OP-ED on Narc-book

Everyone I know my age is turning narcissistic. Our attitudes, beliefs, ethics, ideals, personalities and standards are all different from our grandmothers and grandfathers in their prime days. We value our own goals over goals of other groups, political parties and over God. Young people are relating everything down to “Yah, so what? And how is that going to benefit me?” Psychologist Jean Twenge explains in her book “Generation Me”, that these young people were raised with the idea of self-esteem being more important than achievement, which has caused them to place the self above all else. Modern schooling has instilled the idea in us that we can be all that we want to be. We think we are all special and deserve everything.
Technology must always follow suite to a culture. That’s why Facebook was invented and has accumulated so much popularity among users. Facebook is a spectacle of self-promotion! Facebook statistics say the largest age demographic is between 18 and 25. Facebook, alike other social media sites such as MySpace, amuses us and caters to our narcissistic values. We can make our own ‘special’ profiles and use the site to revolve around your favorite person, you! The profile picture usually shows the most You can show everyone how cute, popular and fun you are in your many photo albums of “last weekend” but it’s renamed to something cooler. Some of your pseudo-friends will click the “like button” and openly like your status, picture, or whatever kind of update you have online. It might give you a sense of pride, respect caring, or admiration. As if we are entitled to be little celebrities. We think we deserve the admiration; we narcissists have a grandiose self, as diagnosed in DSM-4. Facebook fosters our narcissism.
Facebook is some sort of result rather than the cause of narcissism. We were accumulating narcissistic traits as a culture trend before the Facebook explosion. In 1979, Christopher Lasch published “The Culture of Narcissism”. London reviews say he revised the Freud concept of the psyche. Instead of explaining the way in which society works from the personality (as Freud did), Lasch argued that social changes (like the adoption of Facebook) brought about change in personalities. Lasch questioned the nature of the society that produces the narcissistic type of personality as a dominant type of personality. He is saying the nature of the society was already changed because it had been changing and heading toward narcissism in the early twentieth century. New methods of schooling, instilling self-esteem into children, and enabling people to be successfully self-sufficient helped the change. I just think Facebook enables us in our continuation of social evolution.
John Timpane of the Philadelphia Inquirer thinks that Facebook confessions could be more of a social shift than narcissism. He says the Facebook generation “assumes they have an audience": They have a mental image of a large group of people interested in postings such as "25 Random Things." Part of their identity rests on an invisible entourage that accompanies them everywhere. Facebookers think they have their own audience and are little celebrities in a way. I think that's alright, it shouldn't be considered a psychological disorder if it doesn't affect your daily life. Most people are incorporating it just fine; they like it, find it helpful in their busy lives to connect to people when they feel like it. This new interactive technology of online social media sites are beneficial to this generation of self-esteemed, entitled, impatient and don't-want-to-be-bored kids.