I think there's more to it than that. When I taught college, it never failed to amaze me how many and how evidently my students seemed to experience self-important entitlement and shatteringly low self-esteem. You probably know exactly what I'm talking about: the huge population of C-students who are unhappy about their middling grades but don't believe themselves capable of the intellectual work necessary to make better ones.

I'm not a sociologist, but I still found that advertisement rather off-putting. Thank you for putting the problem I was having trouble articulating so concisely. There is such a thing as TMI, whether the self-absorbed believe it or not.

I love it. A conservative looks at this article and immediately blames the rise of the self-esteem cult in primary education and child development. A liberal looks at it and blames the rising celebration of individualism. Tell me, when you look at the ink blot, do you see a butterfly or a skull?

That ad annoyed the heck out of me, especially since it would play every time I streamed anything on Hulu. Not to mention, the whole idea that if information sharing is a "right", then naturally you should expect to pay for it!

I've been hoping this ad would pop up here! The idea of having the right to pay out the nose for unlimited information sharing is asinine on so many levels. I'm seeing the connection to narcissism, but somehow that's not really translating for me to self-esteem.

I haven't read the study so I have to ask, did they control for the fact that college populations aren't representative of the age bracket they belong to? Higher education is becoming more exclusionary along lines of race and class. My initial reaction is to wonder if they are merely measuring class/race etc differences in the college population over time and not a general rise in narcissism. Does anyone know if they addressed this concern?

But what has this article got to do with me?

I can't recall the last time I saw an ad with so much 'theological' language. The product is, quite evidently, being positioned as the Deity.

The age of the douche.

I find "I need — no, I have the right — to be unlimited" most interesting. By framing it as a right, it implies legal and civil ramifications, like denying unlimited access is denying human rights. And while the UN has said that internet access is a human right, I don't think this is what they mean. You don't "need" to or "have the right" to have unlimited data on your phone, you want those things. And that's totally different from not having access to the internet or having your country restrict and censor internet content.

I'm a little bit skeptical about the "rise in narcissism" - language and social relations shift over time, so a "narcissism" metric that made sense in 1979 might not really say anything meaningful in 2006. Consider, by analogy, that a young middle class US woman who talked about her own sexual pleasure outside of extremely specialized medical or health circles in 1880 would be eccentric, a sex worker or mentally ill (I mean, that's really true - it just wasn't done; although there were accepted discourses about sex and pleasure, those were private and specialized rather than the subject of casual conversation) ...but although that's still a moderately personal topic today, it's not eccentric; middle class women talk freely about such things on the internet and in more casual/liberated social situations - are we to speculate that we as a society have become eccentric, are all simultaneously becoming sex workers or are all suffering from mental illness?

And of course, I'm skeptical because it fits so neatly with the usual "people older than me are boring and repressed; people younger than me are lazy and selfish" discourse that is so readily available in the US. (I say this as someone who is in their mid thirties and often feels the temptation to slip into that narrative - it's a socially available explanation for my feelings of confusion or frustration with generational differences and social change.) Does anyone ever discover that the next generation is "more altruistic" or "harder working"? Isn't it always framed as "less inclined to focus on their families, save money and strive to advance"? No matter what the young folks are like, they're always described as worse than their elders.

There's certainly change in people's perception of themselves and their place in society over time - and there are certain trends that are bad - but using an extremely individualist and moralizing framework occludes what might be of interest.

It's a very specific, and dubious kind of "individualism" that is celebrated in this ads. It's not the individualism of making your own things, or of ignoring fads, or of bucking ideological norms. It is "individualism" in which the individual is constructed out of products and services provided by various companies.

not sure what a jesusphone got to do with individualism though.

"What strikes me is the message that every moment of our lives is so
amazing that it would be a horrible shame to not share it with everyone."

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?

Nice one Laura Lee!

I'm glad I'm not the only one who is creeped out by that ad.