“Narcissism is on the rise in America!”
“Are we living through a narcissism epidemic?”
“Millennials: The Me Me Me Generation.”
For decades, headlines have heralded a rise of narcissism in the United States, particularly among those born between the early ‘80s and late ‘90s. The warnings began in the 2000s with a landmark study showing that narcissistic tendencies among college students had skyrocketed by 30% since the 1980s. A slew of books followed, with titles like Generation Me, The Narcissism Epidemic, and The Selfie Generation.
Today, lengthy TikTok videos have replaced static selfies. YouTubers share everything from what their kids ate for breakfast to how they fixed their toilet. Celebrities offer play-by-plays of their private lives on reality TV. Even the president has been labeled by some psychologists as a “malignant narcissist.”
Are we all becoming more narcissistic?
It’s complicated, said Keith Campbell, PhD, professor of psychology at the University of Georgia and a co-author of that landmark study.
“It’s kind of a narcissistic world,” he said. “But I do not think that narcissism at the individual level is increasing, and I don’t think it has been for a long time.”
Instead, he and others say, those with higher narcissistic tendencies now have bigger megaphones and greater influence, shifting cultural norms toward individualism and self-promotion. That’s not necessarily all bad — some narcissistic traits like confidence and self-worth can be good for us. But in excess, they can sabotage relationships and harm mental health, leading many to worry about the negative impacts of our seemingly self-obsessed “look-at-me’’ culture.
“When I look at college students today, what I actually see is a lot more depression, anxiety, loneliness, self-comparison, and fear of missing out than I did 15 years ago,” said Campbell. “They are more sad than egotistical.”
How We Got Here
Broadly speaking, researchers define narcissism as a sense of “entitled self-importance,” ascribing more value to oneself and one’s needs than others.
It exists on a spectrum, with 1% to 6% of U.S. adults, mostly men, on the extreme high end — a clinical condition called narcissistic personality disorder.
And it manifests in different ways: “Grandiose narcissism” — what you might imagine when you hear the word narcissist — describes positive, assertive, attention-seeking behavior, while those with lesser-known “vulnerable narcissism” tend to be more anxious, sensitive, and approval-seeking. Lack of empathy and a sense of entitlement are hallmark features of both.
Social psychologists measure narcissism with questionnaires. Around the 1990s, some started to report that young people were scoring much higher than they used to.
For instance, in their landmark 2008 study, Campbell and co-author Jean Twenge, PhD, professor of psychology at San Diego State University, found that almost two-thirds of college students scored above the mean on a questionnaire called the Narcissistic Personality Inventory — a 30% increase from 1980s scores.
In the 1960s, around 12% of young people agreed with the phrase: “I am important and famous.” By the ‘90s, that number had increased to 80%.
Some contested their numbers. Twenge and Campbell fought back with more research, including studies showing that even books and songs were using more first-person, “I-centered” language than in the past.
Many blame, at least in part, the “self-esteem movement” that emerged in the late ‘70s.
“At the time, people thought that if you make people feel good about themselves it will improve their performance,” said Amy Brunell, PhD, a professor of social psychology at The Ohio State University (and a Millennial herself) who has studied narcissism for 20 years.
“Kids were starting to be told more and more that they’re unique, they’re special, they’re awesome,” Brunell said. “The problem is that artificially boosting people’s self-esteem did not increase performance. What it did do is create a different, more narcissistic way of thinking.”
One study, published in the journal PNAS, found that kids whose parents “over-evaluated” them were more likely to be narcissistic. “Children seem to acquire narcissism, in part, by internalizing parents’ inflated views of them,” the authors wrote.
Then in the mid-2000s came reality TV shows like Paris Hilton’s The Simple Life and Keeping up with the Kardashians, which shifted cultural norms even more toward immodesty and self-promotion.
Facebook, and the rise of the selfie, contributed too.
“We ended up in a situation where the average kid in America had more media exposure than a starlet did in the 1950s or ‘60s,” said Campbell.
All this occurred when Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube were still in their infancy. And many predicted social media would intensify the “narcissism epidemic” even further.
But has it?
Not quite. In fact, Campbell said, individual narcissism peaked in the mid-2000s and then declined after the Great Recession. Today, he suspects it is lower than in the Paris Hilton heyday.
So why is everyone still talking about it?
“Because in a social mediated world, the people gaining all the attention and notoriety are the people self-promoting,” he said.
Social Media’s Impact
Research backs Campbell up.
One study of essential workers, conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic, found that not only did grandiose narcissists post more often about their “heroic” deeds, they also — in a sort of positive feedback loop — got more narcissistic with each post.
“The word ‘hero’ is a trigger for narcissists,” said Brunell, who authored the study. “Having their work elevated to hero status provides narcissists with an opportunity to shine in front of others and feel even better about themselves.”
Other studies have shown that narcissists spend more time on social apps, post more pictures and status updates, have more online friends, and are more likely to develop an unhealthy dependency on social media.
Brunell doesn’t buy the idea that things like TV shows and TikTok videos somehow cause narcissism.
“I can’t see somebody being fairly humble and then watching a lot of reality TV or going on social media and suddenly becoming a very narcissistic person,” she said. “But I do wonder if the more narcissistic behavior we see, the more desensitized to it we all become.”
Lena Derhally, a psychotherapist and author of The Facebook Narcissist: How to Identify and Protect Yourself and Your Loved Ones from Social Media Narcissism, has other concerns.
She points to rising rates of body dysmorphia among adolescents and shifting ideals, documented in the diaries of young girls, about what success looks like.
“Back in the day when girls used to write in their journals, they would write about character, like, ‘I want to be a good person.’ Now it’s all about how they look,” she said.
Meanwhile, people of all ages are struggling with FOMO.
“What I'm seeing in my own practice is that people are more anxious,” Derhally said. “Everybody's comparing themselves to what they're seeing on social media, which is a very filtered and fake version of what their lives actually are.”
There are consequences for narcissists too.
New research published in February by the American Psychological Association shows that people who score high on measures of grandiose narcissism tend to feel more excluded and ostracized than their less self-absorbed peers. (This leads to another viscous cycle in which they behave more narcissistically to get more attention.)
Campbell said he is particularly concerned about “vulnerable narcissists,” which aren’t talked about as much.
“They'll fantasize about how important they are, but they'll generally be kind of soured on the world because no one recognizes it,” Campbell said. “When you get to social media, you're going to see grandiose narcissists self-promoting and taking selfies, appearing to live their best life, and you’re going to see vulnerable narcissists stewing with envy.”
Some scholars have also expressed concerns about what happens to a society when all ears and eyes are fixed on the egotistical self-promoters.
“If you had, like, super genius narcissists who really cared about everybody, that would be fine,” Campbell said. But that’s not the case.
One study, examining 19 presidents who served between 1897 and 2007, found that those who scored high on narcissism spent an average of 613 days at war, compared to 136 days for those on the low end of the spectrum.
“More narcissistic presidents tend to only exit wars if they can say they won, and they will extend wars to find a way to declare some kind of victory,” said study author John Harden, PhD, who did the research at The Ohio State University, in a statement. “They want to look heroic and strong and competent – even if it means fighting the war beyond what is reasonable.”
Derhally also worries about what will become of today’s children, whose every move — from the avocado toast they had for breakfast to their naked frolicking on the beach as a toddler — is shared in infinite detail with the world by their parents.
“This idea of having to document everything, and everything being everybody’s business, could come back to haunt us,” she said.
What to Do About It
Research shows that narcissism tends to decrease with age. Having kids and partners shifts the focus to others, and experience with failure tempers delusions of perfection.
This could bode well for narcissists, and society, as Millennials — the so-called Me generation — grow older.
Derhally said she rarely sees people with very high narcissistic traits in her practice because, by definition, narcissists don’t tend to see anything wrong with their behavior.
But she does see the wreckage from interpersonal relationships with narcissistic people or from those aspiring to live up to others’ online personas.
She advises people to limit their social media consumption, and that of their kids, and remind themselves that the lives on display may not be as wonderful as they seem.
Both online and in real life, Brunell advises people to listen to their internal narcissism radar and, when they “start getting narcissism vibes,” if they can, walk away.
