are higher on drugs than ever, drunker than ever, smoking more, tattooed more, pierced more and having more and more and more sex, earlier and earlier and earlier, raising babies before they can do it well, because it makes them feel special, for a while. They’re doing anything to distract themselves from the fact that they feel empty inside and unworthy."
Dr. Ablow warns about an oncoming "epidemic of depression and suicidality, not to mention homicidality, as the real self-loathing and hatred of others that lies beneath all this narcissism rises to the surface."
He's calling for the nation to make a plan to combat this epidemic, which will dwarf the toll of any epidemic we've ever known.
"And it will be the hardest to defeat. Because, by the time we see the scope and destructiveness of this enemy clearly, we will also realize, as the saying goes, that it is us."
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