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The externalization of children’s self-identities caused by the omnipresence of popular culture and social media today, that I discussed in my last post, has resulted in an unhealthy internal focus on the self among young people these days.

Do you recall the story of Narcissus? The handsome fellow in Greek mythology who, because of his indifference and disdain toward others, was punished by the gods by falling in love with his own image. He was so enrapted by his beauty that he was unable to pull himself away from his own reflection in a pool of water and wasted away and died.

Just so we are all on the same wavelength, narcissism is a personality characteristic associated with self-absorption, egocentrism, an overestimation of one’s own importance and abilities, a sense of entitlement, and a disregard for others. According to recent research, Narcissus has spawned many offspring in our current generation and narcissism is alive and well and living in America. One study found that 30 percent of young people were classified as narcissistic according to a widely used psychological test. That number has doubled in the last 30 years. Another study reported a 40 percent decline in empathy among young people, a personality attribute inversely related to narcissism, since the 1980s. These findings aren’t surprising to anyone who pays attention to the “it’s all about me” culture that we currently live in. So what has caused this rise in narcissism and what impact will it have on our children and our society as a whole?

One obvious place where young people are learning about narcissism is from popular culture. A study by the celebrity psychiatrist Dr. Drew Pinsky, in which 200 “celebrities” (I put the word in quotes because the bar for being considered a celebrity is set very low these days) completed the Narcissistic Personality Inventory, found that they were significantly more narcissistic than the general population. Interestingly, the celebrities who actually had a talent, such as musicians, tended to be less narcissistic. Guess who were the most self-absorbed celebrities? Female reality TV stars! Not surprising that those celebrities who were famous for being famous were the most narcissistic; their narcissism drove them to become celebrities.

Another fascinating study explored the changes in music lyrics over the past three decades. The researchers found a significant shift toward lyrics that reflect narcissism (“I” and “me” appear more often “we” and “us”) and hostility (change from positive to angry words and emotions). These findings aren’t just due to the increased popularity and influence of hip-hop music (which is known for its self-absorption, aggrandizement of the artists and the venom of its messages), but rather are evident across musical genres. You don’t need to go far to collect your own data on narcissism. Do these names ring a bell: Charlie Sheen, Terrell Owens, and Kanye West?

It’s not surprising to see a rise in narcissism in this generation given that young people are being bombarded by these messages through every form of media including recent technological advancements such as celebrity web sites and social networking sites. Other research suggests that social media web sites, such as Facebook, are receptacles of narcissism because it gives young people outlets for sharing the trivial and gaining attention. Additionally, simply the time spent immersed in technology has likely done its part to promote narcissism. All of the time absorbed in screens has reduced the amount of actual human (i.e., face-to-face) contact that children have, thus depriving them of the experiences needed to develop essential social skills, such as empathy, compassion, and consideration for others, which counter narcissism.

Here’s the truly disturbing part: How can children these days avoid being infected with this “disease” when, thanks to the wired world they live in, the majority of messages they receive venerate and encourage narcissism?

The self-esteem movement and the recent shift toward “hyper-parenting” have also likely contributed to this increase in self-adoration. Though the specific causes of narcissism have not been confirmed, researchers have identified a number of child-rearing risk factors including: 1) being praised for innate qualities such as physical appearance, intelligence, or other abilities; 2) praise that is inconsistent with reality; 3) extreme rewards for good behavior and undue criticism or punishment for bad behavior; 4) being spoiled and excessively indulged by parents; and 5) parents whose self-esteem is overly invested in their children achievements. Additionally, children who are born with a sensitive temperament are more vulnerable to these parenting approaches.

In addition to the unsettling rise in narcissism among our children, perhaps a greater concern is that our culture now seems to not only accept, but also promote narcissism as the norm. Certainly, the shift in societal values away from collectivism and toward individualism, away from civic responsibility and toward self-gratification, and away from meaningful contributions to society and toward personal success (as defined by wealth, power, celebrity, and status) have also contributed to the cultural messages of narcissism in which children are presently immersed.

There is no doubt that narcissists in popular culture are worshipped (narcissism = cool) and the new technology is used to a great extent to feed that narcissism to the masses (how else to explain why the actor Ashton Kutcher would have over seven million followers!). Additionally, the indifference, egotism, disrespect, and lack of consideration that are central to narcissism are also reflective of the increasingly polarized and vitriolic tone of our current body politic, recent unethical corporate behavior, the rise in cheating among students in school, and the gamut of bad behavior among professional athletes. Not surprisingly, children who are continuously exposed to these messages will likely fall prey to these messages.

The discussion to this point leads me to ask two questions that I find downright scary. First, what effect will this increasingly normalized culture of narcissism have on our children’s development including their self-identities, self-esteem, values, and aspirations? Think of all the qualities that enable your children to become healthy and contributing members of our society — hard work, respect, compassion, tolerance, selflessness — and you will see that they don’t exist in the narcissistic personality or the culture in which it is fostered.

Second, what will be the influence of future generations of narcissistic children turned adults on the direction of popular culture and our society as a whole? Think about it. The current generation of parents were at least raised in a time that was less narcissistic and more grounded in healthy values and attitudes (even if many adults have now gone to the “dark side”). Imagine a society comprised of the current generation of children soon to be adults who know of no other world other the present, “it’s all about me,” one dominated popular culture and technology.

I don’t have a crystal ball, so I can’t look into the future and see what the answers to these questions are. But if what is happening now to our children and in our society is any indication, it’s difficult to hold out much hope for the future.

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In my last post, I described how new media is causing the externalization of children’s self-identity. The result of this externalization may be your children developing a false self, in which they internalize the messages of popular culture and media, such as valuing themselves based on their wealth, appearance, or popularity, and those messages become the foundation of their self-identity.

The development of the false self grounded in the unrelenting messages from the many forms of media enables them to meet the demands of the “manufactured” world of so-called popular culture they are immersed in. Yet, the cost is high, namely, the creation of a false self that is incongruent with their true self, a self-identity that is an authentic expression of who they really are and the otherwise healthy world in which they live.

The false self is constructed to satisfy the needs of popular culture, in particular, to generate more profit for those companies that control popular culture. Its emphasis on those needs, for example, materialism, physical appearance, popularity, and celebrity, results in children feeling psychologically, emotionally, and socially “undernourished” because these aspects of the false self don’t satisfy their most basic needs for love, security, competence, and connection. In the absence of real meaning and fulfillment in their lives, children become dependent on media to meet the immediate and superficial needs of the externally constructed false self that provides them with only the bare minimum of “nourishment” to survive.

Children who are allowed to immerse themselves in media without guidance or limits are faced with a choice that really isn’t a choice: They can remain true to their emerging self-identity and forsake what they perceive as acceptance and validation by much of their social world (which is largely controlled by media these days). Or they can accept the false self that has been contrived by popular culture and ensure its ongoing esteem, however unhealthy it is. As children’s exposure to popular media grows, so does the pressure to repress their burgeoning true self, with its positive perspectives and healthy needs, and allow their false self, with its faulty judgments and dangerous prohibitions, to gain dominance.

Here is a wake-up call for you: If your own messages are reinforcing the projected identities of today’s media, your children have little chance but to capitulate to the externalized identity that is being forced on them. Imagine the two most powerful forces in their lives, namely, media and you, sending them the same messages to forsake their internally emerging self-identity for one that is in direct conflict with their own. The need to gain love and approval from you and to be accepted and valued by popular culture gives them no other option than to bury their true self-identity deep inside of them and allow the false self to come to the fore and assert control.

On their own, it’s virtually impossible for your children to resist the external identity and false self being imposed on them by media. Your children lack the experience, perspective, and maturity to withstand the allure, particularly when packaged in such entertaining characters, images, and music. The only chance they have in this world so dominated by media is for you to show them how to use all of the good that media has to offer while avoiding their pitfalls.

Self-esteem

There is a robust body of research affirming that children can come to value themselves based on the messages they get from the media. For example, girls who read fashion and celebrity magazines, which portray thin models, are more self-conscious about their bodies, diet and exercise more, and are more vulnerable to eating disorders. Also, the sexualization of females that dominates both old and new media and is accessible to increasingly younger ages of girls results in distorted body image, low self-esteem, and depression, among other developmental problems. Among boys, research has shown unrealistic portrayals of males related to physical prowess, appearance, intellect, and attractiveness to the opposite sex create unrealistic expectations that lower self-esteem.

New media is playing an growing role in the formation and maintenance of self-esteem among children. There is growing evidence that young people are increasingly basing how they feel about themselves on how connected they are and the quantity of their relationships. The steady influx of text messages, regular postings on social networking sites, and number of “likes” and “friends” they have, for example, become the measures of children’s self-worth. The absence of the above becomes the grounds for doubt, insecurity, and anxiety.

There is also an emerging body of evidence indicating that social media is developing an unhealthy relationship with self-esteem. For example, one study found that Facebook users who had low self-esteem posted more “self-promotional” materials on their pages than those with high self-esteem. Another study reported that those who were more dependent on outside influences for their self-esteem were more likely to spend more time and post more photos of themselves on Facebook.

So far, I’ve painted a pretty bleak picture of media’s impact on children. There is, however, evidence of some positive influence on children’s development. For example, one study found that social media provides opportunities to build self-esteem, develop friendships, and hone social skills. Other research reported that viewing and editing their profile and receiving feedback from friends on their Facebook pages boosted self-esteem. In the case of the profiles, because profiles tend to be positive, subjects were giving themselves a “shot” of optimism about themselves. In the case of the feedback from friends, subjects got a “shot” of support.  Additionally, the sense of security that social media provide can allow shy children to express themselves more and practice social skills which can then translate into confident and comfortable face-to-face interactions.

Consistent with my message throughout my latest parenting book, Raising Generation Tech: Preparing Your Children for a Media-fueled World, media will only be harmful to children’s self-esteem if they are exposed to them in excess, without reasonable filters, guidance, or perspective, and with insufficient counterbalances, such as positive experiences, feedback, messages, from the “real world.”

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“To all of Chris’ friends: This is his father. My son carelessly left his account logged in so I decided to snoop around. Upon reading my son’s personal information, I would like to clear a few things up. My son is not a ‘gangsta,’ he will not ‘beat a ho’s ass’ and he will most certainly not ‘roll a fatty wit his boyz.’ So for all of those who think he is some hard ass thug, think again…he is Chris _______, a 15 year old kid that was afraid of the dark until he was 12 and cried at the end of Marley and Me.” Father changing his son’s Facebook status

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Is there anything more important to your children’s long-term development than the formation of a healthy self-identity? The self-identity encompasses the totality of the knowledge and understanding that children gain about themselves including their personalities, aptitudes and capabilities, intellectual and physical attributes, interests, and relationships. The self-identity includes not only present perceptions, but also future and idealized self-conceptions that act as the aspirations and goals toward which children strive. Your children’s self-identity, that is, how they come to think of themselves, define who they are as people, and see themselves as unique all play a vital role in the people that your children become and the direction that their lives take.

Self-identity also involves two separate, though related, “mechanisms:” self-awareness and self-esteem. Self-awareness refers to your children’s ability to be introspective and understand who they are, for example, their personality, values, needs, attitudes, and emotions. Self-esteem is your children’s general evaluation of their competence and worth as a person based on what they know of themselves from their self-awareness and feedback from their social world.

As children mature, healthy self-identity becomes clearly defined; children come to know who they are. It’s also internally and externally congruent, meaning different perceptions that children hold about themselves are consistent and those perceptions are not in conflict with feedback they receive about themselves from the world around them.

Importantly, a healthy self-identity provides children with three essential “senses” that act as the foundation for future development. First, self-identity gives children a sense of consistency and stability over time, helping them to feel safe and secure and from which they are comfortable exploring the limits of their abilities. Second, it gives children a sense of uniqueness from which they can seek out their own individual place and make their own special contributions to the world. Third, self-identity gives them a sense of affiliation in which, while seeing themselves as distinct beings, also feel an integral part of a group and capable of building nurturing relationships in different aspects of their lives.

Externalization of Self-identity

One aspect of self-identity that is particularly relevant is that children gain their self-identity through both self-observation and information from their social world. As children gain self-awareness, they observe and evaluate their own behavior based on past experience, current needs, and future goals and dreams. They also look outward to their social, academic, physical, artistic, and spiritual worlds in which they live for feedback that also shapes their self-identity. Because children are fundamentally social beings and an essential part of their development involves finding their place in the social and cultural context in which they live, feedback from that social world plays a significant role in the evolution of their self-identity.

Because children’s social worlds have expanded dramatically in the last decade, from families, friends, neighborhoods, and schools to an almost-limitless universe of people due to the proliferation of the Internet, it isn’t difficult to see how external forces may now be gaining a disproportionate influence over the development of children’s self-identity compared to previous generations where their social worlds were far more confined. These social influences, accelerated by the explosion of technology, may be interfering with the healthy development of self-identity in children.

One of the most powerful ways in which popular culture and technology are altering the way in which self-identity is established in children is through the shift from being internally to externally driven. Yes, as I just described, social factors have always had an impact on the formation of self-identity, but they had been, up until recently, balanced partners of sorts with children’s own internal contributors to self-identity. Now the sheer ubiquity and force of the recent technological advances has taken that influence and turned its volume up to a deafening roar.

In previous generations, most of the social forces that influenced children’s self-identities were positive; parents, peers, schools, communities, extracurricular activities, even the media sent mostly healthy messages to children about who they were and how they should perceive themselves. Yes, there were bad influences, but they were far outweighed by those that were beneficial to children. These forces acted mostly as a mirror reflecting back on children what they saw in themselves, resulting in affirmation rather than change in their self-identity.

But now, the pendulum has swung to the other extreme in a social world where the profit motive trumps concern for children’s well being and where healthy influences are mostly drowned out by the cacophony of popular culture as transmitted by the latest technology.

The self-identities of this generation of children are now shaped by external forces in two ways. First, popular culture, through today’s media, no longer holds a mirror to reflect children’s self-identities. Nor does it provide feedback about how grounded their self-identities are in the reality of their lives. Instead, popular culture manufactures “portraits” of who it wants children to be. Tapping into children’s most basic needs to feel good about themselves, accepted, and attractive, popular culture tells children what they should believe about themselves.

The problem is that the self-identity that is shaped by popular culture serves its own best interests rather than those of children. Additionally, self-identity is no longer really self-identity, meaning derived from the self, but rather is an identity projected onto children by popular culture and in no way a reflection of who children are, what the British neuroscientist Susan Greenfield calls the “Nobody Scenario.”

Second, technology has caused children to shift away from expressing their self-identities and toward constructing a façade based on the answer to the question, “How can I ensure that others view me positively?” The goal for children in their use of technology, whether Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, or text messaging, becomes how they can curry acceptance, popularity, status, and, by extension, self-esteem. Self-awareness and self-expression give way to a preoccupation with what others think, impression management, and self-promotion. As the writer Christine Rosen wrote in her 2007 article in The New Atlantis, “Does this technology, with its constant demands to collect (friends and status), and perform (by marketing ourselves), in some ways undermine our ability to attain what it promises—a surer sense of who we are and where we belong? The Delphic oracle’s guidance was know thyself. Today, in the world of online social networks, the oracle’s advice might be show thyself.”

Children come to see their identities not as expressions of who they are and what they believe, but rather the identities they would like to have or that they want people to see. They then feel compelled to promote and market these identities using technology rather than embracing and expressing internally generated and accurate expressions of who they really are.

The line between person and persona, private and public self become blurred or erased completely and the so-called self-identity, which is supposed to be a reflection of the individuality of each child, becomes rather a means of their acceptance and status among others who reside in their digital communities. Yet, in children’s extensive efforts to be “liked”—an act of accumulation to be taken on Facebook—by manipulating their persona, they come to believe that they’re not worthy of being liked—an expression of affection, in the original sense of the word—for the person that they really are.

Paradoxically, in striving for approval from their social world writ large through technology and in seeking uniqueness that enables children to stand out in the densely populated cyber world, they unwittingly sacrifice their true self-identities and shape their identities to conform to what the digital world views as acceptable. In doing so, children relinquish the specialness that they hold so dear. Notes Christine Rosen, “Indeed, this is one of the characteristics of MySpace [before Facebook rose to preeminence] most striking to anyone who spends a few hours trolling its millions of pages: it is an overwhelmingly dull sea of monotonous uniqueness, of conventional individuality, of distinctive sameness.” Because children’s needs for acceptance and status are so strong and the external forces so powerful and pervasive, they have little choice but to capitulate and adopt the identities that are imposed on them rather than seek out their true self-identities.

This post is excerpted from Dr. Jim Taylor’s new parenting book, Raising Generation Tech: Preparing Your Children for a Media-fueled World.