American Culture: Why Today’s Generation is Not Narcissistic In today’s day and age, it is easy to fall into the trap of focusing on only oneself and not anyone or anything else. It is easy to get so caught up in social media and the excitement of seeing how many likes one might get on Instagram or how many retweets on Twitter. It is easy to become nearly obsessed with tangible items that are of no emotional value. It is so compelling and fun and it is part of this generation’s culture, but in no way does any of this equate to narcissism or self-entitlement. Nowadays society is being viewed as narcissistic and egotistical due to the rise of rewards and achievements given out; however this is not an accurate depiction of today’s society because
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The reason people may believe this generation has become more narcissistic than others is because we care so much about our reputation, especially when it comes to school and grades. Students are constantly looking out to get as many A’s as possible mainly because of the pressure to do well by their parents. Today, parents are pushing their children to reach and exceed the expectation of getting good grades and doing well on the ACT/SAT. Along with these incredibly high expectations, parents think incentives are a good idea to motivate their children. In “Money for Morality”, Mary Arguelles argues how parents that give children incentives are only making them more narcissistic: “Instead, we rely on external ‘stuff’ as a measure of our worth. We pass this message to our children. We offer them money for honesty and good grades. Pizza is given as reward for reading… We call these things incentives, telling ourselves that if we can just reel them in and get them hooked, then the built-it rewards will follow” (Arguelles 51). While it may be true that kids are focusing more on the incentives than the actual things that must get done, parents need to understand that children need to be motivated, but not with incentives and …show more content…
Narcissism is not a word one can throw around to describe a generation that works hard and loves who they
The reason people may believe this generation has become more narcissistic than others is because we care so much about our reputation, especially when it comes to school and grades. Students are constantly looking out to get as many A’s as possible mainly because of the pressure to do well by their parents. Today, parents are pushing their children to reach and exceed the expectation of getting good grades and doing well on the ACT/SAT. Along with these incredibly high expectations, parents think incentives are a good idea to motivate their children. In “Money for Morality”, Mary Arguelles argues how parents that give children incentives are only making them more narcissistic: “Instead, we rely on external ‘stuff’ as a measure of our worth. We pass this message to our children. We offer them money for honesty and good grades. Pizza is given as reward for reading… We call these things incentives, telling ourselves that if we can just reel them in and get them hooked, then the built-it rewards will follow” (Arguelles 51). While it may be true that kids are focusing more on the incentives than the actual things that must get done, parents need to understand that children need to be motivated, but not with incentives and …show more content…
Narcissism is not a word one can throw around to describe a generation that works hard and loves who they