If beauty is thought to save the world, narcissism would destroy it for sure. When narcissism influences young minds, who are supposed to build the future, it is difficult to see through the implementation of it under such conditions. People are obsessed only with their selves, their popularity, and attention they receive, which leads the society to chaos. Life in chaos is impossible because of the lack of harmony. The task of this essay is to investigate the causes and effects of narcissism on the young people.
Narcissism is a type of egoism, which was first, introduced to the world in the nineteenth century though the theory, originating from the Greek mythology. For several thousand years narcissism was considered to be a myth until a German psychologist Sigmund Freud made an attempt to describe it from psychological point of view. Thus he has drawn a parallel between the sexual side of human mentality and their narcissistic expression. He claimed that narcissism is a kind of a disorder, when a person is more interested and attracted in oneself rather that the people around. Such behavior is abnormal according to the social norms and regulations. Such deviant behavior is caused by human psyche.
According to Freud’s theory of narcissism it can be observed in individualistic persons and mentally weak people with low self-esteem. With regard to these reasons such people try to supplement the lack of interest towards the others by self-attention. This is what differ narcissism from egoism, a psychological need in demanding extra attention and affection of others.
Narcissistic personality is defined as magnifying the traits of character, features of appearance and personality in overall. One is unable realistically perceive the world, therefore objectively categorizes everything. Moreover, the person positions one’s ego on the first place, despising the rest as irrelevant.
This psychological phenomenon attracts much of scientific attention, especially on studying its expression on young generation. The authors of Perspectives on Psychological Science investigate the level of narcissism in groups of young people from different generations. Trzesniewski and Donnellan (year) took into account various factors among which were self-esteem, the level of willingness to have higher social status, egoism, etc. The results of their research were astonishing: “Survey of high-school students is almost entirely consistent with these previous findings, showing decreases in civic interest and trust and increases in high expectations, materialism, and self-satisfaction” (Acton, p. 274).This piece of evidence is called pop-psychology, young people tendency to worry more about personal accomplishments, rather than serious achievements in science. Looking at the glamorous show-business celebrities the representatives of younger generations are eager to copy their life style, which comes down to glamorous self-presentation and self-admiration. When pop-culture with such features imposes rules for living, it is evident that the level of narcissism increases in young generation.
One more serious factor that causes narcissism in young generation is social networking. In the article Facebook’s ‘Dark Side’: Study Finds Link to Socially Aggressive Narcissism (year)the author highlights the idea that this social web resource has the strongest influence on young generations and causes the development of narcissism. The structure of the most popular social net in the world is designed in a way that its users become addicted to spending more and more of their time for internet networking. Uploading new pictures, posting comments on the wall, putting millions of “likes” under the pictures or posts has become a sign of popularity and it even defines the social status of the user on the internet. Virtual recognition increases sense of personal self-esteem that results in appearance of pride, which is not good for mental health as it distorts self perception of inner and external worlds. Shallow friendship displaces the real one, in the same way artificial “˜likes’ rule out sincere emotions. Virtual world and real world are mixing up, and it becomes really hard to draw the line which separates them.
The psychologists, who investigate the behavior of Facebook users point out that the overwhelming majority of young people become dependent of it. They highly appreciate positive comments under their pictures and posts, and become easily irritated and mean when their shadow friends express negative thoughts or remain indifferent. According to the scientists the users with low level of narcissism react normally on events of virtual life. They pay more attention to real life, their real friends and relatives. And those who are attached to the social networks tend to ignore real pleasures. As a result, they remain lonely in real life in spite of the fact that in the internet they have many shadow friends.
The narcissistic features in young generations lead to development of psychological disorders. More and more young individuals are observed to stipulate self-disclose due to unwillingness to bear somebody’s ignorance. The decreasing level of tolerance in young people is also explained by an increasing level of narcissism, which has not been observed earlier before the popularization of the social network.
Narcissism can be observed in a manner of communication as well. Thus, many users agree to make new contacts with people from different countries than from the same one. This means a decreasing level of collectiveness within the social circles the young people live in. Moreover, a large number of them are looking for support and understanding of others, but are not ready to provide such support back.
Aside of the pop-culture and social network, there are more factors that have a significant importance on the development of narcissistic feature among young people. One of them is educational concept. A professor from British university emphasized that the psychological structure of educational system is concentrated on self-improvement and self-realization. Personality is the central part of this system. In addition, various systems of motivation enforce young people to compete, be stronger, and more attractive in the eyes of the others. In reality this approach brings up impatience and intolerance in respect of other people.
Speaking about durability of narcissism syndrome many scientists and psychologists agree that not always this behavior affects future life. There are cases when this syndrome was temporal and disappeared when young people grow older. The demands of adult life are serious and in order to face various difficulties the representatives of young generations must have something more in their character and attitude to external world than high self-esteem and self-admiration.
The psychologists, who study this phenomenon, tend to connect expression of narcissism with the awkward age and psychological crises, which occur at particular life periods. Adolescence is characterized by socialization and searching one’s own place in the world. When asking for somebody’s attention young people find out that there is also criticism, which they have to learn to accept. While waiting for something they should first give something. At last they learn what goes around comes around.
In conclusion, it should be pointed out that during last several years, narcissism in young generations has really become a serious issue. The reasons, which cause the development of this psychological phenomenon, are also known. Thus, the appropriate measures, intended to reduce the negative consequences of these reasons should be taken. Of course, not all of them can be completely erased, especially those ones connected with earning money. On the other hand, society that recognizes serious consequences of its inaction, would be vanished one day as a structure. The group of people where everyone have diagnosis “˜narcissism’ would be a lonely place indeed, because all of the members being occupied with themselves would not be able to notice others. Narcissism would kill the entity.