I think this is a fundamental lack of understanding of how young people use social media and technology, and one would do better to look at a humorous article about these things written by someone more directly involved. You’ll get lists of what is proper to share, what isn’t proper to share, and how those things should be shared. Older and middle-aged people use technology to document and share their lives too. However, they use it to document things that they consider, for a variety of reasons, “major.” I had a baby, my daughter got married, I took a vacation and here are shots of the locations I visited. A person who’s 21 years old generally doesn’t have the same outlook on life or experiences as someone who is 35, or 45, or 65. Most 21 year olds don’t have babies; many are not married, and those that are tend to have more modest celebrations; most can’t afford a lengthy vacation to an exotic, historical location. A 21 year old is more likely to see a party, a midterm, or an event at work as a “major event,” and a 21 year old is young enough that an event at work might mean “I dropped a tray of glasses, it was so embarrassing” or “my boss shouted at me” as opposed to “I closed a million dollar deal.” This is the same logic as older adults complaining about how useless people in their teens and twenties are because they haven’t “done” anything, ignoring the fact that the things that are “done” on the scale they’re referencing are either much older than 21, or are young people with an incredibly unique intellect and skill.

Plus, the “sharing with everyone” attitude also seems to be misunderstood. Most people don’t, or at least don’t intend to, share their pictures and thoughts with “everyone.” This is another age and language thing. To a 40 year old “everyone” means “everyone in the world” or “everyone with access to the internet.” To a 16 year old “everyone” means “my ten closest friends” or “most of the junior class” or maybe “my friends, my cousins, and grandma.” Whether or not this is the end result, most people don’t intend for literally everyone to be privy to their personal media and life story. Even if someone has hundreds of friends on facebook, those friends are probably primarily composed of people that the person actually has some connection to (regardless of how much they care). Sharing with “everyone” doesn’t happen, sharing with a large circle of friends, relatives, and colleagues does. And, of course, many of those who aren’t posting pictures for just their friends and relatives are explicitly trying to get their name out. Ten years ago, you couldn’t really have a legitimate business without having a website somewhere online. Today, it’s impossible if you don’t have a twitter or facebook, and having a smartphone is basically a pre-req. People are offered modeling contracts and record deals and book deals entirely based on their facebook and youtube accounts. Businesses and charities are often run entirely online. And while becoming a supermodel or singer or important journalist or business mogul after being discovered online is rare, that is what many people are trying to do when they’re sharing with everyone. It’s not so much narcissism so much as it is “I have something to offer to the world, and this is the way it’s offered now.”

And really, how arrogant and self-important is it to make a statement about an entire demographic you don’t belong to based on an iPhone commercial?

Now, DConstruct is right that college samples shouldn’t be used to make sweeping generalizations about all people aged 18 to 25. College populations are on average wealthier, more heavily female, more liberal, more educated, less religious, and depending on which college, more white or more diverse, than the average for the group just based on age. But DConstruct is dead wrong claiming that the population is somehow more exclusionary than it was decades ago.

IMO the new twist on this ancient problem is not that kids are getting more narcissistic (it’d be hard to beat the “Me” generation on that score) so much as they’re getting more and more oblivious to their immediate surroundings in lieu of living in their heads, or rather in “phonespace” (a word I just made up; it’s like virtual reality, but smaller and has lots of bad spelling). Being lost in phonespace is actually much worse than being lost in your head because in phonespace you’re lost in someone else’s head (and they want to sell you crap you don’t need).

When someone is lost in phonespace, to outside observers they would appear to be either narcissistic or somewhat developmentally disabled (it’s a fine line). Since more people are ending up lost there, it would appear that narcissism is on the rise but it may just be an increase in general obliviousness. They tend to produce similar results.

So rather than becoming more self-absorbed, maybe they’re just getting painfully bad at in-person social interaction? Someone who won’t (or can’t) engage face-to-face might overcompensate and thereby seem like a narcissist to whoever is trying to talk to them, so perhaps the solution for some folks is to stay home and interact with other people exclusively in phonespace.