Foxnews.com commissioned a curious article by its resident psychiatrist Keith Ablow: "We are raising a generation of deluded narcissists."
In this article, Ablow argues that, in light of data from the American Freshman Survey indicating that "college students are more likely than ever to call themselves gifted and driven to succeed, even though their test scores and time spent studying are decreasing," things like Facebook, Twitter, video games, MTV, and reality TV are raising our children to be deluded narcissists who imagine they're something grander than they are through these venues and activities.
I'm sympathetic to aspects of this argument, at least insofar as I think there really is a deleterious effect of our spending so much more time consuming "information" and empty programming than in concentrated periods of work or study. I do think, ultimately, that when we make "information" into a mathematical abstraction for which more is always better, when we let our technologies teach us that it's OK walk around with our eyes glued to a smartphone like zombies, and when we're content to have no critique of this scenario whatsoever because it's circumscribed by the market, and we're happy for the amoral market to dictate our tastes and preferences to us (quite literally in a Web 3.0 sense), we do become worse as individuals and as a society. I do think that having some semblance of interiority, or a life of one's mind, of one's own thoughts and reflections, is crucial for innovation, progress, and personal health and well-being. These assumptions are what underlie my concerns about data from the American Freshman Survey: that students don't seem to understand, at least by their behavior, that it's more important for their thriving and success to study than to watch Kim Kardashian and fantasize about living that lifestyle, and that the former can at least give them a better shot at achieving such a lifestyle down the road.
But this isn't really what Ablow is arguing. Curiously, Ablow is faulting technology, reality TV, social media, and participation trophies not for making us dumber or less capable of productive thinking and living, but for making us more self-centered, narcissistic, and delusional. Again, there may be something to this argument. Certainly, as Ablow argues, the ability to edit our lives in real time, and to watch others do the same, can make us sheltered from realities that we'd be better off confronting, accepting, or improving upon. As I see it, however, these self-centered media are just that--media--for a wider consumer culture, born of an advanced hypercapitalism, which is the true culprit.
For example, it doesn't surprise me that children are more likely now than ever to think of themselves as "driven to succeed." The reactionary idea that with an individualistic mentality and hard work, we can *ALL* be successful, regardless of circumstances, is not a figment of Facebook; it's a tenet of American capitalism. The idea that "success" means a material lifestyle akin to what we see on reality TV shows like the "Real Housewives" series didn't arise after Twitter; it's the foundation of the widespread consumer culture that tells all young people, regardless of whether they're Facebooking or studying, that material wealth defines their success and should be their ultimate objective. Indeed, Ablow even acknowledges in his article, in a brief, polemical aside about how the President fails to "applaud...genuine and extraordinary achievements in business," that material success in business is something worth pursuing.
What Ablow seems not to recognize is that "extraordinary achievement in business" is precisely what gave us Facebook, Twitter, reality TV, the Kardashians, and the inflated language of corporate speak and life coaching (in which Ablow participates) about drive for success, individuality, unfettered positivity about oneself, etc. If anyone is out to blow sunshine up our asses, it's not Facebook; it's the corporate cheerleaders behind the idea that success means being the next Mark Zuckerberg.
In a telling line from Kanye West's recent hit, "Clique," West observes: You know white people / get money don't spend it / or maybe they / get money and buy a business." Here West pins down the hypocrisy of Ablow's argument about self-aggrandizing youth, social media, and popular culture: the conservative and largely Anglo-American ideal of being successful in business but living with relative austerity relies on--if one is to be successful in business today--selling a kind of delusional self-aggrandizement to everybody else. What advertising isn't based on the premise that once you consume (extra conspicuously when you share on social media) you will be made whole? This deep insecurity within that Ablow believes is at the heart of our narcissism, and, according to Ablow, will result in increased violence and murder as young people painfully come to grips with the inevitable bursting of their narcissistic bubbles, is largely fueled by hypercapitalism and empty consumer culture. In other words, it's not so easy to separate the negative aspects of hypercapitalism and consumer culture--for Ablow, social media and vapid television programming--from the kinds of business initiatives that Ablow seems to think are the recommendable alternative to social-media-driven narcissism.
And as for the deplorable practice of telling everyone they're a winner, giving everyone a trophy just for playing the game, etc.: isn't corporate life coaching of the sort that Ablow does, among other things, for a living just an adult version of the same? Isn't the exceptionalist narrative of everyone being able to succeed with hard work, etc., just an ideological version of the same? Isn't it kind of ridiculous to argue that children need to be taught their limitations, but not adults?
