The Kids Are Too Alright

The AP reports that according to five psychologists, "College students think they're so special." So special, in fact, that they are hurting not only themselves, but society as a whole.

The study's lead author, Jean Twenge, is also the author of the book “Generation Me: Why Today’s Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled — and More Miserable Than Ever Before.” According to the Publishers Weekly blurb found on the book's Amazon page,

Twenge argues that those born after 1970 are more self-centered, more disrespectful of authority and more depressed than ever before. When the United States started the war in Iraq, she points out, military enlistments went down, not up.

This argument is of course nothing new. Over a century ago, sociologist Emile Durkheim worried that the excessive individualism fostered by modern society was heightening the feelings of personal alienation that cause depression and suicide. Put simply, "the less one has the less he is tempted to extend the range of his needs indefinitely,” whereas “[t]he less limited one feels the more intolerable limitation appears.”

Twenge would surely agree: parents and teachers pamper young egos from birth, insisting that each child is "special"; a child's sense of entitlement grows when parents are permissive; our culture encourages individuals to pursue the basest of wants and the most far-reaching dreams. Collective discipline has dissipated to the point where (gasp!) kids would rather see themselves on YouTube than in camoflauge.

How to save America's youth from the "misery" of entitlement? W. Keith Campbell, a co-author of the aforementioned article, sounds a familiar refrain.

“Permissiveness seems to be a component,” he said. “A potential antidote would be more authoritative parenting. Less indulgence might be called for.”

At the heart of the "anti-me" project lies a call for authoritarianism and austerity: a limiting of freedom, dampening of desire, and lowering of expectations of personal satisfaction. What's more depressing? The possibility that kids will be disappointed if they find out they can't have everything they want, or teaching them not to want in the first place?