New Narcissism
“1. Sigmund Freud was the first one to ever put a name on the familiar phenomenon “loving yourself” which came to be known as narcissism. He named it after the story about a good-looking boy, Narcissus, who fell in love with his own reflection. Back then narcissism was used as a medical expression but today we are more likely to describe it as a phenomenon. The text “Me, Me, Me”, an article written by Sarfraz Manzoor, leaves us under the impression that today's narcissism is worse than ever before, especially among the youth (according to a study from San Diego). The Internet has a powerful role in this as it can help anyone, who wants, to achieve wealth and fame without even relating to their real lives. Through the Internet, it is possible to create your own reality, kind of like a parallel world, which most likely is the complete opposite of the real world. This is important to the new narcissistic way of living as appearance means everything. People today are also much more likely to get plastic surgery. They do this to feel better about themselves, to get a boost of self-confidence, and to be ready for competition from their fellow human beings. Therefore, people spend money like crazy to design their outer appearance most of all to appeal to as many men or women as possible. Attention becomes a competition you cannot win too many times. New Narcissism can be explained as a phenomenon where today's society is willing to do almost everything it takes to achieve fame, attention and wealth simply for their own personal benefits.

2. The text “Students narcissism on the rise”, written by Janice McDuffee, agrees a lot with the first text “Me, Me, Me” and mentions a lot the same studies. According to this article, the society will from now on only reproduce self-centered and very narcissistic individuals, which will create a generation of people that lacks talent and realistic sense. Janice McDuffee doesn’t exclusively blame the youth, however. She clamps down on the parents who she is blaming for being too soft and overprotective on their children, trying to hide the real world from them when they in reality should show them what it is really like out there. This cause the children to think and believe that there is nothing more important going on than to think about themselves. These children are way to optimistic about their futures thinking everything will work out just perfectly which means they don’t engage as much in the process of education and societal needs. This also causes them to set unrealistic goals for their futures, even though they have no chance whatsoever to achieve these goals. Janice McDuffee goes so far to believing it will be dangerous in the long term to rely on such a narcissistic generation being able to take over. She calls the generation, generation me. As a complete contrast, to the other two, the article “Do Today’s Young People Really Think They Are So Extraordinary?” written by Catherine Wes, tells us that according to Jimmi Carter, who is a former president and also a university teacher, there is no sign of any significant change in the students attitude towards themselves. His statement is even supported by a study from a university in Western Ontario that completely disproves the term “generation me” by not being able to show any increase in today’s narcissism compared to earlier studies. In both of the texts, the writers rely on scientific studies. This is a technique, which makes it easier for the reader to have credibility as you have experts supporting your statement. Also, neither of the texts mentions anything about how these studies were performed, their measuring techniques of the meaning, which makes it more difficult for the reader to question the specific definition of narcissism.

3. The individual is in centrum in the modern society, which has come to make the individual the most important customer yet. When the computers came along came the Internet where everybody is measured as equals, making it possible to achieve a sort of “star quality” without even facing their fans in real life. This creates falseness to this parallel universe where everything is how you want it to be. I would be lying if I said that everyone uses the Internet for this kind of fame because ordinary people use it just as well, maybe even just as much, to achieve benefits. This can be in a relation of education, business or something completely different. Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and, last but not least, dating sites is like a homepage for the narcissistic individual to create a space where they can focus on themselves and post updates of their so-called celebrity life’s. Especially Instagram and Snapchat are used to do so as these are sites where you exclusively post pictures of what you find appealing in your life or looks. Facebook is more wide focused, but even on this site it is possible to delude people into thinking you are more popular and good-looking than in real life. This can, for example, be done in having a load of Facebook friends whom you don’t even know or having hundreds of likes on your profile pictures. This is a pretty easy way to achieve confidence if you lack believing in yourself in real life. The real abuse of the Internet is that you so easily can manipulate the truth around you as you decide what parts of your life are shown and what are hidden. If you’ve become so afraid of showing even a little imperfection, your credibility will be likely to fade which makes the opposite effect of what you probably were trying to achieve. This is not always a negative quality. For example if you’re using your image to make money or gain success, this is definitely the way to do it. The Internet will always have its advantages and disadvantages. Along the process, everyone has to deal with his or her own personal ethics and morals. You can only hope that the people who use the Internet are good and wise enough to respect others. “